If you already read my byline about how the criminals in this situation were very lucky the homeowner was using restraint let me explain to you briefly the gun laws of North Carolina, where this really stupid crime took place.
North Carolina has something called "Castle Doctrine" which means that a person is legally permitted to use lethal force to prevent injury or damage to their own property. This includes shooting people that break into your house and asking questions about it later.
Basically, if you hear a pane of glass getting broken in your house late one night and you have a shotgun next to your bed like I do, you can go confront the perpetrator and shoot them without even warning them at all. Once they illegally entered your house you are allowed to prevent them from committing a crime in your property by shooting them.
I'm not saying that is what you should do, I am saying that you are allowed to. Many people think like me and believe that this is part of the reason why we have very little property crime in areas like New Bern, which has a very high level of legal gun ownership. Criminals think twice about breaking into houses when they have a chance at getting ventilated at 1600 feet per second.
Well, not all criminals and this brings me to my story that fortunately had about as happy an ending as you can imagine.
Some friends of mine when I was in college were gun enthusiasts or at least 2 of the 3 roommates were. These guys were legal gun owners. They didn't parade their weapons around like gangsters and they kept their guns locked away except for one or something like that they kept at the ready in case a situation just like the one that did happen, happened.
Some young men, probably 18-25 or somewhere around that age decided to kick in the door and rob the place because I guess they saw one of the roommates counting some money in the living room - this is how the story was told to me after the fact anyway. The one roommate in the living room, obviously afraid by 3 dudes charging into the house after kicking the door in, ran down the hallway shouting for the other two roommates. The other two roommates came out of their bedrooms I think one of them was asleep and the other wasn't, but both were armed. One had a Mossberg 12-gauge pump action shotgun and the other had a Glock 9mm with a laser sight on it.
upon seeing the little dot where the bullet was going to travel through them if they didn't comply and the click-clack of a shell being loaded into the chamber of a "boomstick" the criminal enthusiasm died really fast.
now I want you to understand something at this point. The two armed roommates could have legally shot and grievously injured or even killed all 3 of the invaders and most likely wouldn't have even spent a single day in prison. They were inside their house that they legally rent with guns they legally own and were registered in their names.
Thankfully they were not trigger happy individuals and were responsible gun owners with many many hours of training and good trigger discipline. Things could have gone south though if the invaders hadn't complied and immediately gotten on the ground in the hallway, which is where the roommates held them at gunpoint reminding them that they will be shot if they get up and that this would be completely legal for them to do.
It didn't take the police very long to get there after the other roommate called them and from what I was told a relative army of officers turned up at the house. The police in this city take armed response VERY seriously and when the police pulled up on the house they told everyone to freeze including the two roommates with the guns in their hands... especially them actually.
You see the police need to establish what the situation is here so everyone was held at gunpoint until the lead officers who were decked out in full body armor with impressive long guns held everyone at bay and disarmed the two roomates who also immediately complied. They were both familiar with police protocol as is required for some gun licenses in North Carolina.
After the officers checked ID and got the story, the 3 people that invaded the house didn't even bother to try to lie: The evidence of forced entry was there with the splintered door frame and the 3 roommates were on the lease as renters of the house.
No round were fired, nobody was injured. The 3 guys that were arrested well, we don't really know what happened to them but seeing as how none of them were armed with anything, not even a knife, the charges were probably not that extreme. They probably had to do a little bit of time in prison, but not anything like years.
I consider this a really dumb crime because it is well-known that people in this part of the state are extremely likely to be legally armed, as those 3 thugs found out that night. I think this is the best possible outcome though because those 3 guys could have left that house in bodybags if they had been any more stupid than they were that night.
As it turns out the money that they were after, it was only something really small like $50. The tips the guy in the living room had gotten that night from his waiter job in an Italian restaurant. I think someone should value their life a lot more than this. What a stupid thing to almost get shot over.
