It seems good ol' Lincoln, NE, is not quite the peaceful mid western city it once was. After forty plus burglaries, at least a couple of sexual assaults on store clerks, and a home-invasion robbery/beating in just a couple of weeks, people are starting to wonder about their safety. While I'm not terribly concerned about a break in while I'm at home (with three dogs and a number of loaded guns at hand), I would be rather upset to come home and find my place had been ransacked.
While concealed carry is not an issue in this regard, a castle law would be an improvement Nebraska could make to help insure that innocent citizens can protect themselves without worry of prosecution or civil suits. Current law here is difficult to decipher at best, and leaves a lot to interpretation. In my estimation, deadly force would be justified as self-defense in most cases of illegal entry for the purpose of robbery, burglary, or any type of assault. However, it would behoove one to know the letter of the law in order to make sure one's story of what happened is not only consistent with the evidence, but also that it doesn't violate any of the many stipulations in the statutes. (Don't blow the guy's head off before he gets the back door pried open and then claim he was pulling a butcher knife from your kitchen drawer when you shot him.)
It's hard to know what one would do placed in a situation like that, but I'd like to think that if I discovered intruders in my home, they'd have about two seconds to drop spread eagle on the floor and wait quietly without moving for the police to show up and haul them off to jail. Otherwise, they wouldn't be leaving in the same condition as when they entered, and they might even wake up on the wrong side of the grass in the morning. If by chance, I came out on the wrong end of a gun battle or a subsequent court case, so be it. At least I tried to do the right thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment