British Burglar Calls Police After The Victim Shoots Him With An Air Rifle

http://armedselfdefense.blogspot.com ^ | 02/17/11 | Sasparilla

[Sasparilla]

English don’t have much in the way of firearms protection from burglars in the home. But an air rifle can be an exception.

Gary Holmes, who was at home with his girlfriend and child, spotted a man prowling around in his home’s garden area. He went upstairs for a better look and saw 20 year old Lewis Patterson break a window in his home with a baseball bat. He hit the window hard enough to break the bat. Then the burglar used a metal bar to complete his entry.

When Holmes got downstairs, Patterson was trying to get the homeowner’s motorbike out of the house. Aware of Britain’s restrictive home defense laws, and the consequences of shooting a burglar, Holmes just showed Patterson that he had an air rifle. He yelled at the man to leave and gave him a chance to leave. That was when Patterson raised the metal bar and came at the homeowner. Holmes responded, raised his air rifle, and shot the man.

The man then picked up a brick and threw it at Holmes. What he didn’t know was that the homeowner’s air rifle was a bolt action repeater. Holmes reloaded and shot the man again.

Patterson ran away. In an effort to get Holmes arrested, he...

[ReverendJames]

Well good luck to you. In Minnisota they have pretty much the same thing, i.e. perps suing homeowners if they injure themselves.

[Moltke]

Yes, and you can thank the idiot Blair and his government for that, with their incessant fetish for signing us up to European legislation and treaties we didn’t want.

Well, I'll not argue against Blair being an idiot, but what is described in this article is 100% homegrown British madness. Been that way for a long time, best as I can tell. There's no other European country with no-self-defense-allowed laws on the sub-terranean level of the UK. None. And it's not imposed by the Brussels EU fascists for once, either. To wit, IT IS WHAT YOU (well, some majority anyway) WANTED, when voting Labour into power.

[smokingfrog]

Maybe it was a cricket bat, mate.

[Mitch86]

Just because some smart entrepreneur (and those are good, right?) has decided to develop this product does not mean that this is some sort of much desired “every home should have one” product that is an indicator of fear in the streets or ones own home.

This is the kind of novelty you find in the back of a catalogue, not standard issue in home defence.

A bit of perspective, please.

[Mitch86]

No he won’t, read the article man.

[Mitch86]

No he won’t, stop peddling this false dogma. The bloke has done nothing wrong in defending his property and no charges will come of it.

[GeronL]

I already had corrected myself in another post

[Jack Hydrazine]

What about all of the other UK citizens who have defended their property and life with force against the criminal who have been arrested and thrown in jail? I’ve read way too much of that happen in the last 15 plus years.

[OB1kNOb]

Thief to Bobby: I want to report that homeowner over 'ere for shooting me with an airgun.

Bobby: Well why in the world would 'e do that?

Thief: I don't know unless 'e didn't want me to steal 'is motorbike.

Bobby: Well, did you provoke 'im in any way while stealing his motorbike?

Thief: Well come to think of it I did throw a brick at 'im to make 'im stop shooting me.

Bobby: Well now, don't you think that might 'ave provoked the bloke just a li'ile?

Thief: Yes, come to think about it now I guess it might 'ave provoked 'im a li'ile. But I still want 'im arrested.

Bobby: On what grounds?

Thief: We....well, 'e coulda put me eye out 'e could of, isn't that enough?

[Mitch86]

Some examples please?

Whilst the situation in Britain is far from perfect, home owners are allowed to use ‘reasonable force’ and if they feel threatened this can include killing an intruder, as long as they action was instinctive and proportional.

See, for example, ‘Burglar murder charge against Nottingham man dropped’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/8629395.stm

These cases rarely get discussed on here though, as it doesn’t fit in with the myopic ‘England is insane’ spiel to which you all so desperately cling.

Regards.

[jimt]

And toss life as you know of it away.

Which is why I love Texas. You can shoot the SOB as he's running or even walking away down the road.

And no, it's not a wild west scene. In 27 years I've never seen a gun fired in that situation.

If the guy came to my house, he'd find my "air rifle" is a 12 gage Winchester Model 1300 Defender loaded with triple-ought buck. Nine .38 caliber "pellets" per round.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

The Crown was happy to pursue the charges all the way up until a court appearence though weren’t they?
In America, the police wouldn’t even have arrested him. I will admit that even in bonkers Britain, the chances of you actually being convicted of killing a burglar are very small (unless you shot them as they were running away, or tied them to a chair and tortured them to death whilst playing ‘stuck in the middle with you’ by stealers wheel) but still, if you killed a burglar, or even left a mark on him. You would end up being arrested and spending time staring at the inside of a police cell before the charges got dismissed...

[LowOiL]

The case you cite is hardly any indication that victims are safe from protecting themselves. In fact, if it wasn’t for the kid lying the guy would be behind bars now just for defending himself.

[Celtic Cross]

What model was the airgun? I know in Britain they are limited to 12 foot-pounds energy at most on their air-arms.

[Vanders9]

No they won’t.

[Vanders9]

Well its a wrong thought. Note the criminal alleged he had been shot in the street while walking by (which is a heck of a nerve). He knew that otherwise he wouldn't have a legal leg to stand on. An Englishman's house is still his castle. You are legally entitled to use any force you consider neccesary to protect yourself when at home.

The only reason the police were considering action against the homeowner is that they weren't sure who to believe.

[Vanders9]

errm...that isnt what happened.

[MalPearce]

The Crown was happy to pursue the charges all the way up until a court appearence though weren’t they?

Yes, but not for the reasons you think.

As much as I would like the police and CPS to exercise far more common sense, I do recognize (partly because I do a lot of consultancy work for the police) that the very reason they go by-the-book nowadays with seemingly no regard to common sense, is because those people feel the need to cover their own backs to the Nth degree.

The Criminal Justice system is expected to be "blind" to class, politics, religion, skin colour and the like when deciding which cases do and don't need a full investigation. That impartiality is part and parcel of DUE PROCESS OF LAW. That is why Justice wears a blindfold! From the first 999 call to a trial and judgement of ones' peers, the defendant's class, politics, religion, skin colour and so on ought to have no bearing on the process. Except we all know that historically hasn't been the case. Rich white middle class kids with friends in high places enjoy the benefit of the doubt far more than, say, a black Muslim youth from a broken home.

The police, frankly, don't want to be painted as the bad guys anymore, so they go by the book and investigate properly if there's even the remotest chance that they could appear prejudiced if they drop the investigation too early. Then the CPS go by the book and prosecute the case because THEY don't want to be the bad guys either, and so on it goes.

In America, the police wouldn’t even have arrested him.

In cases like this one, their decision not to bother would be a good thing. But you cannot say it would ALWAYS be the right decision. The game changer in England was Damilola Taylor - the case of a black child stabbed to death by a white gang. the Met police came up with a crock-of-BS along the lines of, he fell and hurt himself on a broken bottle. Unfortunately for them it was COMMON KNOWLEDGE who killed the boy, and that it was a racist gang attack.

The Peckham and Brixton area going across to Croydon is a nasty place with lots of gang activity (I have family in those neighborhoods) and I know personally of situations where white gang-bangers were dealing drugs and mugging old ladies on South London high streets in broad daylight without being bothered, and the cops were literally no more than 2 minutes away, stopping and searching black kids walking home from school without any basis for doing so.

The Damilola case was so obviously mishandled that the police were accused of institutional racism, and the Daily Mail printed a front page naming the murderers and daring anyone to sue them for libel:

And the police have been falling over themselves to ensure they never again get it so badly wrong.

I speak to a lot of senior rankers in over 20 police forces in the UK, and I know where they stand. From their perspective it'd be better for a case to be investigated properly, and let common sense AND due process be seen to prevail ONLY when it's appropriate.

One thing's for sure and that's NOBODY least of all the general public, police, CPS or courts have any desire to see bad news stories about cases that are prejudiced, mishandled, or dropped too early, for the wrong reasons.

I tend to agree with that. Due process is due process. If the police don't follow Due Process and the courts don't follow it then you might as well live in a banana republic and forget about your constitutional rights.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

Police should have reasonable grounds to suspect someone before they arrest them. In the case of a burglar being stabbed to death by a home owner, the latter should not be arrested unless the police have reasonable grounds to suspect that the dead scrote in question had not actually been killed under the circumstances as described by the householder...

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

BTW, I think you are confusing the Damilola Taylor case with the Stephen Lawrence one. I hope you get all your other facts right when you are doing all your consultancy work with the police...