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“I was in fear of my life, and the lives of my family!” won’t stand up in court if the corpse on the floor has an empty stomach and a mouth full of peanut butter and jelly, especially if it matches the brand your wife has in the cabinet.

I think in most cases the average working man is not going to be the victim of an armed robbery/hit team. They are much more like to be the target of a drug addict looking for your prescription pills, cash and jewelry.

From what I hear, it can get very expensive if you kill someone and the cops, all of them, aren’t 100 percent on your side. Make sure the evidence matches your storyline to a T or else .......

Well now of course HOPEFULLY nobody would shoot somebody for stealing a meal. But there is a bad trend where B&Es consist of 4 to 6 individuals and at least some of those are usually armed. It makes a good argument on several fronts. One is that they usually have to coordinate a little better. It's not as if one guy and his homey got the bright idea to rob a house on the spur of the moment. The other is that these groups are shown to have a "rough" leadership structure. There is usually one individual in the group that the others look up to as a leader. It's akin to the social dynamics of gangs and their leadership structures, just on a smaller scale.

I can verify from second hand recounts of what happens if the outcome is not 100% in your favor, and it can be very, VERY expensive. There's a guy here locally who's somewhat famous/infamous...depending on your point of view. He was the victim of an armed robbery a few years ago and he chased the thieves from his house through the garage. As the last two were running through the garage to the outside, the one in the rear turned and fired a pistol at him. He was in the doorway leading to the house and he had a pump 12 ga shotgun. He returned fire, killing the guy who shot at him, and wounding the guy in front of the dead guy. The problem was that every single pellet went right through the perps back. He went to court and it was ugly. It looked as though he might do jail time. He got a good lawyer and ended up being acquitted, but if you ask him what he would have done if he had to do over again, he'd tell you that he would have either shot the guy through the front, or just let them go!

>But there is a bad trend where B&Es consist of 4 to 6 individuals and at least some of those are usually armed.<

What is the pattern for enticing them to break in? Do they hit one house after the next until they locate a particular item or what? Do they tend to stay in certain income level areas? I can’t picture them busting into Section 8 housing unless they were going after a known drug dealer.