Do you keep a weapon by your bed?

Kylta

Kylta wrote: »

So the would be victim gets his just desserts

Like a cream filling, what?

Sorry, that's disgusting.

Ulmus

Kylta wrote: »

So the would be victim gets his just desserts

It's fake news.

quokula

quokula wrote: »

Is this a thread to show your hard man credentials or are that many people really that paranoid?

I've a lock on my door and I can call the gardai if needed. In 36 years I've never needed to. I'd imagine the stress of thinking you always need a weapon at hand would take more years off your life than the vanishingly unlikely attempt that somebody decides to break into your house and attack you for no reason.

If they're just breaking in to steal stuff (which has also never happened), then like I said, I've a lock on my door, I've got insurance, and I can call the gardai afterwards.

Possibly both, and the latter, well if it's happened even once, I would swap 'paranoid' for prudent or pragmatic.

Maybe you live in a nice neck of the woods, but for people who don't the gardai won't do a hell of a lot. In the last thirty or so years scum have gotten scummier and the 'ethnics' have completely gone off the reservation in terms of lawlessness.

Nothing much happens to career criminals in this Country and many people who post here will have experience and sometimes evidence of vandalism/assault/robbery; sometimes a sympathetic ear is the best they can hope for. Most probably get fobbed off : "nothing we can do" etc..

They would do plenty if similar happened to a judge or solicitor, or indeed if it happened to an ordinary Joe soap perhaps; if said Joe soap lived in a salubrious locale..

Kylta

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

Like a cream filling, what?

Sorry, that's disgusting.

To the victor the spoils. Could you picture a guy with a bally on looking at you the victim who has a smile on their face and a massive horn, and you whisper softly to him. I love your gimp outfit. Tell who should be petrified? Thief or victim?

Kylta

Feisar wrote: »

Actually if it was a woman burgler you couldn't like bugger her or you'd be in trouble.

Kylta

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

Like a cream filling, what?

Sorry, that's disgusting.

Only if the burgler rats on you

Manic Moran

Feisar wrote: »

One can to a degree, didn't they change the laws a few years ago? I remember something in the news about everyone'd home being their castle or some such. However one cannot have something to hand solely for the purpose being used as a weapon. Anyway, it's a hard heart that kills, not the tool.

Edit - beaten to it punch.

Sortof.

It was a clarification. The courts had already ruled on the standard of defense, in DPP v Barnes. It is easy reading, and makes a lot of sense. The Oireachtas then put it into law for those who don't read court cases.

https://www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5da044464653d077725a0b6f

To answer the question, I've a SIG P2340 in 357SIG with hollow-points in a finger-print release lockbox by the bed. But I live in the US, where that sort of thing is normal.

Bullocks

I was staying in a girlfriends house years ago when one of the other girls came into the room in the middle of the night to say there was a burglar in the house. I hadn't a stitch on me but was half drunk so wasn't at all self conscious so bet off to find the thief.
He was hiding behind the kitchen door so I grabbed him and sat on him the poor bastard while the housemate called the cops. He was crying to be let go and hadn't stolen anything so I had to get off him after bout an half an hour of digs to keep him on the ground!
Cops didn't come till the next morning..

I keep the guns in the safe in my room now and sellotape two cartridges inside the side rails of the bed but I don't expect to ever use them, actually we seldom lock the doors going to bed but have a big dog sleeping in the house at night that most people wouldn't chance waking up (even though the clown would probably lick a thief to death!)

I Am Nobody

Kylta wrote: »

Only if the burgler rats on you

No chance of that,no "hard man"is going to admit he was creme pied during a burglary.He'll take that to his grave.

harry Bailey esq

Knuckle duster and a buzzer

Treppen

SuperSean11 wrote: »

Enjoy prison guys Voluntary manslaughter right there. Irish laws great

If there's no body there's no crime

Cupatae

When anyone mentions a baseball bat for home defense I instantly think of this scene

https://youtu.be/bjv7CVhZXNs

Cupatae

I find it strange here people with reasonable response to there home being invaded.. the last thing I would be is reasonable and the last thing I'd be worried about would be the law !

Protect your home and family first worry about that ****e after the fact.

Fortunately never had to experience such an event! I think dogs are great home defense aswell as being good pets everyone should have a madra!

Manic Moran

So this is from the 2006 Court of Criminal Appeals case I mentioned earlier. For background, a burglar and homeowner encountered each other. Burglar thought the home was empty. In the ensuing scuffle, the homeowner was killed.

A person who commits such a violation exposes himself to various legal penalties, if he is detected and convicted. But that is not the limit of his exposure. Although he is not liable to be killed by the householder simply for being a burglar, he is an aggressor and may expect to be lawfully met with retaliatory force to drive him off or to immobilise or detain him and end the threat which he offers to the personal rights of the householder and his or her family or guests. And this is so whether the dwellinghouse which he enters is, or appears to be, occupied or unoccupied when he breaks into it.

[...]

The considerations set out in the last paragraph equally explain why burglary must always be an act of aggression. In reality, it is amongst the worst acts of aggression the individual citizen is likely to encounter. Moreover, Mr. Forrestal was a country man whose occupation and interests alike constrained him to live in the country in a somewhat isolated position and was worse off to that degree than one who lived in an apartment or an estate of houses in urban citizens.

[...]

Degree of force.
We have already held that burglary is an act of aggression by its nature, and that a burglar may be met with retaliatory force to drive him off or to immobilise or detain him and to end the threat which he offers to the personal rights of the householder and his or her family or guests. That is easy to say in general terms, but in individual cases the question will immediately arise, what degree of force may the householder deploy to those ends?

It is, of course, impossible to lay down any formula with which the degree of force can be instantly calculated. Nor, in our view, would it be just to lay down a wholly objective standard, to be judged by the standards of the hypothetical reasonable person.

The victim of a burglary is not in the position of an ordinary reasonable man or woman contemplating what course of action is best in particular circumstances. He may be (and Mr. Forrestal actually was) aging, alone, confronted with numerous and/or much younger assailants (Barnes was almost exactly fifty years younger than his victim). In almost every case the victim of burglary will be taken by surprise. The victim will, therefore, be in almost every case shocked and surprised and may easily be terrified out of his wits. To hold a person in this situation to an objective standard would be profoundly unjust.

Equally, however, it cannot be left to every person himself to lay down for himself how much force he or she is entitled to use. There must be both a subjective and an objective component in the assessment of the degree of force proper to be used by the victim of a burglar.

[...]

force “such as is reasonable in the circumstances as her or she perceives them to be…” and an objective element - the provisions of s.1(2) of the 1997 Act which require a court or jury to have regard to the presence or absence of reasonable grounds for the belief that the level of force used was no more than was reasonably necessary in the circumstances. But it must always be borne in mind that the burglar must take the occupant as he finds him and that in many cases it will in practice take the deployment of grossly disproportionate force, or evidence of actual malice (as in the well known Martin case in Great Britain) to fix the householder with liability. He or she has, after all, been deliberately subjected to an experience which will shock even the most robust and might make many irrational with terror.

Tom Mann Centuria

Pepper Spray is illegal in Ireland I think, so I don't have a tin of that in the car and on my bedside table. My wife and daughter don't have a tin of it either.

Auguste Comte

Kylta wrote: »

So the would be victim gets his just desserts

He done some breaking in of his own so to speak.

Strumms

quokula wrote: »

Is this a thread to show your hard man credentials or are that many people really that paranoid?

I've a lock on my door and I can call the gardai if needed. In 36 years I've never needed to. I'd imagine the stress of thinking you always need a weapon at hand would take more years off your life than the vanishingly unlikely attempt that somebody decides to break into your house and attack you for no reason.

If they're just breaking in to steal stuff (which has also never happened), then like I said, I've a lock on my door, I've got insurance, and I can call the gardai afterwards.

I think when people work hard, collect and pay for possessions as fruits of that hard work which they want to enjoy, such as a nice widescreen tv, a nice car, jewelry, artwork and so on.. there should be an ability for them, if somebody forces entry into their home, compromising their safety, security and those possessions that they can use a reasonable amount of force to prevent possessions from being taken and to prevent injury to themselves.

If I get up at 3am this morning, going down for a drink, I hear a noise.. I’m not going to walk into the kitchen, saying “ahoy dear fellow, I’ll put the kettle on, we’ll have a chat, now Jaffa cake or a kimberly ?”

Somebody has used force and a degree of risk to be in your property , the probability is they they can and will use force and a degree of risk to get away.

Manic Moran

I'd imagine the stress of thinking you always need a weapon at hand would take more years off your life than the vanishingly unlikely attempt that somebody decides to break into your house and attack you for no reason.

I don't find that leaving a weapon by the bed causes me much stress.

However, I do know some folks who have been at home when a burglary has happened, and the amount of stress they went through at the time (and residual effects) appears to have been likely quite higher than anything caused by keeping a weapon to hand.

kowloon

Strumms wrote: »

If I get up at 3am this morning, going down for a drink, I hear a noise.. I’m not going to walk into the kitchen, saying “ahoy dear fellow, I’ll put the kettle on, we’ll have a chat, now Jaffa cake or a kimberly ?”

I expect a full fcuking spread, Strumms. It might be 3am but we're not savages!

Strumms

kowloon wrote: »

I expect a full fcuking spread, Strumms. It might be 3am but we're not savages!

3 courses or 4 ?

I Am Nobody

4 go all out with it.

Witcher

jimgoose wrote: »

Illegal. Ammunition is supposed to be secured separately. Has that been inpsected?

There's no law stating that.

Hairy Japanese BASTARDS!

Leg End Reject wrote: »

I am the weapon.

I wouldn't mind having you by my bed

johng906

A nice big torch, in case I need to light anyone up.

nj27

Feisar wrote: »

“They broke in my front door, so I broke in their back doors!” Harrington reportedly told the cops when he was arrested.

ablelocks

Just looking around my bedroom, if I had to confront a burglar, I'd have the option of a pair of scissors, a stapler or the hoover.

Not great choices. But I'd have no issue stabbing a burglar, so I suppose scissors it'd be. Then the hoover to try and clean the blood up, and the stapler to work on my tax returns and invoicing whilst I await the Gardai to eventually consider making an appearance at some point in the near future, if they have a car available.

punisher5112

Nail gun, hammer, some other tools which I could well be doing some DIY...

Deleted User

Deleted User wrote: »

Anyone got any ideas on what one could use; say an object that could reasonably expected to be in one's bedroom

Part of my training I had to pick weapons. I go with knives and staff because I figure of all the things lying around the world - these were the most likely to find lying around or quick substitutes lying around.

I've been learning to use guns through a friend with my 9 year old daughter recently but don't think I will ever want to own one. Going to use and train with them off site is fun - but ownership not for me.

The one time someone came into my house in the night he was cornered by the house canine and I found him sitting quietly in the corner - too terrified to try and leave - when I happened to come down for something from the kitchen. We had a surprisingly amicable wait for the guards to arrive.

TheChizler

I'm convinced that the type of person capable of burgling a house would be much more adept at using a weapon than the average groggy person with eyes not adjusted to the light.