Intruder and Resident Lucky to be Alive after Philadelphia Defense Shooting

In the early morning hours on Sunday, a man and his girlfriend awoke to find an intruder standing in the bedroom doorway of their home in Philadelphia, about 15 miles from downtown. The intruder didn’t know just how lucky he was to be that morning.

The man told The Times-Reporter that he grabbed his gun, aimed it at the intruder and pulled the trigger three times. Only the gun didn’t fire. Regardless, it was enough to scare off the intruder anyway, who yelled into another room at an accomplice, “He’s got a gun!” Both intruders then quickly ran out of the front door, leaving behind an ax and an empty duffle bag.

The man called police, who gathered the items left by the intruders and are now conducting an investigation.  But cases like these, where the defensive gun use or DGU is more characteristic of the anarchy of real defense shootings, can raise a lot of questions for gun owners too.

The first question one might ask is how this DGU stacked up against the state’s Castle Doctrine. While each state’s law differs, Pennsylvania passed HB 40 in August 2011. The bill, known as the Castle Doctrine Act, ensures that residents are not required to retreat when threatened by death, serious bodily harm, kidnapping or sexual assault in their home, workplace or vehicle meaning the man was well within his legal rights to engage the threat in the manner that he did.

If the resident lived on the other side of the Delaware river however, in neighboring New Jersey, things may have been quite different.  Lacking a Castle Doctrine, NJ self defense law requires that the defender demonstrate that he was in immediate danger from the intruder and that the force he used was not ‘disproportionate in its intensity’ to that of the attack.  Disparities like these go to show how extremely important it is for all gun owners to know their own state’s self defense laws concerning Castle Doctrine lest they end up debating the “intensity” of gun versus an ax in court.

This DGU also brings up two more very important topics concerning gun ownership: Usage and maintenance. While it’s certainly possible that the issue with the gun was due to some sort of mechanical malfunction (we do not know at this time why the man’s gun did not fire), it’s also quite possible, and much more likely, that either the gun was not loaded or the safety was on. Though it is extremely fortunate that no one was killed during this encounter and no property stolen, a failure to fire due to human error, be it because one forgot to load the clip, flip the switch or regularly fire and maintain the gun, could have tragic consequences.  Lucky for us, we don’t have to cover that story.

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