Specifically, because firearms are one of the highest value-for-portability, easy to move items burglars can steal, and America's gun culture is such that gun owners tend to have multiple guns, not take them all with them when they leave the home, and very often not have them effectively secured.
Is this actually true? It makes some kind of sense, but it is hard to guess at what percentage of thieves will be deterred, versus what percentage of thieves will be encouraged.
A buddy got pulled over by a cop who gave him a warning and then told him he recommended for him to remove his sigsauer sticker because people will walk through a parking lot looking for trucks typically with weapons manufacturer names and break in looking for a weapon to steal.
This might vary from location to location. Everyone in my state is armed and about 2/3 of people are concealed carrying. Everyone here will look out for each other. Everyone in my area knows who lives where and what vehicles they drive. There is property crime but that also carries with it the added risk of justifiable homicide which sadly is not broken down in the homicide statistics as far as I know.
It is a messed up world. Sadly people that have bad things going on in their lives get depressed and look for an escape. Here as in many places that escape is typically alcohol and/or meth. When people become addicted and overuse drugs their rational mind is overpowered by emotions and desperation. When in that state of mind one can not presume their intentions or how they will react when confronted. My own theory of which I have zero data to back it up is that on some level they want to leave this world but want someone else to do it for them.
As a pragmatic realist all I can do is work with the cards I am dealt. That is one of the many reasons I moved to a place I am allowed, encouraged and expected to defend myself, my family and my property. I do not consider myself or family to be replaceable. The best I can do otherwise is to mitigate getting into that situation in the first place by hardening my home but people will always find a way around it.
The problem is that when someone breaks into your house, you have no idea what they are capable of. Are you willing to give someone performing a home invasion the benefit of the doubt? I'm not advocating for blindly firing away at anyone in your house, but I'm also not judging someone who has firearms in the house to protect their family.
This is an oversimplification. If someone is in your house and especially if you have kids you are going to do whatever you can to protect your kids not have a conversation with the burglar or warm him off with aiming a weapon. You don’t know if he’s armed and what he’s capable of, just that he’s in your house and potentially everyone’s life is in danger. I agree with you when someone steals a car from the front yard and the homeowner has legal basis to shoot that person over their car but in my home? It’s life or death.
Sounds pretty reasonable to me. In what world do you live in where someone can violate the sanctity of your home with impunity and you find that to be an acceptable outcome? Boundaries in society are ultimately always enforced with death as the final arbiter. You can put as many layers of abstraction as you want between that type of enforcement and the action that leads to it as you want, but it's always there.
When someone breaks into your house while you are home you have no way of knowing what they plan to do. It is reasonable to assume the worst, burglars want to reduce risk and only break in when the house is vacant.
