defensive gun use dgu

Defensive gun use stories are not only commonplace, they also tend to elegantly prove exactly the points pro-2A people have been making until our faces turn blue. One of those points is that people who manage to get themselves shot by armed citizens often have an extensive criminal history. As in, they’ve had their second chance, and sometimes their third. Or more.

In this case, a homeowner in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle heard loud banging sounds at 4:15am. He got up, grabbed his handgun, and walked out of his room to find that a 35-year-old man trying to break down his door after having already broken into the mudroom.

The homeowner fired one shot, center mass, through the window of the door. The invader ran off, and the homeowner did the right thing by going back inside and dialing 9-1-1, reporting a dark-colored station wagon outside his home which he believed belonged to the stranger.

The intruder didn’t get far before he was dropped off at a nearby hospital by his sister with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. He was promptly arrested on an outstanding warrant (go figure). The station wagon was found a few blocks from the victim’s home, covered in dried blood.

Like many Americans, the victim of this home invasion lives in a neighborhood that’s changed during his lifetime. Fifteen years ago, according to a neighbor, residents of Ballard could sleep with their doors open. Of course, that may just be nostalgia speaking, but either way, it’s a good thing the victim had the clear-sightedness and wherewithal to be armed.

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36 COMMENTS

  1. The next day, I would still be standing guard, no time to call 911. When the cops arrived (not very damn likely) I would ask if I could finally relax. Then I would relate what happened. I suspect no one would ever arrive, dickhead would prefer not to go to prison. Not much different from presenting and then not reporting after perps run away.

  2. Good on him for not chasing down or shooting the perp in the back. Hopefully they lock that fool up for a while, but I’d wager he’ll end up back on the streets in no time.

  3. “The intruder didn’t get far before he was dropped off at a nearby hospital by his sister with a gunshot wound to the abdomen.”

    How did his sister get a gunshot wound to the abdomen? 😉

    • It should have said that he had a gunshot wound to the abdomen and that, perhaps after a call to his sister, she came to his aid, realized the seriousness of the wound and took him to an ER for treatment.

      I agree the sentence wasn’t worded perfectly and may have been confusing.

        • The blood location in the car would tell that. If it was on the driver’s side, he would have been alone. If on the passenger side, he had an accomplice who is still at large. But that sort of basic investigation is too complex for the current crowd of LE administration.
          LEOs, please don’t take offense! I am aware that these sorts of details are often noted by the lowest rookie patrolman(person???). I AM, however, referring to the way in which such details are slapped down by most administrations as “irrelevant”. After enough of that, obviously, most patrolmen prefer to just put in their time and ignore any opportunity to do the job they were hired for. I’m merely pointing out that it is the system that is rotten to its core, and not all of the people within it.

        • Interesting. So according to local coverage, which is usually the most accurate, the TTAG headline is BS. It was NOT the “home invader” who was arrested on the outstanding warrant, but some unnamed, likely co-, conspirator.
          One wonders why the sister was not arrested also. What story did she tell? That she had no idea why her brother might have went up to a stranger’s house and returned bleeding from a bullet in the guts? That she hadn’t a clue and ‘didt do nuffin’ anyhow?
          I also wonder(and will be watching, but not holding my breath), to see if TTAG will choose to acknowledge their quite large error and fix it. I seriously doubt if they will even notice, since they likely didn’t even read the source story in the first place. RF used to read the source as well as the comments, but it seems like those days are over now.

        • Well, ttag’s had three days to notice their mistake and fix it. Annnnddddd, nothing. Nada.
          Bupkis. Why am I not surprised? So the new owners don’t care about the accuracy of their reports, don’t read their own comments, and don’t even read their own sources.
          Well color me shocked. How very media-like. Every other media outlet does the same, why should this one be any different? But I bet they keep real busy searching out sponsors for ‘unbiased’ reviews.
          They could just delete this because its criticism, but they’d have to see it first….

  4. This guy waited until they broke the glass in the door before shooting, but that didn’t keep him out of handcuffs. I guess you should inquire about the invader’s criminal record before shooting:

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teen-shot-homeowner-door-knock-massachusetts-murder/

    It was all innocent, the surviving drunk kid said they did’n do nuffin. (Of course he’s going to say that, you think if they were trying to break in the surviving invader would confess to home invasion?)

    • One of the benefits of keeping your doors and windows closed and locked is that a bad guy has to break in to get at you. That leaves evidence to support your claim of self defense.

      Personally, I wouldn’t shoot through a door especially if it’s locked. Doing so would violate the rule about knowing your target. Someone on the other side of the door, even if he has the means and intent to do me harm, doesn’t have the ability until he gets through the door.

  6. The State government in Washington (Seattle) allows citizens to own person protection firearms?

    Who would have guessed.

    • Until a few years ago, Washington was actually a very good state for firearms ownership. It’s under constant attack now, and that’s becoming less and less true.

        • ^^^This.

          For the most part, Washington outside of the city limits of Seattle is still fairly gun friendly.

          Years ago, a former Seattle city attorney called Seattle “84 beautiful square miles surrounded by reality”. It’s not getting better…

        • Yeah, I left for other reasons, but glad I did. The libby-gravity just pulling it faster and faster…

          They don’t even get that Amazon / Bezos didn’t have to put a “Headquarters II” anywhere. Having an alternative makes it that much more feasible to pack up and leave, if Seattle pushes them away hard enough.

      • Yeah, it’s been run by Dems for a long time but, they were moderates. Now, they all try to out- liberal each other with crazy ideas. One Seattle City Council member wanted to look into the possibility of buying heroin and giving it to the junkies, saying it would decrease crime! With taxpayer dollars! No idea is too idiotic for the morons of Seattle’s city government. I can’t wait to leave. Next month, I’m gone!

        • I mean, it almost certainly *would* reduce crime, but I’m not sure that keeping people addicted is a good long-term strategy.

    • The rights of gun owners in Washington State are under attack thanks to both Governor Jay Inslee & Attorney General Bob Ferguson, plus a large amount of hoplophobic ideologies, particularly in Western Washington.

  7. Uhh. I lived in Seattle 15 years ago (and still), and I wouldn’t have left my door unlocked in Ballard then. That said, Ballard today is not some ghetto. It’s a nice middle class neighborhood. Bad shit can happen anywhere.

    Because drug addiction can happen anywhere.

    • It’s a very nice, upper middle class neighborhood awash with homeless people. There are people sleeping in doorways and tents springing up all over the place. A while back, a homeless guy followed a woman into the bathroom of a car dealership and raped her. It’s modern Seattle, nice properties and homeless camps.

      • Well, when the median price for a home is $777,000, you’re gonna get homelessness.

        Freewheeling opiates aren’t helping a damn thing, either.

        • Many of Freeattle’s homeless aren’t locals. They flock to this liberal utopia of endless handouts, free “camping” wherever you want to pitch a tent, and no enforcement of drug laws. And the clueless city clowncil can’t understand why the problem keeps getting worse. Tax and spend is the only option they consider.

        • Prices are that high because 60+% of the city is zoned single-family only. Instead of having large apartment buildings where hundreds of people could live relatively affordably, we have basically suburban neighborhoods all across the city. They’re nice places, but they’re super expensive, and require at least two very high incomes two afford. Zoning laws aren’t about to change any time soon, though, and the city would rather hike taxes and the minimum wage. Then they wonder why it keeps getting more and more expensive to live here.

        • I work in Seattle… housing costs by and large have nothing to do with it. It’s a city government that tolerates and almost encourages mental health issues and drug addiction without treatment. About a month ago, the Seattle Times ran an Op-Ed from a guy who was moving out of Seattle to the Eastside suburbs. He was a mostly liberal, but when he told a his city councilwoman that he didn’t feel it was compassionate to allow and encourage people to live on the streets with drug and mental health issues, and not really make an effort to get them treatment, she basically called him a Nazi.

          [EDIT] Who am I kidding… they do encourage drug addiction with out treatment. They’re going spend millions of dollars on mobile safe injection sites for heroin addicts.

      • Seattle has always been a liberal city.
        It has however, until recently, had very good gun laws (or lack of bad ones)
        We have always been a Shall Issue state.
        There are no mandatory classes to conceal carry.
        But we have, and are, hugely under assault by the freaks that have moved in from not just CA but from China/ Japan/ Mexico/ Middle East.
        Most of this is in King/ Pierce Co, but has spread out to other counties on the wet side.
        I live about 30 miles south of Seattle.
        It use to be reasonably sane, but is becoming less so.
        Seattle though is completely insane.
        They want to provide places where the addicted can “safely” shoot up. At tax payer’s expense.
        One judge took an illegal alien (convicted of another crime) out the back door so that ICE couldn’t pick him up.
        A man living in a set of condos that was open carrying was reported to the police.
        Who took away his guns under the new red flag law.
        His crime was “staring at pass-byers”.
        They passed a storage law in Seattle, knowing that we have a preemption law that will strike it down.
        They want it to because they are trying to pass a bill that will remove the preemption law.

        God help us, we are going the way of CA.

  8. If you click on the link “according to a neighbor” you can read the original article. Then click on the side bar article about the unsafe conditions directly outside of the King County Courthouse, to the point that jurors are refusing to serve, interns are being mugged, and homeless are defecating on the courthouse building itself. The last item is fully deserved, but that is another matter. The situation is totally out of control and the politicians who created it could care less.

    The burglar is very lucky and should thank the POTG. If Obama, Clinton, and Shotgun Joe had their way, the homeowner’s handgun would have been banned, and he would have had to engage the burglar with a double barrel shotgun. One side with 00 and the other with a deer slug. Gut shot from a few yards away. Interior door meaning nothing. What a mess and seriously DOA. No chance to get religion, turn his life around, and find the cure to cancer while rehabilitating in jail. Thank the POTG that it was only a handgun round.

  9. Oh look, right here in black and white. An incident in a liberal city no less, where a homeowner shot an intruder and wasn’t “arrested and sentenced to life without parole”, as several idiots here who recently claimed in that article a few days ago, that, That exact thing would happen to you, if you dared defend yourself while at home.

  10. It would be nice to find out if the homeowner gets his firearm back after the investigation. I have heard from LEOs in the Seattle area that even in a justified DGU you have a limited amount of time to retrieve your firearm after it is released by the SPD. If you don’t pick it up they melt it. And they don’t notify you that they’ve released it.

  11. Big city SUX……..As soon as I could, I moved out to rural South Carolina, where almost everyone is armed, and crime is barely visible. Not long ago, some guy making meth in his house was chased by the cops for 2 days in the woods (I live next to a 400 square mile National Forest). It was the the BIGGEST story to hit our local area in a long time.

    My neighbor Bonnie, a mid-70s woman, drives her tractor with her handgun visible in the holster while mowing the lawn. I actually get a lump in my throat when I see that….. :-)….I have never heard of a home invasion in our area, and people are friendly and respectful. Last I checked, we were up to 3 thefts/burglaries in the last 6 months (Oh, the Horror!!!).

    PS. They just hired a new police officer last month, which makes it a force of 3 cops….

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