ABA Family Legal Guide

Home Ownership

Property Insurance and Other Protections

Security Issues

May I shoot the intruder?

You do have a legal right to protect yourself and your property, but recognize that you may end up in court if you shoot an intruder or whack him over the head with an iron pipe. You would have to argue that you really did act in self-defense or in defense of your property, and it would be up to the jury to decide whether to believe you.

Basically, the law says that you can use reasonable force to defend yourself if you're being attacked or if you have a reasonable belief that you will be attacked. That is, you don't have to wait until the intruder is actually coming at you with a knife. The key word here is "reasonable"; the jury would have to decide whether a reasonable person would have thought that a toy gun was real or that a hand going into the pocket was reaching for a weapon.