Good Guy with a Gun #319: Buckeye, AZ

Stand your ground, or call the cops and wait? A reasonable debate: What do you think? | Original incident: January 7, 2024

Sep 15, 2026

These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is essentially the same as the calendar version.

A homeowner woke up to his doorbell. He and his family had been asleep, so he grabbed his gun, then went and looked out the front window to see who was at his door. No one was there.

A noise from the backyard drew his attention. At the back door, he found a stranger. The trespasser refused to leave when told to. Instead, he came toward the homeowner.

The homeowner fired a single shot to the perpetrator’s chest. Police arrived and the wounded man was taken to the hospital in critical condition.

It doesn’t look like there was any follow-up to this incident, which indicates that the DA didn’t press charges. When I read this story, I saw that the homeowner was trying to ascertain what was going on when he found the trespasser, and then the trespasser kept coming at him — and to me, that means it’s a DGU.

John Boch makes a very persuasive argument at The Truth About Guns that the man should have stayed in his house, called the cops, and kept an eye on his surroundings. I don’t think we know enough about the situation to be sure of that. He says:

Or, such as this case, the homeowner fires at an apparently otherwise unarmed backyard prowler. The Supreme Court has weighed in that you shouldn’t use deadly force over property crimes.

There’s no indication to me that the homeowner used deadly force just because of a property crime, and there’s no indication that the homeowner knew that the trespasser was unarmed.

On the other hand, I don’t think we know enough to be certain that he’s wrong, either. Consider:

Opening the back door creates an opportunity for things to go poorly by exposing the homeowner to danger, up to and including getting shot and killed. After all, what if the prowler pulls a gun? Suddenly you’ve found yourself in a gun battle which you might not win. Is it worth risking a colostomy bag or other debilitating injury from a gunshot wound to confront a criminal in your back yard? The wise and prudent man says that’s a hard no. Let the cops do that.

The shooting may have been justified, but the homeowner opening the door carries an inherent risk that he didn’t need to take on.

If you have a third hand, you can hold in it the fact that someone prowling in your back yard could leave to a neighbor’s house, and the people inside it might be less aware and more vulnerable.

We could go back and forth like this all night. The point is that using a gun demands real judgement. If you haven’t thought about how you’d handle situations like this, maybe this is a good moment to do it.