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R DAVIS wrote:

android wrote:

R DAVIS wrote: You're O.K. if you can convince the jury that you didn't know your wife had ordered the pizza. Put enough lead in the Domino's driver, and HE won't be able to testify against you. Go ahead and shoot through it. After all, it IS YOUR door.

Some of the hyperbole here is really over the top.

I have NEVER, NEVER in 20 years of being a home owner had any pizza delivery guy beating on and attempting to kick down my door. They ring the bell and wait patiently for me to open the door.

And to add, no door to door candy bar salesman, no Girl Scouts, no Jehovah's Witness, no Clean Water Petition hippies, neighbors or friends or anyone else for that matter has ever tried to kick in my door. Somebody trying to kick in my door is up to no good, really.

I'm not saying I'd take a shot through the door. I'm just saying it's NOT the pizza guy.

Golly Mr. Know It All, I guess you weren't around when my neighbor had his door almost kicked in by a Dominos driver (hence the reference), who was being attacked by a big vicious dog running loose in the neighborhood. Fortunately, my neighbor was wise enough to check out the situation. He didn't shoot through the door, but he DID dispatch the dog, which likely saved the drivers life. The driver ended up with about 50 stitches from the dog bites. I guess he is lucky it didn't happen at your house.

After all, " Somebody trying to kick in my door is up to no good, really." --- RIGHT ?

And in the fire department I used to belong to, we broke in the door of a house with an active fire, and discovered that the homeowner was in his basement workshop running a lathe with the radio up loud. His first clue that there was anything amiss was when we charged down the stairs with a hose to check where the fire was burning through the living room floor. We banged a lot before we broke the door down.

EEllis wrote:Come on! It just isn't yes or no. The best and most accurate answer has got to be "It depends". Under some limited circumstances articulated properly you might get away with shooting thru a door but you would likely be charged and tried so generally speaking no you cannot shoot thru a door.

Even though the law says "attempting" I can imagine circumstances where someone might be "attempting" with no foul play in mind.

Back in the '60s there was a crime where someone shot a BG outside their house and was subsequently arrested, and a cop made the statement that if they had dragged the dead body inside the house so that it appeared that the shooting occurred inside, the shooter could have saved themselves a lot of trouble. Over the years this became a rather popular urban legend, as if a good forensic team couldn't tell where the shooting took place.

Even if they are obviously, to me, attempting to break the door down, I think I am going to err on the side of letting them get all the way in the house before opening fire. Of course that also gives me the chance to get the shotgun off the rack in preference to my bedside .45.

These days I have a couple of digital voice recorders near phones in the house and if I have my wits about me, I will probably be using one of those and have 911 on the phone.