long island man shoots ding dong ditcher with shotgun

[meadowlander]

28. I don't think it's unreasonable to feel frightened or threatened

when someone bangs on your back door at 3 am.

The other element that people haven't talked about is that when you're jolted awake at 3 am you're often not firing on all cylinders.

I was once woken up at 3 am by someone banging on the glass French doors in my back yard. I walked out and there was this huge biker guy I'd never seen before standing there asking me to let him in. So I started looking around for the keys to open the door...

I actually had the key in the door and was about to turn it before I noticed the predatory expression on his face and thought maybe actually letting the strange biker dude into my house in the middle of the night as a single woman living alone wasn't a great idea. But it took me a good 3-4 minutes after waking up to get there.

So I shouted through the door to ask him what he wanted and he said he was looking for "Smitty" and I told him he had the wrong house and he left after a pause.

But that could easily have gone badly, badly wrong.

It's not an excuse to have a loaded gun around the house or to shoot people, but it's worth making the point that people suddenly awoken in the middle of the night can do things that they wouldn't do when they are fully awake and thinking rationally. Another reason why banging on strangers' doors in the middle of the night is ill advised.