This would be my HOME I'm defending, not just some spuriousm piece of real- estate. It is an extension of "self."
And if I'm not mistaken, one does pick up the right to use deadly force in defense of the home
(**someone correct me) if that home is threatened. It is the one time that "property" is viewed in that light.
(**Again, correct me if I'm wrong).
As requested: you're wrong.
Your home is not an extension of yourself. It is a piece of property. You do have the right to defend your life, regardless of where you are – inside the home or outside the home, you have the right to protect your life. You do not necessarily have the right to use deadly force to protect property, but you do have a right to use deadly force to protect human life.
Inside the home or outside the home, the right to protect your life carries with it the duty to correctly (within the limits of reasonableness) assess the situation before you act. For the most part, written laws and case law are there to provide guidelines for judges and juries to understand your actions when they look back at what you did. The (idealistic) goal for most of these laws is to help the authorities figure out whether you were protecting an innocent life when you acted, or were instead needlessly slaughtering the other person when you had some other way you could have solved your criminal problem.
This attempt to parse the necessity of killing the attacker is the origin of the "duty to retreat" laws, which have been widely – and correctly – criticized for forcing good citizens to die or be seriously injured rather than allowing innocent victims to defend themselves from deadly attacks.
Some states, either in repealing bad duty to retreat laws, or in clarifying muddy case law, have chosen to enact "Castle doctrine" laws, which are laws that specifically codify your right to act in self-defense within the home. But even such laws do not actively permit you to protect your property using deadly force; they simply allow you to make certain legal and practical assumptions about the motives and ability of anyone who breaks into your occupied home, and to protect your own life and the lives of your family members based on those assumptions.
Short version is, you do not (invariably) have a legal duty to retreat within your home, as long as you live within a "Castle doctrine" state. Mostly. With some exceptions. And you better read the fine print. Even in Texas, you still need to read the fine print.
On a practical level? It is not lawful, nor is it smart, to shoot through the door before the attacker actually enters the home. But it's damn stupid to stand there in the open and wait for the door to come flying open, even if you are armed. Guns, you see, do not stop incoming fire...
It is far smarter and far safer to grab your defensive firearm and set up a tactical ambush. You want to find someplace safe and easy to protect inside the home, preferably behind a locked door, where you can see the intruder as he enters, but not easily be seen by him. From there, you can perform the indicated response without endangering the single most important thing inside your home: your own life.
If your family members are there with you, get your family members behind you when you set up your tactical ambush. Get them out of sight and out of the line of fire, but within your sphere of control. Protect those precious lives.
People get so hung up on protecting stuff. They forget that the most valuable thing inside their home is a human life. Protect that most important thing, first and always. When you have your priorities in line, everything else falls into place, both legally and practically.
pax
Edited to add: State laws vary widely on what happens inside the home. This is one case where the devil really is in the details, and it is absolutely worth your while to look up your own state laws for yourself. Even if you have a very strong written law, be aware that your strong written law may have been gutted by case law. Start at
www.handgunlaw.us, but don't stop there.
