Not that I learned this from Miss Manners, but if you successfully deter criminals you (to put it mildly) do not play well by shooting them in their backs once you successfully deter them from committing felonies against yourself, against other persons in your household, or against your property.
If you shoot a burglar in the back close to a time when the burglar was running away with your 42 inch plasma TV, you could be on the hook for anywhere from failure to allow chance to heed a warning to failure to run the perp down without deadly force while the perp was handicapped by trying to run away with something fairly bulky and somewhat heavy.
This puts me more in a mood for hitting hard and early against burglars as quickly as allowable, and for assassinating them with whatever appears effective among basic Tae Kwan Do karate moves, partially broken fluorescent lamps, ordinary kitchen knives, largish iron core transformers, large screwdrivers, hammers of whatever size I most quickly find handy if I don't grab a scary knife or screwdriver first...
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)