Elderly WWII Vet Scares Off Home Intruder With A Gun

Casey Harper

A 92-year-old World War II veteran used a gun to defend his San Jacinto, Calif. house Sunday from a home invader.

WWII veteran Joseph Milspaugh was home Sunday when a burglar used an axe to smash into his house, NBC Los Angeles reports. Milspaugh grabbed his model 1911 .45 caliber handgun and fired off a single shot, sending the home invader fleeing.

“I could have shot him straight in the head, right between the eyes, but I didn’t want to do that because I’d have been in trouble,” Milspaugh told NBC Los Angeles.

A spokesman for the San Jacinto Police Department told The Daily Caller News Foundation that no suspect has been apprehended, and that they have not received word of any hospitals receiving a gunshot victim who could be connected to the shooting.

Milspaugh’s case is like hundreds around the country. A DCNF investigation of self-defense shootings between July 2014 and July 2015 found that hundreds of potential victims were saved by gun-toting Americans.

The analysis found that using guns to scare away burglars, as Milspaugh did, is more common than expected. Gun carriers were able to defend themselves, usually without killing the invader. Of the 217 suspects in the analysis, 148 perpetrators survived their encounter with a gun carrier, whether they took a gunshot wound or simply fled. The other 69 were killed, so more than half the suspects involved survived.

See the investigation’s interactive graphic here.

Jeremy Beale contributed to this report.

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