There are a lot of states that allow deadly force to stop burglary without fear of your life, not just Texas.
Even of a home nobody is in?
Most places allow lethal force to be used to stop an intruder of an occupied residence by one of the occupants or by someone else coming to the aid of the occupants.
That is different than say coming home, knowing nobody that lives there is in your home, and then entering with the intention of shooting the burglar on sight.
So many places do not allow lethal force to be used against the burglar posing no threat, they give the presumption of a threat existing from an intruder and allow lethal force to be used.
That often means lethal force can be used to stop a burglar posing no threat by someone in the residence, but is not quite the same thing as allowing lethal force to stop the crime itself.
In this situation a man noticed individuals had broken into his place from another building. He had been burglarized a few recent times previously, and the law was obviously not able to stop it form happening again. He was fed up and determined to put a stop to it. He prepared for when it happened again. Then it did.
He grabbed a shotgun and headed out of the building he was in, and into the trailer with the burglars.
He then held them at gunpoint probably using force to gain compliance judging by the "beat with shotgun" statements. At some point during that situation he eventualy killed one of the criminals. We will probably never know the exact details of how that happened, but we do know the fatal blast was fired from a few centimeters away from the criminal's back. The law should give the benefit of the doubt to the person not engaged in felony criminal action and infringing on the rights of others: The home owner. Luckily in Texas it usualy does (even with several other criminal witnesses against him.)
In some other places things may have turned out much worse for him since he chose to put himself in that situation (of course the criminals chose to create that situation) when nobody was placed in any danger and he was in another building.
Force is allowed to be used to stop many crimes, lethal force is allowed to be used for self defense (covering far fewer crimes than allow just 'necessary force') if while stopping the crime one is required to defend themself or another.
However in many states people are regularly put into prison when the court makes the argument those steps were not seperate, but that lethal force was being used to stop a crime that did not warrant the use of lethal force.
For example in many places if you see someone commiting a crime such as felony grand theft stealing your vehicle outside you are allowed to stop that crime with force (not lethal force)and even take them into custody. If while trying to do that a lethal threat is then posed and you brought a firearm with you, then you would be justified in using lethal force in self defense.
However people are regularly put into prison for killing people trying to steal thier vehicles. I can recall several instances of that exact thing.
The court will never seperate the two actions in the prosecution, and it will generaly be believed you intended to use lethal force when not justified to stop the theft.
Texas often has incidents go in favor of the people facing criminals. However just because you see that result in Texas does not mean the same result would happen elsewhere. In fact in many situations it would end very differently elsewhere.
