To read the official police report, you’d think the incident at Michael Woodard’s New Brunswick home just before Christmas involved four criminals, not three.

But the truth is a 68-year-old homeowner confronted three burglars inside his remote home, at least one of whom was armed. While trying to defend himself and his home, Michael Woodard shot one of the alleged assailants in the leg. Now he and the three alleged criminals have all been charged; Woodard with “discharging a firearm with intent and discharging a firearm in a reckless manner.”

Just before midnight on Dec. 19, 2014, Woodard, an industrial process engineer, found a 19-year-old man and woman and a 17-year-old man in his home about 90 km west of Saint John, N.B.

The younger man had a weapon, according to RCMP, that he allegedly used to assault Woodard. Woodard managed to get hold of a gun and allegedly shot the 17-year-old in the leg.

The charges against Woodard carry a potential for greater prison time than the charges against his three alleged attackers.

That’s outrageous.

You find three criminals in your house in the middle of the night. One of them attacks you with a weapon. You’re badly outnumbered and in genuine fear for your life, so you respond by using a gun to defend yourself. And you end up facing more jail time than the little darlings who broke into your home.

Even worse, though, is that this is hardly the exception in Canada. Again and again homeowners who use guns to fend off attacks against themselves, their loved ones or their property end up cuffed by police and prosecuted by Crown attorneys.

Despite the fact that the Criminal Code still clearly permits armed self-defence (especially when armed intruders have invaded your home), criminal justice officials have convinced themselves that self-defending homeowners should be punished.

Too many police officers and prosecutors simply cannot accept that ordinary citizens have the right to defend themselves, with deadly force if necessary.

Early on an August morning in 2010, Ian Thomson of Port Colborne, Ont., awoke to find four masked men attempting to firebomb his remote rural home. A licensed firearms instructor, Thomson grabbed a pair of legally owned handguns from his safe and fired three warning shots at his attackers.

When he showed police surveillance footage of the incident, he was arrested and charged with weapons offences even before any of his assailants had been caught.

Thomson was eventually acquitted, but it took two-and-a-half years and tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees before his right to self-defence was restored.

I have no sympathy for burglars or home invaders. If you break into someone’s home, I don’t care if they shoot you dead, whether or not you plan to attack them.

In situations such as the one Michael Woodard found himself, there isn’t time to ascertain the burglars’ motives or level of violence. Homeowners haven’t time to wonder whether a burglar is the victim of a rough childhood or addicted to substances that are clouding his mind.

A homeowner who hesitates can end up dead

If you, a criminal, have chosen to enter a home uninvited in the middle of the night, you and you alone should be responsible for any harm that befalls you. No handwringing about root causes or psychobabble about the need to give criminals a chance to reform.

And as the homeowner, you shouldn’t have to spend a small fortune in lawyers’ fees or have years of your life suspended while you wait to be cleared by the courts.

Too many in officialdom wrongly believe ordinary Canadians have no right to use force to keep themselves safe.

lorne.gunter@sunmedia.ca