A Vance County, NC man is alive and well and a home invader is in critical condition because the criminal brought a pistol to a rifle fight:

A Henderson homeowner defended himself against a home invasion Monday morning, shooting an intruder who kicked in his door.

Jonathan Haith said he was sleeping in his home at around 9:45 a.m. when someone kicked in the door. When the intruder saw Haith, he fired a 9mm handgun but missed. Haith said he returned fire with a AR-15 rifle and struck the intruder in the stomach. The intruder ran out the home and collapsed down the street, Haith said.

Haith said someone in a nearby car was arrested, and the intruder was last listed in critical condition.

An updated version of the same article has been rewritten to give Haith’s perspective.

“I heard the loud bang in the laundry room area,” he said.

Someone kicked in the door, a Haith grabbed the AR-15 rifle he keeps under his bed.

“I crouched down, grabbed the firearm and was walking up the hallway,” he said. “As soon as I poked my head around the corner I saw a tall male standing there with a gun.”

Haith said he surprised the intruder.

“He shot first, I shot second,” he said. “He missed and I reckon I connected.”

A commonly held belief in citizen control circles is that the AR-15 is a “weapon of war,” and that it isn’t practical for self-defense.

That belief could not be more factually wrong.

In this incident, we see demonstrated the fact that it is far easier to get hits in high-stress situations with a rifle than it is a pistol, and there is no doubt from a ballistic perspective that a rifle carries more fight-stopping energy than a pistol.

When used with standard M193-style ball—or hollowpoint or other frangible loads in particular—the AR-15 is an incredibly effective home-defense firearm. Because of its modularity, it is arguably the most effective arm for the widest number of shooters across the widest range of conditions.

It combines low recoil with a lower risk of over-penetration (when used with frangible/fragmenting/hollowpoint ammunition) than most pistols, a high degree of control and practical accuracy under stress than a pistol, much greater ammunition capacity (30-round magazines are the standard capacity) than pistols or shotguns, and has a practical effective range of 300+ yards if the defender faces incoming fire from an accomplice outside the home, such as a getaway car driver.

Homeowner Haith is far from the first person to find out just how effective an AR-15 is for self-defense, and since the AR-platform is the hands-down the most popular rifle sold in the United States in recent years, we can expect to see a lot more stories like this underplayed by the media.