A south Texas burglar picked the wrong home as a target this week, and is recovering from his injuries behind bars.

According to the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office, deputies received a call about 9:15 on Tuesday evening about a burglary in progress at a home near Edinburgh in a rural part of the county. By the time they arrived, the burglary was over, and the alleged burglar himself was no longer in the house. Instead, officers found 36-year old Carlos Garcia in a nearby field suffering from a gunshot wound.

Upon arrival to the home, deputies talked with the homeowner, who told authorities that man had broken into their home through the garage. The homeowner said the man tried to get into the bedroom where she and her children had locked themselves to hide from the intruder.

“The homeowner warned Garcia that the police had been called and she had a gun,” the sheriff’s office stated. “When Garcia refused to leave and continued to try to get into the bedroom, the homeowner shot once through the door.”

That one shot apparently hit its mark, as Garcia fled from the home with non-life threatening injuries. Thankfully, because of the woman’s ability to protect herself and her kids the intruder never entered the bedroom where the three were hiding from the intruder in their home, and none of them suffered any injuries in the break-in.

Hidalgo County Sheriff Eddie Guerra, meanwhile, praised the armed citizen in comments made after Garcia’s arrest.

“You have the right to defend yourself in your own home against an intruder,” Hidalgo County Sheriff Eddie Guerra said. “I imagine she was in fear of her life…so she did what she had to do, and we support her.”

… According to Guerra, Garcia and the woman knew each other, but Guerra declined to elaborate on their relationship.

Guerra said the mother hid inside a bedroom with her children and called police and informed Garcia she had a gun, Guerra said.

The woman fired off a shot through the bedroom door, hitting Garcia in the arm. He was later found in a nearby field and booked into the Hidalgo County jail after he was medically cleared.

“You don’t have to give notice, if someone’s breaking into your home you have the right to protect yourself and use deadly force, and you’re not going to have any problem with the sheriff of Hidalgo County,” Guerra said.

I know some gun control activists who might have problems with the actions of this armed mom, but I don’t think they’ll be mentioning this incident at all because it doesn’t fit their narrative. Still, if the gun control lobby had its way it would have been much more difficult for her to protect herself and her children. Between the permit-to-purchase a handgun, the hundreds of dollars spent on mandatory fees and training requirements, and other bureaucratic red-tape that anti-gun activists want to impose on all would-be gun owners, this armed citizen might never have been able to afford to exercise her Second Amendment rights, and she certainly wouldn’t have been able to do so in a timely fashion.

Thankfully she didn’t have to worry about having to satisfy the whims of anti-gun politicians before exercising her fundamental right to armed self-defense. I’m sure it will be some time before she and her children will be able to move past the terrifying events of Tuesday evening, but at least they still have each other to lean on; an outcome that could have been very different if she didn’t have her gun to defend her family.