Would anyone here try and reason with the burglar or would you just go straight into attack mode?
Sod that.
If you take time to think about it you are giving him/them time to look at their options too, you need every advantage you can get.
My house got hit just under two weeks ago while our oldest (15) was home alone. In the middle of the fucking afternoon.
One guy inside roughing him up another outside keeping watch, when we arrived home from work the youngster was still sitting terrified in his room. Have to compliment the police on their reaction as at one point that evening the house resembled a scene from CSI with detectives, fingerprint specialists, crime scene photographer and a couple of normal cops. Luckily I got on well with the cops as I have quite a bit of Liverpool stuff around the house and quite a few jujitsu trophies which got them chatting to me. The Liverpool fans outnumbered the single Manc supporter 3 to 1 one and we had a quite a bit of Manc baiting going on.
The reason I say I was lucky was that the next night the dog went nuts at around midnight and I found someone in my back garden. What i did next was in no way well thought out or considered, and I suppose the main point of what I am trying to say - there was no way in hell that reasoning with somebody was ever going to happen.
The result was one badly mauled intruder, the neighbours calling the cops because of all the screaming (not from me...) and then me sitting at the police station in the early hours of the morning explaining why I did what I did and hadnt stopped when it was clear I had the situation under control.
The point being that under stress you are likely to react rather than think your actions through.
Luckily one of the Liverpool supporting cops spotted me and got me out of there, I do keep wondering though what would have happened if it had been the Manc that spotted me...