Easy. One is a loss of material goods. One is the permanent loss of a life. It's not really hard to see why there's a different value on those things.
The loss of material goods that belonged to someone, and a loss that may cause them great harm. I'd say those material goods do have some good value.
The burglar's life is the life of someone who would do harm to others out of greed, and who violates the safety of their homes. Gets a solid negative value from me.
Firing at them is not the answer, but because guns, people assume it is (sigh...).
Thanks to gun control laws, any burglar I meet will instead be stabbed with a sword. Yay!
Working with the police and providing information on the burglar IS the correct response. Dont take THEIR job into YOUR hands. Because chances are, you're not capable of doing it.
Our views differ here. You may not trust people in general, I have only limited trust in the police. To be frank I find the entire idea of hunkering down and calling the police while somebody breaks into my home rather ridiculous. Oh, sure, there's the point that my own safety is at risk, since I'm not as well-armed as policemen are whereas the robber may carry a gun. Yeah, I guess I should leave the task of protecting my life to the police, too.
Oh, dont get me wrong. I dont really trust the police either. Not for thinking they'd be bad guys or anything, but mostly just in thinking they'd be lazy or uncaring. It's easy to get into that state of mind in ANY job.
But that's not why I'd trust that they'd do their job. Certain individuals in the family, particularly my father and my uncle, tend to have alot of influence. In the end, their hand would be outright forced. Actually when I think about it there's probably a few others that could do it too, but those two would get results the fastest.
That being said, I also dont live in a big city, where 10 squillion crimes are committed all the time (nearest major city is Chicago, and it does indeed have a high crime rate). The police around here arent overworked, that's for sure. When something DOES happen, they have time for it and tend to be effective. There's only been a few incidents... such as the time someone tried to rob the gas station, or the time some damn fool kid broke into my car (and got nothing of real importance out of it, I"m too careful for that; he did get some money, but frankly I dont care about that much, which is why I'm fine about keeping some in the car); both were caught very fast. I tend to think that police in major cities are the ones that really have the issues.
On the note of calling the police for help though when a situation does occur, frankly, not doing so is all sorts of dumb and illogical. Going into a fight on your own, when you COULD have backup summoned and approaching, is bloody stupid.
