I say jokingly that it's a weird Dutch law, but really, shouldn't everyone be protected? In the US, I wish there was something in place to protect people from unnecessarily getting hurt in situations like these. That said, it's easy to ignore the differences between the Netherlands and the United States. When I was looking into this, I saw that one suggestion was to put your hand on the burglar and ask them to stop. I can't imagine doing that in the US because you never know what arms the burglars are carrying.
