<p>The legal problem the senior victim has is that by his own admission and what has been reported, when he fired the second shot which killed that burglar, he was no longer legally considered defending his property as both burglars were fleeing and at least one shot was fired when both parties were in an alleyway off of his property. </p>
<p>At that point, the situation’s legally closer to the Starbucks/public analogy than self-defense with the possibility of hitting innocent nearby bystanders whether on the street, in their vehicles, or even on/inside their property. </p>
<p>His own words in that press interview where he made his intend and the way he went about arriving at it also makes problematic any defense along the lines of “flight or fight” fear or sudden passion. </p>
<p>Yes, cobrat, I <em>understand</em> that what this man did may not be legally defensible since he went off his property. We all GET that, so you don’t need to lecture us on it. We also all GET that he wasn’t very wise to say what he did. </p>
<p>We are talking about what we think is right. I get that this case may not fall under strict self-defense, but personally I wouldn’t throw the book at him and I’m not going to shed too many tears that this woman is dead. </p>
<p>"The other part–and I wish posters here would be honest about this–is the seeming lack of intelligence of many people in the pro-gun movement. (And I am not talking about the educated visitors to this site, so don’t flame me.) These are not people who instill confidence that they will be responsible with their weapons at all times. "</p>
<p>There was a time when the NRA stood for responsible, educated people who wanted to exercise their 2nd Amendmt rights in a thoughtful manner. Those days are long gone.</p>
<p>I agree with post 253 that it is important for students to understand history. I am not at all convinced that “carrying was the norm in this country for a couple hundred years” Are there contemporary accounts/primary sources confirming this statement? I read quite a bit of fiction and non-fiction, including memoirs, from the 1800s. I can not recall any examples (much less an idea of it being the norm) of middle class folks carrying guns in the streets or into shops or coffee houses for protection. That doesn’t mean #247 isn’t true, but I don’t have the sense at all that people like us were carrying guns on the streets of Philadelphia, Boston, NYC during the late 1700s, 1800s, and first part of the 20th century. Any historians of the period reading?</p>
<p>Unless someone can point me to some evidence, I think this idea everyone used to carry is an incorrect modern interpretation of the customs of that time.</p>
<p>Sometimes the history we tell ourselves says more about our own times than anything else. I may be incorrect in my interpretation. Oral tradition is another kind of history. In my family, when someone needed shooting in the 1800s, an ancestor had to go home to get his gun. Or at least that is the story.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I can understand an emotional reaction that these robbers were Bad People and got what was coming to them. And I’m not going to shed too many tears for the woman either.</p>
<p>But it’s a step too far to say that shooting a fleeing suspect is “right.” It’s not right. We can’t have that. We can’t have people taking the law into their own hands, and shooting at people running away-- for one thing, they might miss and hit a kid. For another thing, the legal penalty for burglary plus assault and battery is not death, nor should it be, and we can’t have vigilantes enforcing their own version of justice.</p>
<p>It’s not <em>right</em> to shoot fleeing suspects, no matter how angry you may be at them. You shouldn’t defend people who do it. Allowing people to shoot fleeing suspects leads even more in a direction you, based on your other statements, don’t want to go in, the direction of wild-eyed gun-toters with bad judgment. I urge you to put aside your emotional reaction and look at this analytically. Shooting fleeing suspects is not an action you should approve or defend.</p>
<p>The thing is judges, prosecutors, and to some extent…jurors don’t have the luxury of having such a blase attitude about ignoring laws they don’t personally agree with. </p>
<p>That and lawmakers writing those laws need to weigh possible consequences of broadening self-defense laws beyond the current narrowly defined lines…such as the possibility of encouraging crime-victims to put themselves in further danger by chasing criminals well-off their property, encouraging more stereotypical wild west shootouts in public/on another person’s property, possibility of injured/killed bystanders from stray bullets, etc.</p>
<p>Incidentally, such considerations are also factors in why cops in many jurisdictions are no longer allowed to engage in shootouts with fleeing suspects or participate in high speed car chases. Lawmakers in those instances felt the immediate grave danger to the greater public out on the streets outweighs the need to apprehend the suspect/criminal fugitive. </p>
I don’t believe this is true. It certainly is highly unlikely to have been true with respect to handguns. Certainly, a much larger percentage of people owned guns than they do now, but it was not because of fear of crime. And I’ll bet people in cities were unlikely to have guns (especially poorer people).</p>
<p>Somewhere in a previous post I expressed my concern that this thread would turn into an anti-gun debate and it has gotten there. As I have said in past gun debates on CC, to move this issue forward to something constructive, you have to find common ground. Otherwise, these typical arguments push people to more extreme views. I’ve been on both sides: first anti-gun (even for the majority of police) to gun rights. But the more I hear the anti-gun rhetoric, the stronger my support for gun rights become.</p>
<p>As for this elderly man, I continue to point out that a person who is attacked, fears for their life, and defends themself, will not be in a state of mind to evaluate the rights of a fleeing assailant. I will also add that they won’t be able to gather a PC way of talking to the press. This man should not be treated as if he was drinking tea while relaxing and then decided to shoot someone.</p>
<p>But shouldn’t be treated as somebody who shot a fleeing woman twice in the back as she pleaded for her life? Outside his house, after he chased her?</p>
<p>By the way, in response to a question above–of course private citizens have used guns to thwart crimes–just recently somebody used one to thwart use of a cell phone in a movie theater.</p>
<p>So the defense here is that the guy, in the heat of the moment, lost his head and shot the woman. That defense evaporates when we realize that the guy was interviewed, not ten minutes after the killing, but a day after the killing. He was no longer in the heat of the moment, yet he continued to insist that he intentionally and deliberately shot her, then when she pleaded for her life, shot her again and killed her. He was judge, jury and executioner.</p>
<p>The person who shot the cell phone user will most likely go to jail for shooting a man who was attacking him.</p>
<p>If someone invaded your home, assaulted you, you fought them off, and then we gave you a math test, you probably would make mistakes that are unthinkable. This victim is being asked to make a similar assessment as it relates to the law. Completely unreasonable. </p>
<p>The math test is a poor analogy. For sure, you’d screw up the math test in the heat of the moment. But the next day, when you were speaking to the press, would you still insist that 2 + 3 = 23? If you did, we’d have reason to believe that you really couldn’t do arithmetic. Similarly, the guy, interviewed the next day, still insists he intentionally and correctly shot the woman. So we can believe that rather than doing something uncharacteristic in the heat of the moment, he deliberately executed a robber.</p>
<p>I don’t belief that. I grew up in rural North Carolina, at a time when most country people had rifles or shotguns. Concealable weapons like pistols were rare; they were considered to be city murder weapons and looked down on. People carried their guns with them when they hunted or walked around their property, or they would have them in their trucks on the way to or from hunting. However, no one walked around in public with guns. That would have been considered very rude and threatening. My parents have confirmed that this was true when they were children as well.</p>
<p>It’s ironic that the woman who was shot tried to play on the victim’s sympathy by claiming she was pregnant. Did it ever occur to her to be sympathetic to him because he was an elderly person?</p>
<p>I hope that the DA will use prosecutorial discretion and not charge the victim.</p>
<p>Clearly there are two main views on this issue and viewpoints are as strong as freedom of religion. I suspect the Framers had much of the same conversations and thus the second amendment was conceived. </p>
<p>There is something highly suspect when one group of law-abiding citizenry tries to limit the most effective way for another group of law-abiding citizenry to defend their several persons. Why would someone have the need to limit the gun ownership of someone who has never done anything indiscriminate to anyone? I just do not get that, unless there is another motive involved. </p>
<p>I suspect the framers understood there was another motive as well and that it was an inherently unwise situation to be in because the first shot of the Revolutionary War did not occur until the King sent soldiers to confiscate the guns of the colonists. The colonists are actually partaking in civil disobedience and negotiating right up to that first very specific attempted confiscation. The Framers knew they would be at the mercy of the King, tyrannical governments and unsavory people if the person could not defend himself. </p>
<p>My position stems from these: 1) I feel no need to tell another human to limit his ability to defend his person with the most effective device possible, and 2) I am not afraid of law-abiding people with guns. Unlike many on here, my heart rate does not go up, and I do not harbor a unfounded fear of law-abiding people because they have a gun. </p>
<p>I saw one poster say something about the gun not being a macho thing, which is very accurate. Anyone who thinks it is a macho thing is missing the fact that conceal carry is 22%+ females and climbing fast. I believe women are 25% of all gun owners and climbing even faster as well. I am all for women having the capability to more immediately and expeditiously defend themselves, and since I am not going around attacking women, I am not a bit concerned in the least.</p>
<p>The biggest risk to having a gun in the home is not that a burglar will turn it against you, or that you will accidentally shoot your spouse. The biggest risk is that you will shoot yourself or that a member of your family will shoot themselves. The number of gun deaths due to suicide is twice that of death by homicide. Removing guns from the population, as happened when Switzerland tightened up on gun ownership, reduces the total number of suicides. Suicide is difficult, guns make it easy. But something tells me that the same people who believe in open season on “scumbags” won’t shed a tear for someone who wants to end their own life either.</p>