This is the seed of an interesting discussion but I don’t want to take this thread off into that tangent. Is there another thread where it would be appropriate to reply?
You can always start one. 
“A 19-year-old Kenosha man has been charged with two felonies after prosecutors say he gave a gun to Kyle Rittenhouse, the suburban teen accused of killing two protesters during unrest in the southeastern Wisconsin city.
Dominick Black was charged with two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a person under the age of 18, causing death.
On May 1, Black purchased a rifle at Ladysmith Ace Home Center using money he was given by Rittenhouse, according to a criminal complaint from the Kenosha County District Attorney. Prosecutors stated that Black was aware Rittenhouse was 17 years old and not legally able to purchase a firearm.”
How exactly is someone illegally furnishing a gun to an underage person “positive”?
Maybe the fact that he was charged with two felonies for doing it.
From yesterday in Lake City, Florida, a man armed with a shotgun attempted to break into a house, but fled after being shot by the homeowner, and was subsequently arrested. There were reportedly also children inside the house at the time of the attempted home invasion.
From Palo, Iowa, a news story from earlier this month, reporting on the legal follow up to something that happened this summer: The Linn County Attorney has ruled the fatal shooting of a man in August was justified. The deceased man first wrecked his car, then attempted to break into several houses, before finally breaking the window of a child’s bedroom and then breaking through the front door of that final house. At that point a resident of that house fired a single shot from a handgun, killing the intruder. A toxicology report showed that the deceased man had “amphetamine, cannabinoids, fentanyl, and methamphetamine” in his system.
On one level, the intruder was perhaps unable to control his own behavior at that point, and it’s unfortunate that he wound up dying. But, as the county attorney said
I usually do not make statements like this because they are rather facile and do not fully recognize the complexities of substance abuse, but the time to control his behavior would have been before he pumped all that shit into his body. Although he may not have been able to control his behavior later he is certainly accountable for it.
Oh, yeah, I definitely agree.
From Douglas County, Missouri, a rather oddly delayed story (the story was from yesterday, but is about things that happened nearly three weeks ago, on Halloween night). A man returned to a home he was renting and found three people had broken into the house. The resident of the house was able to detain the three would-be burglars at gunpoint until local law enforcement arrived to take them into custody.
From a couple of days ago in Mobile, Alabama, another case in which a homeowner with a gun was able to detain a burglar until police arrived. There were actually two reported burglars in this case; police were able to find and arrest the other themselves.
From a couple of weeks ago in Greeley, Colorado: The owner of a group home for people with disabilities shot and wounded a man who forced his way into the house and attacked the homeowner. A man who had been demanding money and pounding on the front door of the house had been told to leave the property, and the occupants of the house were calling the police, but when one of the home’s tenants arrived, the trespasser forced his way into the house. The intruder shoved the homeowner to the ground, causing him some injuries, at which point the homeowner drew his gun; when the intruder tried to seize the gun, the homeowner shot him. Fortunately neither man appears to have suffered any life threatening injuries. The intruder has since been charged with assault and burglary.
A very recent story (from earlier today) in Lynchburg, Virginia: Around 1:40 this morning two men knocked on the door of a house, then attacked a resident who answered the door and attempted to force their way into the house. The resident shot and injured both attackers, who have both been charged with breaking and entering and assault and battery.
From ten days ago in Baltimore County, Maryland, a man agreed to sell a pair of shoes to another man, the buyer and seller having connected with each other on the Internet. They agreed to meet in a Walmart parking lot–as the article points out, this is exactly what police usually advise people to do in these sorts of situations. Once there, however, the “buyer” pulled a handgun and attempted to rob the seller at gunpoint. The seller then drew his own handgun and fatally shot the assailant. The shooter is reportedly cooperating with the police and has not been arrested.
Ending in an alternate universe: “The seller then said, ‘Fuck, it’s only a pair of shoes’ and handed the shoes to the robber who fled. The police tracked down the robber and he is now in custody for assault with a deadly weapon.”
Or, if we’re doing “counterfactual hypotheticals”: “The seller then said, ‘Fuck, it’s only a pair of shoes’ and handed the shoes to the robber, but the robber shot and killed the seller anyway. The police tracked down the robber murderer and he was fatally shot when he resisted arrest.”
More seriously, the idea that the seller shot someone “over a pair of shoes” is fundamentally wrong. The would-be robber did try to rob someone at gunpoint “over a pair of shoes”, but the shooter fatally shot someone who was menacing him with a gun. If someone grabs your shoes and runs, and you shoot him in the back, you would totally deserve to be arrested for murder (or at the very least, manslaughter). Defending yourself against someone who is threatening you with a deadly weapon is not the same thing at all.
Clearly the seller has a case of self-defense (although it appears investigation is ongoing). But once shooting starts anything can happen. We tend to envision these situations as they are portrayed in movie and TV dramas but reality is usually a lot uglier. I count the seller as lucky that he disabled the robber with one shot. The gun threat was most likely leverage to conduct a robbery rather than a murder. Of course, we don’t know the robber’s full intentions, and never will.
I suppose it’s true that this was a positive DGU but a death is a tragedy, even if it’s a “bad guy.”
This is Baltimore we’re talking about here. Your alternate universe is probably one of the least likely possible outcomes in this scenario. It’s significantly more likely that the robber would get away with his crime if he did choose to run, and there is a definite possibility that he would have killed his victim anyway, and if that happened, there’s only about a 1 in 3 chance that the police would be able to track him down.
People say things like this as if it’s some sort of excuse, like he didn’t deserve to die. He threatened the life of an innocent person. He deserved what he got (IMHO).
A good friend of mine who lived in Baltimore City was killed by someone who broke into his house. The guy who broke in just wanted to steal some stuff so that he could buy crack. The idea that a robber will always let you live is bullshit.
Yes, it’s always tragic when someone dies, but in this case, it was one of the better possible outcomes. Only the bad guy died, and I am not going to put bad guy in quotes, because he really was a bad guy. He was a robber and also a potential murderer. He demonstrated that he was willing to murder someone over a pair of shoes. The world is better off without him.
I won’t perpetuate a debate about morality, certainly not in this thread. I respect that view.
The homeowner was protecting his kids. A rifle is a bit extreme but it may have been the only weapon in the house. 3 men had forced their way into the home.
From a week ago in Mobile, Alabama, five adults and a two-year-old child were in a car when they were spotted by the ex-boyfriend of one of the women in the car. He attempted to run their car off the road, then followed them when they drove to a gas station to seek help. The ex-boyfriend blocked in their car and got out of his own car, at which point he was shot and seriously injured. The article doesn’t say who shot the man (or even that the shooter was one of the people in the car with the woman whom the man was presumably attacking), but police do know who the shooter is and are reported to be treating the shooting as a case of self-defense.