Wilmette Man Charged After Shooting Burglar

I'll wager the homeowner is punished more than the perp.

Without the support of Freeper donations, Free Republic would go belly-up, leaving guys like The French Gynecologist to be unopposed. And we can't have that!

What? You question the enlightenment of this professional government official of the enlightened State of Illinois???

Here's a bit of somewhat related humor that mentions Illinois.

I guess if you can't laugh you're gonna cry.

Regards

J.R.

"It would be unfortunate and potentially tragic to conclude from this incident that Wilmette families will be safer if they keep a handgun in their homes," Wilmette police Chief George Carpenter said.

Yet another nazi cop who thinks that only they are worthy to be armed. It must be a requirement these days for a cop to be an anti-gun hypocrite.

It must be a requirement these days for a cop to be an anti-gun hypocrite.

It's only required if the is cop to be quoted in a left wing rag. Most cops hold more civilized notions on gun ownership.

Yet one more example of an individual protecting his home and family with a gun, and being demonized by the press, the DA, and the Police Chief.The Chief rolls out the old tried and true lefty argument that a gun in the home will not protect you, even though the events blow his bulls@#t theory out of the water. I love it when these clowns step on their tongues when they talk. Keep on running your jibbs Chief, people can see your full of it.

Thank God for living out west where we're still allowed to defend ourselves and our families without fear of prosecution. Well... Most of the west. heh

Had the guy called 911 instead of defending himself we'd likely be hearing his taped call on America's most wanted while they plead for our help to find the guy that ended up killing him.

That whole attitude of persecution towards gun owners is sickening.

-Laz

The police chief doesn't mention that this was the 2nd night in a row the thief had hit this house.

He also left out the fact that the thief had hit several homes on this block.

The chief left out the fact he was doing a very poor job of protecting the people who live on the block since they kept getting broken into by the same thief.

You hit it right on the head. The Chief knows he can't protect his community, but he has to tow the party line to hold on to his job. The sick thing about this is these people can't protect the community, they really don't care about protecting the community, they just want to disarm the community!! Slowly but surely people are waking up to this fact. I read this morning that more and more senior are arming themselves.

Why was he even there? He'd already stolen the TV, the video games, and the BMW X5 the night before.

And you gotta' wonder what sort of criminal history warrants a $3 million bail. I'll bet the perp is a repeat violent offender.

If I lived there,(which I never will - city or state, because of all the firearms restrictions) I'd be the proud owner of a 12 gauge pump shotgun... (for hunting purposes, yeah)

...and the perp would have been tagged at the scene, not treated at a hospital.

I live in an unincorporated area in far west Knox County near Knoxville, Tennessee, where it takes the sheriff about 20 minutes to respond to a call. To the best of my knowledge, in my neighborhood, there hasn't been a night time burglary in the last 16 years. After Tennessee adopted shall issue CCW in 1996 there haven't even been any day time burglaries here. Just about everybody keeps guns in their houses. No mass shootings or other problems. Which is better, the backward Illinois way or ours?

Illinois Freepers were ably represented at the Wilmette gun hearing by Chicago farmer and myself. We were joined by hundreds (over 200) other like minded people, both Wilmette residents and others.

What I saw there was a body (Wilmette trustees) who embody the new face of tyranny, the benevolant nanny. The first item on the agenda was a smoking ban at an AMERICAN LEGION hall, the upshot of which is to negate private property rights under the guise of health concerns. The owner of the hall passionately spoke to that concern and pointed out that he would have to move the Hall or lose buisness.

When the attention turned to the gun ordinance, the slaughter began. One trustee opened the meeting by piously intoning that he had an open mind about this issue and then in almost the next sentence admitted that there was no intention to change the law. In other words, don't bother me with facts, my mind is made up. The trustees looked like a bunch of deer in the headlights as they were barraged by an avalanche of fact, history lesson, law, and common sense that to this observer clearly shook their insular sense of security and self rightousness to it's very core.

To be sure there were several speakers in support of the ordinance, some even were Wilmette residents. They were clearly outnumbered by residents opposed to it and utterly swamped by non residents who unanimously opposed it. In attendance were the honorable Terry O'Brien and Eileen Byrne from WLS, both of whom made passionate, and coherent remarks that bought forth applause from the listners, along with a gathering of other media. Eileen expressed interest in our nascent firearm training course, which is still under development.

I read the E-Mail to Chief Carpenter that I posted here, and Chicago farmer pointed out that cops were mostly "armed historians" who inevitably show up after a crime has been comitted. He detailed the reality of the laws that shield Wimette from civil liability for the failure to prevent crime.

There were a host of second amendment supporters who passionately and eloquently made their points. One speaker made a particularly cogent point when he highlighted a dismaying trend of constitutional inversion, that of legit constitutional rights, (Bearing arms, private property, freedom of speech, equal protection) being demoted to privleges, and bogus ones (health care, illegal alien driver's licenses, abortion, welfare, etc.) are becoming hallowed US constitutional rights envisioned by James Madison.

Comic relief was provided by a Wilmette resident who proudly proclaimed himself estatic over the fact that he was victimized without the legal right to a handgun for self defense. The guy looked like he was right out of Central Casting for the role of nebbish victim.

Responsibility, what a concept.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-letter22.html

www.suntimes.com

Gun owner: I, not cops, got bad guy
January 22, 2004

Three days after Christmas, someone broke into the DeMar family home in Wilmette through a dog door, stealing a television, an SUV and the keys to the home.

The next night, Hale DeMar was prepared for a return visit. With his children upstairs, DeMar, 54, shot burglar Morio Billings, 31, in the shoulder and calf, police said.

Billings was caught at a nearby hospital and charged with felony residential burglary and possession of a stolen car, authorities said.

And, in a move that has drawn criticism, DeMar was cited with breaking Wilmette's ban on handguns and with failing to update his firearm owner's identification card.

The misdemeanors are unlikely to bring jail time. Wilmette Police Chief George Carpenter did not criticize DeMar for protecting his family but said homes are safer without handguns.

DeMar, in a letter sent to the Chicago Sun-Times, is now speaking out:

Village Trustees ... Stick to Parade Schedules & Planting our Parks

Many of us have experienced a sense of violation upon returning to our homes, only to find that someone else has been there. Someone else has trespassed in our bedrooms, looting and stealing that which is readily replaced. Many of us, still haunted by that violation, will never again have a sense of security in our own homes. Few, however, have awakened to realize that they had been violated as they slept in their beds, doors locked, as family dogs patrolled their homes. For me, the seconds until I found my children still safely tucked in their beds were horrifying. The thought that a young child may have been hurt or abducted was incomprehensible.

The police were called and in routine fashion they came, took the report and with little concern left, promising to increase surveillance. Little comfort, since the invader now had keys to our home and our automobiles. The police informed me that this was not an uncommon event in east Wilmette and offered their condolences.

What is one to do when a criminal proceeds, undeterred by a 90-pound German shepherd, an alarm system and a property ... lit up like an outdoor stadium? And now, he had my house keys and an inventory of things he'd like to call his own. Would the police patrol my dead-end street as effectively the second time as they had the first? Would my small children be unharmed the next time? Would the career criminal be satisfied with another automobile, another television or would he feel the need, once again, to climb the staircase up to the bedrooms, perhaps for a watch or a ring or a wallet, again risking little?

Would my children wake to find a masked figure, clad in black, in their bedroom doorway, a vision that might haunt them for years? Would the police come again and fill out yet another report, and at what point should I feel comfortable that the 'bad guy' got everything he wanted and wouldn't return again, a third time?

I went to the safe where my licensed and registered gun was kept, loaded it for the very first time and tucked it under the mattress of my bed. I assured my frightened children ''that daddy would deal with the bad guy ... if he ever returned.'' Little did I imagine that this brazen animal was waiting in the backyard bushes as I tucked my children into bed.

Fifteen minutes after bedtime, the alarm went off. Three minutes after the alarm was triggered, the alarm company alerted the police to the situation and 10 minutes later the first police car pulled up to my home, but only after another call was made to 911, by a trembling, half-naked father. I suppose some would have grabbed their children and cowered in their bedroom for 13 minutes, praying that the police would get there in time to stop the criminal from climbing the stairs and confronting the family in their bedroom, dreading the sound of a bedroom door being kicked in. That's not the fear I wanted my children to experience, nor is it the cowardly act that I want my children to remember me by.

Until you are shocked by a piercing alarm in the middle of the night and met in your kitchen by a masked invader as your children shudder in their beds, until you confront that very real nightmare, please don't suggest that some village trustee knows better and he/she can effectively task the police to protect your family from the miscreants that this society has produced.

This career criminal had been arrested thirty times. He was wanted in Georgia and for parole violations in Minnesota. How many family homes had he violated, how many innocent lives were affected, how many police reports went into some back office file cabinet, only to become some abstract statistic? How is it that rabid animals like this are free to roam the streets, violating our homes and threatening the safety of our children?

If my actions have spared only one family from the distress and trauma that this habitual criminal has caused hundreds of others, then I have served my civic duty and taken one evil creature off of our streets, something that our impotent criminal justice system had failed to do, despite some thirty odd arrests, plea bargains and suspended sentences.

Hale DeMar, Wilmette