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I think you got some of the facts wrong about the Carl Rowan incident.

IIRC, his son was visiting from out of town. His son was a LEO of some sort and had a pistol with him. I think the pistol was a .22 or .32, some really small caliber.

Rowan was awakened in the middle of the night when some kids jumped the fence in his back yard and went swimming or something like that. Rowan got up and grabbed his son's pistol and saw a kid standing at his back door, maybe even trying to open the door (the kid may have actually been in his house at the time, I can't remember). He shot the kid but the kid wasn't killed.

Rowan was not charged with any crimes, as he stated that the kid was "menacing him" or some such, so they deemed it a self-defense situation. Rowan acted appropriately in the way he handled the situation.

The ridiculous part about the whole thing was that he should have been willing to change his opinin about gun laws after that, but he stubbornly refused to change his mind. He basically said that he did the right thing, he had no regrets, but that didn't mean it was okay for anyone else to do that. Typical liberal double standard.

That was a fascinating case as far as PC controversies go. People react differently in such situations - some with instinctive fear. Ever walked up to the wrong house after getting bad directions? There are any number of possibilities that could explain noises outside. I wouldn't open the door late at night unless I were expecting someone who had already telephoned. I would look out the window first. If I wasn't satisfied at that point, I would call the cops. The kids were skinnydipping in the backyard pool in the Rowan case, right? A prank.

In this case it seems like he was waiting for the kid, caught him walking across the grass, shot him with a shotgun (slug) from a distance of some 20 or 30 feet (as described in a post above) and then walked the distance and fired point blank again (a second time!). That's not "self-defense" in any book.

If the kid was postrate in the street, that's not a good crime scene for the shooter.