After I got out to the Marines I had to drive across county twice with everything I owned in my car, sometimes sleeping in it. While on the highway, where anyone who bothered me would likely kill me, I slept with a loaded pistol. While sleeping in residential neighborhoods or parking lots, I put the gun in the trunk. I wasn’t going to blow away what was much more likely to be a small time thief or a kid misbehaving.
Depending on what was said/threatened by the dead kid, the homeowner may be technically within his rights. But even if the kid yelled “boo” of laugh maniacally, that’s not an immanent threat to the gun owner. Pranks happen. When taking on the responsibility of judge and jury, he should know that.
I don’t know the law here. What makes sense is that the same criteria for sentencing a person to death in court should apply to shooting someone in your home. I don’t think that it’s self defense if the odds are just 50/50 or even 90/10 that this was just a prank. I think that the shooter needs to be able to demonstrate that there was an immanent threat to his life or property beyond reasonable doubt. Otherwise, I think that the benefit of the doubt should run against him, and he should be made an example of to people who have no business owning guns.
You must be thinking of a country that has no 2nd Amendment. Who are these "people that have no business owning guns" besides criminals who have had their constitutional rights aborted?
The only way to show beyond a reasonable doubt that there was a threat is to wake up dead or hospitalized in the morning.
The standard in my state (ND) is such that the use of lethal force be predicated on reasonable belief that the shooter is acting to avoid serious bodily injury or death, or intervening on behalf of a third party to prevent serious bodily injury to or death of that party. Even if the shooter is wrong about the situation, the reasonable belief becomes an affirmative defense.
Here, the question becomes one of 'Did the man believe he was being seriously threatened?'. We do not know if the man had recieved death threats, owed his bookie, etc. and felt this was the 'enforcer' come to collect.
It is a shame that the kid paid with his life for the stupidity of rousting people after midnight. The shooter will probably lose everything in a civil suit, even if he is acquitted.
As for shooting in the back, I didn't see in the article where anyone stated with certainty that this was the case.