Posted on 07/14/2012 5:02:03 AM PDT by marktwain
“The incident highlights the potential for fatal mistakes when private citizens exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms.”
This sentence should read “This incident highlights the potential for fatal mistakes when LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS do not follow the Fourth Amendment’s illegal search and seizures and search warrant with probable cause.”
Cops make mistakes all the time.
There is a local cop in a town near here who is on trial right now for blowing a lady’s head off as she sat in the drivers seat of her car. She wasn’t armed, she wasn’t doing anything wrong, she didn’t appear to pose any threat to the officer. He shot her several times with his service pistol in the head at close range. He made a mistake.
I understand that the officer had recently returned from duty overseas. There has been some discussion that PTSD may have had some influence. Still, he made a mistake.
If you choose to keep a firearm in your home, and I have lots and lots of them, you should be aware of your responsibility in the way those weapons are used and stored.
If you shoot someone on your property, you better have a really good, iron clad, reason for doing so. If you kill them, you will still be investigated for the shooting. All of your firearms will be confiscated, not just the one involved, until the inquest is over. The law will toss the rest of your house while they are at it, just to make sure. You will probably get most of your guns back, someday.
If you don’t kill the person you shot at, all of the above is still going to happen except now you are going to be sued to the extent that a cardboard box beside a dumpster somewhere will look pretty good in the near future.
If you shoot and kill what you were certain was a burglar and it turns out to be your drunk brother-in-law, you are going to jail. You must be able to ID your target BEFORE you use deadly force. Those aren’t just noble sounding words, it’s the law.
I don’t want to live next door to anyone who starts blazing away with a .357 Magnum. I own two of them currently and I will attest to the power of this cartridge. It has the velocity and energy to penetrate the outside walls of the shooter’s house as well as those of the neighbor’s.
I will be happy to do whatever I can to try to get this lady’s gun gun back for her under the condition that she trade it to me for a 20 gauge, single barreled shotgun and a lifetime supply of self defense shells which won’t take out the burglar, the cat, and the neighbor sitting in his kitchen.
That way, the next time a stupid cop tries to break in her door without announcing himself, he won’t walk away so lucky.
Obama-scale hubris there.
They could call her and tell here they are outside and going to be looking around the house, too. That would be both reassuring to her and safety for the cop. It would be common curtesy.
Years ago, I had the police call me in the middle of the night asking if a particular tag and car belonged to me.
They were looking for a runaway, and they damned sure didn’t want to banging on the door in the middle of the night. Smart move.
I'd like to know what attempts were made. Her story might be different than theirs. If they identified themselves loudly and said they were there for a welfare check and looked around the house and yard then that's one thing but if they just knocked then tried breaking in that's something else. Many people ignore knocks.
Years ago, I had the police call me in the middle of the night asking if a particular tag and car belonged to me
Wow, similair thing happened to my family. We had neighbors with a teenage girl who caused her mom big problems. At any rate, another neighbor got tired of the yelling and screaming and called 911. The police only knew that a kid was screaming in a house nearby.
They rang our bell and politely asked me if everyone was ok. I said yes, what’s going on? They then asked to SEE everyone in the house in order to ask THEM if they were ok.
My wife and kids woke up and came to the door.
That was a strange thing to happen at 11:45 pm. I didn’t hear of anything happening, but assume it was no big deal.
Doesn't sound like the cops did anything wrong - just a mistake that could have ended much worse.
Many people who don’t answer their phones unless they know who it is. If she didn’t have an answering machine or they didn’t leave a message, then who knows. Couple that with not answering the door and not wanting to be disturbed. As someone else said, lights and sirens might have brought her out but then you run the risk of neighbors getting upset over being disturbed or her thinking there’s bad guys loose and shooting at whomever is breaking in. Lots of angles to look at and no real solution.
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