Mr. Bad Example

So, what spare time I've had the last week or two had mostly been spent transcribing my notes from MAG40. I think I'll pass on posting a day-by-day AAR and just post the outstanding things from it.

When I'm ready.

In the meantime... I often pass on posting about things in the news, because others post about them so much better. But sometimes...

As seen on View From The Porch: See this? Don't do this?

Man, 20, killed by shotgun blast outside northeast Raleigh home | News & Observer

This. This right here is why we can't have nice things.

(And actually ties in with some of the things covered in MAG40.)

Acknowledging that the press almost always leaves important details out, and that events as described by friends and family of the deceased are biased and not to be trusted...

A bunch of young males in their late teens and early twenties at, or leaving, a party two doors down does not sound like "hoodlums and vandals."

The part that really caused me to face palm so hard I almost gave myself a concussion was this:

I fired my warning shot like I’m supposed to by law.

Not only is there no legal requirement to fire a warning shot, but police are generally prohibited from firing warning shots. 

And, sweet Jesus, if you HAVE to fire a warning shot, shoot into the ground!

The 911 calls include this:

12:50 a.m. “We’ve got a bunch of hoodlums out here. I’m locked and loaded, and I’m going outside to secure my neighborhood. You need to send PD as quickly as possible.”

and

“You need to send PD as quickly as possible, I’m on neighborhood watch. I’m gonna have the neighbors with me. There’s hoodlums out here racing up and down the street. It’s 1 o’clock in the morning, um, there’s some vandalism.”

and

12:57 a.m. “We have a lot of people outside our house, yelling and shouting profanities. I yelled at them, ‘Please leave the premises.’ They were showing a firearm, so I fired a warning shot and, uh, we got somebody that got hit.”

at which the dispatcher asked (reasonably enough)

“Someone was shot?” the operator asked.
“Well, I don’t know if they were shot or not, ma’am,” he told her. “I fired my warning shot like I’m supposed to by law. They do have firearms, and I’m trying to protect myself and my family.”
The operator asked who had come to his house.
“Ma’am, I don’t know who they are,” the man said. “There’s frigging black males outside my frigging house with firearms. Please send PD.”

Okay, so...

• Neighborhood Watch is no more a license to kill than a concealed carry permit. 
• The evidence as presented in this article makes it sound like no one got further than a few feet onto the idiot's property. 
• At this point, we only have the idiot's word that anyone had anything resembling a firearm besides him.
• And since the evidence makes it sound like he fired from inside the garage, through a window, it hard to see what made him feel he or his family were in such danger that discharging a shotgun was necessary.

The bad part, aside from all the people who have been writing and training about these things for years having apparently done so in a giant exercise in futility, is that there are people out there who will read this little screed of mine, and similar ones by others who are more experienced, have taken more training, and have more exposure, and excoriate us for "abandoning" this guy. (Not to mention NRA, SAF, etc.)

Make no mistake: There may be evidence to come that will change this to another "Good Guy With A Gun" story, but at this point this moron is a moron who deserves to be locked up, and only trotted out when a Bad Example is needed.