USCe student shot dead last night in 2nd Amendment lesson

If the homeowner didn't have a gun, could he have shot and killed the kid?

 

Those analogies might make sense if the highway driver intentionally ran over the drunken person or someone pushed him from the balcony.

 

If the kid wasn’t inebriated off his ass would he have gotten shot trying to enter the wrong house at 2am?
Also just to be clear if your intentions.. you believe all guns should be banned and confiscated.. correct?

 

No doubt there is a lot of imagining in your comments.

Fight against the straw man: gun loving, bible toting, Fox news watching, etc. The straw man is so easy to burn.

 

Also own multiple firearms and would never shoot through a door first response is to call 911

 

Has anyone touched on the student was underage drinking. If they can trace his steps that night, can any bar that served him be held accountable for his death?

 

Or trigger your panic alarm to the alarm company.

Years ago a woman was spending the night at my home. I was woken by the sound of someone pounding on and kicking my front door. To get to that point, my visitor had to have come over an 8 foot bloock wall that completely enclosed my property. At that point my uninvited guest was in the "curtilage" of my home. Under Florida law, it was the same as if he was inside my home itself. This was before SYG, but that didn't matter as the castle doctrine clearly applied, no duty to retreat in my home. I grabbed my .357 magnum and went to the door. The woman recognized the person's voice as her very recent ex-BF. I absolutely could have opened my front door at the point and shot him. It would have been cleared, I had cleared shootings in less qualifying situations as a prosecutor. He was legally already in my home and was either going to assault me or attempt to remove the woman against her will. That is an armed or assaultive burglary of a dwelling, punishable by life in prison, and defined as a forcible felony in Florida. Florida law authorizes the use of deadly force to prevent the commission of a forcible felony. He sounded drunk as he was kicking my door and yelling her name. While I could have shot him, I did not want to live with that for the rest of my life, didn't want the woman to see her ex being killed and have to deal with it, either. I also remembered I had done some stupid things in the name of love myself, although nothing on that magnitude of stupid.

I saw my alarm pad next to the door, activated the panic alarm and it's external siren. I yelled to him the police were on the way and that if he came through the door, I was going to shoot and kill him. He left and I had the alarm company install motion detectors that same week.

Just because you can legally shoot someone, it should always be the absolute last resort. In some of these stories, it seems like it was the first option, not the last one. Activate an alarm, turn on lights, yell at the person and call 911.

In my younger days, we were staying at the beach. I had a bunch of drinks and accidentally walked into the wrong motel room. A motel room is your residence under Florida law. I realized my mistake immediately, explained/apologized and left, but stories like this SC one make me realize I was lucky that day.

 

"Homicide" just means the death wasn't of natural causes or accidental, it was the result of the intentional act of another. It does NOT mean it was illegal or not justified.

 

Nobody said the kid is without fault, but he's dead. You're the one trying to claim that guns aren't an issue here. It's dishonest. The mass proliferation of guns is bad for our society and leads to tragedies like this one.

 

both of those are illegal no matter the circumstances, so nice try, but no. This would be more like if a belligerently drunk person started a fight on a hotel balcony and in the course of trying to protect themself, a person pushed them away and they fell over the balcony.

it would entirely depend upon the specific circumstances involved, but short of some evidence that the person who was defending themselves was themselves intoxicated, that they had other readily accessible alternatives that a reasonable person in their position would have likely taken, and/or that there was intent to kill the person, it would be hard for me to say that it was anything but a tragic accident. Root cause wasn’t the hotel, the fact that the room had a balcony, etc.

If you get so drunk you mistake your residence for another, one of the possible outcomes is someone could mistake you for a home invader. People have a right to protect themselves in their homes, and that often means split second decisions made under adrenaline with an incomplete set of facts because waiting can mean death or great harm. That said, this was not an objectively responsible course of action based on the facts known so far (shooting through a locked door). Whether he faces criminal charges likely have to do with whether or not what the drunk kid was doing rises to the level of attempting to force entry or at least whether a reasonable person would believe he was trying to force entry. Banging on a solid locked door or jiggling the handle a bunch of times and not leaving is questionable, but likely enough to cause some reasonable level of doubt in even a negligent homicide or manslaughter type of charge. I’d likely find him responsible to some extent if I was on a jury in a civil suit.

 

So a drunk college student, who did NOT enter the shooter's home, is shot dead through the door. I'm sorry, the shooter didn't have to shoot. I would tell him through the door he was at the wrong house and called the police. Why is this ok at any level?

 

A couple things. Homicide only indicates someone was killed, not criminal intent. Second, the police report mentions broken glass. Was the glass broken in or out? Seems that would be the immediate tell as to whether the intruder or the bullet broke the glass. A bit lazy on the investigator's part if you ask me. Of note is also that the representative of the area is a defense attorney and had doubts formal charges would be filed. Someone mentioned that the police had already been called and were on their way. If that's the case, I'm betting that there was an escalation by the intruder in the interim that led to the trigger being pulled.

As far as the incident itself, I'm of a similar viewpoint as with what appears to be most others here. Tragic result, more than enough blame for both sides dependent on the specifics of the incident. Probably most closely aligned with ridgetop, "don't shoot what you can't clearly see".

 

The person responsible for the death is the victim himself. It is a tragedy but the kid was obviously drunk off his ass and and tried to enter someone else’s home in the middle of the night. Obviously when that happens, there is a very good chance things don’t work out well.

The report I read said the initial call was for a burglary which makes you believe the victim may have continually attempted to enter the home. Being South Carolina is a “stand your ground state”, the resident was justified to pull the trigger if he feared for his or her safety.

A young man lost his life leaving behind a grieving family and I’m sure the shooter feels terrible also. A really terrible tragedy.

 

Not everybody is Bruce Lee with Spidey sense. The rest of us have to defend ourselves the best way we can.

 

I have to agree with @ridgetop. Your choice of words – blasting them – conjures up a certain kind of image. Perhaps that was not the image you intended, but it was reasonable to see it the way we did.

 

Like it or not, we live in a nation with a gun lust and exorbitant amt of gun violence. Too many innocents are getting blasted by idiots with guns. If that makes some people feel uncomfortable, then good. It's a problem desperately in need of a solution. Meanwhile, more and more innocent folks (mostly young people) continue to get shot.

 

I feel so much safer out there with these gun owners protecting us against tyranny

https://x.com/peggykusinski/status/1696575221082321361?s=61&t=Txm-mjaJo1cwIn6vbZJYEA