{"id":32070,"date":"2012-11-27T08:53:13","date_gmt":"2012-11-27T14:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=32070"},"modified":"2012-11-27T08:56:21","modified_gmt":"2012-11-27T14:56:21","slug":"right-wrong-and-fearless-predictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=32070","title":{"rendered":"Right, Wrong, And Fearless Predictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

For starters – the Thanksgiving shooting in Little Falls seems, according to what we know, to be a textbook case of how not\u00a0<\/em>to shoot in self defense<\/a>.<\/p>\n

64 year old Byron Smith allegedly shot\u00a0Nicholas Brady, 17, as he came down the cellar stairs – and then allegedly shot Brady’s cousin Haile Kifer, 18. \u00a0 He’s been charged with two counts of second degree murder.<\/p>\n

And if the news accounts are accurate – and as we’ve learned<\/a>, on all gun-related stories, we must distrust but verify the media, but this case seems fairly clear-cut so far – he’ll deserve the conviction. \u00a0While you don’t have a “duty to retreat” in your home in Minnesota, you still have to have reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm (or, nebulously, to “prevent a felony”, which in practice had better mean “the felony of killing, kidnapping or raping you or your family”), and the force you use has to be reasonable – in other words, no finishing people off.<\/p>\n

According to the complaint, Smith told investigators:<\/p>\n

He heard glass breaking around noon Thursday while he was in the basement. It was the latest of several break-ins that he’s experienced. Brady started coming down the stairs, and Smith shot him with a rifle by the time he saw the intruder’s hips.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unless Brady had a chainsaw running around hip level, there wasn’t a whole lot of fear of death, there…<\/p>\n

Brady fell down the stairs and was looking up at Smith when the homeowner shot him in the face.<\/p>\n

“I want him dead,” Smith explained to the investigator for the additional shot.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And there’s your “unreasonable force”, right there.<\/p>\n

And let’s be honest; you hear the same kind of talk from all kinds of people; “it’s best to finish them off”, one yahoo told me in a bar, “because then they can’t sue you”.<\/p>\n

I’ve never heard it from anyone that’s been through carry permit training, of course.<\/p>\n

And just in case there was some corner of his legal case that wasn’t already utterly self-sodomized…:<\/p>\n

Smith put Brady’s body on a tarp and dragged him to an office workshop.<\/p>\n

A few minutes later, Smith heard footsteps above him. As in Brady’s case, Kifer too started down the stairs and was shot by Smith by the time he saw her hips, sending her tumbling down the stairs.<\/p>\n

Smith attempted to shoot her again, but his rifle jammed, prompting Kifer to laugh.<\/p>\n

Upset, Smith, pulled out a revolver he had on him and shot her “more times than I needed to” in the chest, he said.<\/p>\n

Smith dragged Kifer next to Brady as she gasped for her life. He pressed the revolver’s barrel under her chin and pulled the trigger in what he described as a “good, clean finishing shot” that was meant to end her suffering.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hint: \u00a0virtually no deer-hunting etiquette is appropriate in self-defense shooting.<\/p>\n

This is a case that should be used in self-defense classes as a punch-list of everything\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>to do in a self-defense case.<\/p>\n