This one made the news over the weekend; in Phoenix, a 14 year old boy shot and gravely wounded an armed intruder who’d not only kicked down the door of his house while he was baby-sitting, but was pointing a gun at the kid:

The boy was home with his three siblings, ranging in age from 8 to 12, when he saw a woman they did not recognize at the front of the house around 4:30 p.m. She began pounding on the door, said James Holmes, a Phoenix police spokesman.

The boy went upstairs and got a handgun, police said. A man with a rifle had forced his way into the home. He aimed the gun at the boy, and the boy shot him, police said.

Having the coolness under fire to not only not have to stop to change his pants after what must be, to a kid, the most terrifying possible thing – a group of strangers kicking the door of your house in – and seeing a rifle being pointed at him, and returning fire with (by one report) a head shot?

Someone call the SEALS’ talent scout.

The boy and his three siblings left the house and went to a neighbor’s house, where the boy called police and his father, Holmes said.

“He took an action that no police officer, certainly no one in our community, wants a 14-year-old to have to take,” Holmes said. “And yet he’s safe, his siblings are safe, and so now we have to figure out why this happened and why these people were there.”

Another thug off the street.  That’s the good news.

Now for the (hypothetical) bad news:  in Minnesota, this kid’s problems, and his parents’, could be just beginning.

Arizona has strong “Stand Your Ground” and “Castle” laws.  If a shooting is ruled justifiable, the citizen is immunized from civil litigation over the shooting.

Here in Minnesota, even if the county attorney declines to press charges – and under Minnesota law, the boy would have to have proven he was an unwilling participant and that the force he used was appropriate and that his fear was reasonable, although clearly all three of those applied, and there is no “duty to retreat” in the home under Minnesota case law – the “victim” and his family could come after the teenager’s parents for damages for the injuries sustained.

A lawyer may well say “the suit won’t get far under those circumstances” – which is an explanation only a lawyer could buy.  The family will have to spend thousands of dollars defending against that non-lawsuit lawsuit – and that’s presuming they don’t run up against an activist judge, or a plaintiff with enough money or connections to land a big-dollar attorney with the aim of overwhelming them, or a crusading David “Darth” Lillehaug uber-attorney willing to fight against the family on a contingency just because he hates guns..

When lefties say “name one person in jail for lack of a stand your ground law”…:

a. We do, and

b. Jail isn’t the only hell that Minnesota’s legal system holds out for the families of the otherwise perfectly law-abiding citizen.   Eternal legal hell is another.

When our bored dilettante of a governor vetoed “Stand Your Ground”, all he did was give trial lawyers another marketing hook.