This weekend, Caleb Gordley, 16, was shot and killed in a home that he mistook for his own after sneaking out for a party. The homeowner confronted Gordley on the stairs inside the home and said that the teenager ignored a warning shot. The shooting occurred after the failure of a “Castle Doctrine” law in Virginia’s General Assembly — a law that we have discussed previously on this blog that gives homeowners protections in the use of lethal force with anyone illegally entering their domicile. Ironically, the bill was shot down by gun groups that felt that the common law offered more protection.
Caleb was told that he could not go to the party because his room was not cleaned up. He decided to sneak out and his friends helped him get back in through a window. He had mistaken a similarly constructed home for his own. He had been drinking. The home is owned by Donald West Wilder II.
The scene is all too familiar to critics of Castle Doctrine laws. We have seen a long line of mistaken shootings of neighbors and others who go into the wrong house in developments with similarly constructed homes. There are also cases of standard home and workplace disputes that lead to fatal shootings.
In this case, there is the questioning of whether the first shot was a warning shot or a miss. However, in these circumstances, there is no alternative account to rebut the homeowner and police are left only with the trajectory of the bullet to confirm the account. The strongest case would be a round in the ceiling where there was clearly no attempt to aim at the suspect. When you add that the teen was drunk, the homeowner is unlikely to be charge presuming the forensics do not conflict with his account.
The Castle Doctrine law proposed in Virginia failed due to opposition from gun groups which did not like the requirement of an “overt act” by the intruder to justify a shooting. The gun groups felt that such a requirement is more restrictive than the common act and opposed the requirement that the intruder show aggression or threatening behavior.
Source: Washington Post
Today, I went to the beach with my children. I found a sea shell and gave it to my
4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She put the shell
to her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear.
She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is completely off topic but I had to tell someone!
http://www.prisonplanet.com/army-officer-warns-of-dhs-coup-emergency-report.html
Otteray,
I read that whole Barry Seal case you posted days back.
Very interesting& it dovetails right in with much of the recent decades of evil I’ve been posting for decades about.
Otteray,
I thought you would have recognized my sarcasm.
Where are these gun grabbin citizens outrage?
The very small number 40-60k gun deaths a year by comparison to other hazards, most of them gang bangers selling Bush/Obama’s dope, most of the rest suicides on Big Pharma’s suicide pills, the so called anti-depression pills, who just happened to choose a gun as the tool of choice.
Look at the last 5-10 minutes of that Paul Craig Roberts/AJ video up above. It shows us what the end of this current mess will likely look like.
The Bill of Rights grabin haters so concerned about the kids, where is their outrage about this on going bio-weapons attack against us all by Monsanto?
Senate Passes Monsanto Protection Act Granting Monsanto Power Over US Govt
http://www.prisonplanet.com/senate-passes-monsanto-protection-act-granting-monsanto-power-over-us-govt.html
“There reaches a point where there is no difference between excessive taxes and confiscation. ” (OS)
Well now … what’d ya know about that.
The Boston Tea Party was about taxation without representation (really it was the Stamp Act which placed fees on all sorts of documents and importation etc) and the gun culture has loads of representation in today’s
Congress but the pendulum is swinging, OS, the pendulum is swinging.
Oky1,
You can LOL all you want. In the famous words of Queen Victoria, “We are not amused.”
Bless your heart.
Otteray Scribe,
Why go to the trouble of making an AK out of a shovel when one can go anywhere in the US where GW/Obama/Holder are working night/day letting illegal aliens out of detention prisons & no doubt handing them an Ak, extra mags/ammo, Welfare Card,Whiskey/Dope, cash & Obama phones.
Just showing up, tell them you hate the USA & they’ll give all the weapons/supplies you need just like they’ve been doing for Al Qaeda in places like Iraq, Libya, Egypt, now Syria & across Africa.
Prolly calling it Operation Fast n Furiously Destroy Amerkia 4 dee Wallst Bankers 2.0
LOL:)
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/stop_talking_about_hitler/ Wayne La Pierre does not exactly tell the truth about Hitler and guns.
Thank God the women’s rights groups have President Obama. He will certainly restrict you gun toting nuts to the place that you belong. Obama only cares about women’s rights and gun control.
Oky,
Nazi’s don’t need to do any research.
Blouise,
Agree in part and disagree in part. Let’s take the agreement first. Prohibition not only doesn’t work, it can make a problem worse. Tell people they cannot have something they want, and they will ignore the law to get it. The 18th Amendment gave us the Mafia, untold numbers of deaths from contaminated liquor, and smuggling on an epic scale. It more or less turned J. Edgar Hoover into one of the most powerful men in America. The “war on drugs’ has created huge crime cartels with the money to take over whole governments. It has made “criminals” out of so many people, jails and prisons are overcrowded, and we have seen the rise of the prison-industrial complex. Furthermore, I doubt anyone knows how many people have been murdered or injured as a direct result of the “war on drugs.”
As for taxes, or as you put it, “..lots and lots of taxation.” There reaches a point where there is no difference between excessive taxes and confiscation. Most criminals ignore tax laws anyway, and excessive taxes only injure the poor. Excessive taxation created the smuggling industry. If you recall, the original Boston Tea Party incident was about taxes. NASCAR racing was literally created because of liquor taxes. Moonshine delivery drivers had fast cars to outrun the law. Groups of moonshine drivers started getting together once in a while to race and see who had the fastest car. Before long they organized and created NASCAR when they figured out they could charge admission to their races.
The US Coast Guard began as a revenue service to intercept smugglers.
Source: http://www.uscg.mil/history/
That’s the ultimate effect of high taxes. Human nature being what it is, increasing taxes simply creates a new industry.
BTW, there was another home invasion in our community last night. The armed home invaders were looking for prescription pain medication and while they were at it, they took his wallet. The homeowner was injured with lacerations and was taken to the emergency room. He is lucky they did not kill him. There were two home invasions recently where the octogenarian homeowners met the home invaders with 12 gauge shotguns. One was killed when shot in the chest, and the other was wounded. Actually, the second one was shot in the groin, and his ability to reproduce was eliminated.
Felons ignore laws. That is the main reason they are felons. Furthermore, felons are not allowed to have firearms, or even live in the same residence as anyone who does. Being a felon in possession of a firearm is a felony in most states, by state law. In the federal system, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) states that a felon may not possess a firearm. Under 18 U.S.C. § 924(a)(2), such possession is a class C felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Note that is “possession,” not necessarily owning.
As for penalties for causing death or injury by careless and negligent acts, those laws are already on the books. Such acts are not limited to firearms. Yesterday, I spent five hours in a continuing education class on this very subject.
For example, there is a woman in jail right now awaiting trial on capital murder charges. She let her small child run into traffic because she was allegedly paying more attention to a text message than the child. He ran into the street where a dump truck ran over him. The indictment is for the death of a child caused by an act of dependency and neglect. That is not just an ordinary charge, it is a death penalty charge.
There is also the fact that technology outstrips laws and Congress. 3-D printers can make almost anything you want, it is just a matter of materials at the moment. Materials are an emerging technology as well. Guns are not as hard to make as some people think. I have several pistols in my gun case I made myself. Mikhail Kalashnikov was a tank mechanic and tinkerer who invented his famous rifle while recovering from wounds he suffered in WW-II. There was a story in the news recently about a guy who bought a shovel at a yard sale for $2.00 and made an AK-47 clone out of it.
http://thebrigade.thechive.com/2012/12/06/diy-shovel-to-ak-47-50-photos/
When passing laws to control or restrict anything, one must always beware The Law of Unintended Consequences.
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/251794/november-25-2009/in–60-seconds—sweetness