11/13: Destroying Pakistani firearms

[MaggieL]

Well, the story here is that the homeowner was awakened by a naked man trying to enter his *back* door. It emerged after the shooting that the man was his neighbor's son (who didn't live there) who apparently had the odd habit of going out naked at night and peeing in the backyard. BUt apparently this particular time he was too drunk to realize he's somehow gotten to the *neighbor's* back door. I imagine we'll never know how hard he was trying to get in, but then considering how drunk he was I suspect if he was frightened and disoriented he wasn't gentle. So Mr. Homeowner is awakened by noise at his back door, and finds naked guy back there. From the neighborhood where this went down I would expect there might be an enclosed back patio, lots of glass and so forth; it might have been reasonable to think he might have enetered the home.

But what kept this from being a "no bill" out of the Grand Jury was that forensics showed two shots to the head from an angle consistant with being fired while standing over the prone figure of the naked guy. I suspect there may be an element of homophobic panic here.

But the naked drunk is elegible for the Darwin Award, IMHO.

[Whit]

     I find it interesting that no one has brought up the possibility of shooting to wound in this situation. Deadly force is certainly to extreme but I think shooting the drunk in the leg would be well deserved. Is this because of the all to legitimate fear of civil lawsuit?

     By the way, as a martial artist I can think of many potentialy leathal attacks I could easily do naked. Unless the shooter knew in advance that the attacker was drunk it was a potentialy deadly situation. I don't know about the rest of you but if someone barged through my door I had better know them or they better back down instantly. Otherwise I'm not likely to give them much chance to do anything. Nudity, not withstanding some guy charging in to the home is not something you be cool about.

     Of course I'm probably going to be even more pissy about the whole deal if the guy is naked, but that's just me.

[CharlieG]

Originally posted by Whit
     I find it interesting that no one has brought up the possibility of shooting to wound in this situation. ...snip

Shooting to wound is a BAD idea, and may even get you put in jail!

The only time you are justified in using deadly force is if your, or another persons life is in immediate danger (Reasonable man test). If you believe your life is in danger, you shoot to END THE THREAT, ASAP! That means shooting for center body mass. Remember, it's actually hard to shoot a person - you've been surprised, the adrenaline is going a mile a minute, your probably half awake, your SCARED - it's kinda hard to aim in that situation. This is part of the reason you hear about cops firing 5 or 10 shots and only hitting with one or 2 (The first shot amost always goes into the floor between the cop and the perp - the cop actually pulls the trigger before the gun is even up).

If you admit to shooting to wound, it means that you were not that worried, and therefore did NOT have a valid reason to shoot - or at least that's what a DA who wants you convicted is going to say

I'm a gun owner - I don't own a pistol (I don't feel the need), but I have read a bunch on this. Folks, you shoot someone, even in valid self defense, you are in for a heap of legal problems. You're probably going to have to prove it in court at least once, and probably twice (The probable is the victims family, the possible is the DA if he doesn't think it's a "Good Shoot")

Most gun owners know this, and have thought about it.

[MaggieL]

Well, Masad Ayoob says that when asked "Did you shoot to kill?" your answer should be "No, I shot to live."

But the facts in this case aren't pretty.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. charged an Upper Gwynedd man with voluntary manslaughter yesterday in the shooting death of a naked neighbor who, he told police, appeared to be trying to break into his townhouse.

Castor said he decided to bring the charges after concluding that Paul Bellina, 52, had continued to fire at neighbor Craig Holtzman even after Holtzman was fleeing. The final shot was fired downward at Holtzman's head as he lay on the ground, mortally wounded, according to Castor's reconstruction.

"I came to conclude beyond any doubt that the fatal rounds were fired outside, when Holtzman was incapable of providing any threat," Castor said at a news conference.

The incident occurred about 4:30 a.m. Sept. 13, when, according to an affidavit filed in the case, the 31-year-old Holtzman, whose blood-alcohol level was 0.22 percent, left the basement of his parents' home to urinate outside. He then mistakenly tried to enter Bellina's home, which has a basement door [sliding plate glass -MSL] identical to theirs.

Unable to enter and having sounded a burglar alarm, Holtzman turned to walk away. That is when Bellina unlocked and opened the door, ordering Holtzman to put his hands up and lie down on the ground.

Holtzman put his hands up, the affidavit said, but then began walking toward Bellina, disoriented and ignoring his requests to stop and get down. As Bellina backed into his basement, Holtzman followed him. There, officials believe, Bellina shot Holtzman twice with his 9mm Ruger handgun.

After being hit, Holtzman uttered, "Ouch," and then turned and fled, only to be shot twice in the back and once in the arm, Castor said. Following him, Castor said, Bellina shot Holtzman three more times, in the head. Bellina hit Holtzman with a total of eight shots, the affidavit states.

Bellina, a Vietnam veteran, has said he was protecting himself, his girlfriend, and her 10-year-old daughter, who were in the house. He told police that he simply "kept firing until the threat was dead," the affidavit states.

But, according to Castor, the legal line from self-defense to manslaughter was crossed when Bellina stepped outside his door. "At this point, Holtzman is no longer a threat to him. Holtzman is fleeing and probably mortally wounded, and therefore there is no permission under Pennsylvania law to use deadly force," the district attorney said.

Under Pennsylvania's criminal statutes, a person commits voluntary manslaughter if, at the time of the killing, he is acting under a sudden and intense passion resulting from serious provocation.

Bellina's attorney, Patrick J. McMenamin Jr. of Montgomeryville, rejected Castor's conclusion. "It was absolutely a case of self-defense," McMenamin said after Bellina's arraignment on manslaughter and reckless-endangerment charges in Blue Bell before District Justice Patricia Zaffarano. "I think the evidence will show that he was afraid."

After posting 10 percent of $30,000 bail, Bellina declined to comment except to ask reporters to get out of the way of his van. A preliminary hearing is tentatively set for Tuesday. If convicted at trial, Bellina could be sentenced to a maximum of 22 years on both charges.

Bellina, who owns a home-inspection business, has said that he did not know Holtzman, an assembler of gym equipment who had recently moved in with his parents, whose townhouse is next door to Bellina's on Browning Court in Upper Gwynedd's Gwynedale neighborhood, off Sumneytown Pike near South Broad Street.

According to the affidavit, however, Holtzman's brother Eric told police that the men had met when Craig Holtzman had discussed buying Bellina's motorcycle.

There was no answer at either the Holtzman or Bellina residence yesterday.

The decision to charge Bellina came after two weeks of speculation while authorities awaited the results of toxicology, ballistics and forensics tests. Castor had initially believed the shooting to be justified and said again yesterday that he believed Bellina felt he was justified in his actions.

At least one legal expert said he was not surprised by Castor's decision. "I can understand under all the circumstances why a prosecutor might think he has to file charges," said Leonard Packel, a criminal-law professor at Villanova University Law School. "But I don't know what a jury will do," he said.

Castor acknowledged that his decision would likely be second-guessed.

"I think that there will be great speculation now and in the months to come," Castor said, "but I am confident that, under Pennsylvania law, this is the correct decision."

--http://inq.philly.com/content/inquir...e/NSHOOT27.htm

[jaguar]

Copyright © 1998 The Associated Press
The United States has by far the highest rate of gun deaths -- murders, suicides and accidents -- among the world's 36 richest nations, a government study found. The U.S. rate for gun deaths in 1994 was 14.24 per 100,000 people. Japan had the lowest rate, at .05 per 100,000.
The study, done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is the first comprehensive international look at gun-related deaths. It was published Thursday in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

The CDC would not speculate why the death rates varied, but other researchers said easy access to guns and society's acceptance of violence are part of the problem in the United States.
"If you have a country saturated with guns -- available to people when they are intoxicated, angry or depressed -- it's not unusual guns will be used more often," said Dr. Rebecca Peters, a Johns Hopkins University fellow specializing in gun violence….

…Japan, where very few people own guns, averages 124 gun-related attacks a year, and less than 1 percent end in death. Police often raid the homes of those suspected of having weapons.
Also at the bottom of the list were South Korea with .12 per 100,000 people, followed by Hong Kong with .14, Mauritius with .19, Singapore with .21, Taiwan with .37 and England and Wales with .41.
The study found that gun-related deaths were five to six times higher in the Americas than in Europe or Australia and New Zealand and 95 times higher than in Asia.
By CHELSEA J. CARTER, Associated Press Writer

Better late than never.

As for the fire extinguisher analergy - last i checked the primary purpose of having a fire extinguisher in your home was not to kil people.

[Whit]

     Thanks for the answer CharlieG, that makes alot of sense. It's also a prime example of why I don't own a gun. I simply don't have the training for it. Therefore it would be irresponsible for me to have one. Of course should I ever get the training I most likely will get a gun.
     Wow, and thanks to MaggieL for letting us out-of-towners in on the story.
     Damn, Bellina just went nuts with the whlole shooting thing. He's in it deep as it's hard to claim self-defense on the three head shots. Holtzman being outside and on the ground, not to mention that he clearly wasn't concealing a weapon on his person... Still I can understand the 'keep going till the threat stops moving' idea. It's a shame that somebody died because they were to drunk to find their house. Not to mention the fact that he went to the door of a man ready to shoot.

[CharlieG]

Originally posted by MaggieL
Well, Masad Ayoob says that when asked "Did you shoot to kill?" your answer should be "No, I shot to live."

But the facts in this case aren't pretty.
...snip

Yeah, that's an ugly one, and if I was the DA, I would bring the guy up on charges, and let the Grand Jury return a true bill/no true bill, and take it from there

I could find my copy of "In Gravest Extreme" to quote Ayoob, or I would have

[CharlieG]

Originally posted by jaguar


Better late than never.

As for the fire extinguisher analergy - last i checked the primary purpose of having a fire extinguisher in your home was not to kil people.

That study was OK as far as it goes - of course the murder rate in the US has gone WAY down since that study was published nearly 4 years ago, using data from about 6 years ago, and England's and Japan's murder rate has gone way up.

Japan is an interesting case - if you combine the murder and suicide rates of both Japan and the US, you will find they are very similar - In the US, we tend to kill other people when we don't fit in, and/or are angry. In Japan, the culture is that the problem is "me", and so not to bring shame on your family, you kill yourself

[Undertoad]

That is very interesting!

For another thread a few months back, I looked up the stats for violent crimes in England, and they are really on the rise. The number of people shot in the US is much higher than in England, but those numbers only affect a small set of people. The numbers who are robbed or just beaten up are much higher, much more likely to impact someone, and in England they are about 50% higher than here.

Plus, the shooting in the US is largely social darwinism at work. As Dennis Miller says: sometimes the herd needs a little thinning.

Now, I know, that makes me a cruel, cold, heartless and thoughtless person. But if you watch "Cops", even just once a year, you see the people who are shooting each other. I don't hang out with these people, and if I did, the escape route would be very clear. Unlike other social problems, this one doesn't trap you into its lifestyle; if you just don't hang out with the shirtless guy at the laundromat with crack vials in his pocket, chances are you won't get shot. Probably half my friends over the years have been gun owners, but I've never been shot.

[MaggieL]

OK, Jag wins another award for point-missing and blatant red-herring maneuver on the fire extinguisher analogy. I shan't feed the troll any more than that, beyond mentioning that quoting Jefferson while advocating gun prohibition isn't the smartest thing to do.

Re UTs shirtless laundromat guy, while I don't *hang out* down there, I'm not able to afford to live in the nice isolated suburb that UT lives in (which isn't actually that far away from here geopgraphically) Nonetheless I'm within credible striking distance of several such laundromats; inasmuch as there's not much left that's worth stealing any closer to Laundromatville--it's kind of grazed-out. (locals: I'm talking about Norristown). So when I need to drive though/near those neighborhoods, having a dozen rounds of 9mm jacketed hollow-point standing by is somewhat reassuring.

That doesn't mean I don't keep the car doors locked.

As for the "unfortunate" drunk, as I said, I think he's Darwin Award fodder. Anybody who's *that* fucked up wandering around outside his home is a public menace. What if he'd stumbled out into the street in front of a car at that hour? He might have caused an accident that injured or killed someone else who *wasn't* being an asshole at the time.

This doesn't excuse excessive force on the part of the 'Nam vet...who recently withdrew his manslaughter plea bargain; he may be hooking up with a new lawyer who's thinking of a PTSD defense. That's plausible, at least. Either way, if he's convicted on the manslaughter charge *OR* sucessfully mounts a PTSD defense, in this state he loses his right to *own* firearms, much less *carry* them. Which from what we know is probably A Good Thing.

[Undertoad]

Yabbut before I lived here, I lived in an apartment complex that was literally on the Norriwtown border. I still didn't get shot.

I got punched out once, but never shot.

Originally posted by MaggieL
As for the "unfortunate" drunk, as I said, I think he's Darwin Award fodder. Anybody who's *that* fucked up wandering around outside his home is a public menace. What if he'd stumbled out into the street in front of a car at that hour? He might have caused an accident that injured or killed someone else who *wasn't* being an asshole at the time.

I'm not sure we can make any kind of judgement on him. Yeah, he was excessively drunk. I personally am opposed to people being un-sober - so I can make no apologies for him there (though I still don't think we can judge - any number of things can lead to excessive drinking).

Sure, he could have wandered into the road and gotten hit by a car, possibly injuring or killing someone else. That would have been tragic. But he didn't. He got confused, tried to get back into the house, and was murdered for it. What if a blind person loses their seeing-eye dog, stumbles in front of a car, gets hit and kills the driver? Is it their fault for being out in society? Are they a Darwin Award nominee for being in a crowded city while being blind? How do you judge that?

Let me pose an unlikely, yet not impossible, scenario for you.

Robin goes out with some guy. Seems like an alright guy. Decides to have some drinks. Maybe a few too many drinks. Maybe it feels really good so she gets fucking shitfaced. This guy does the respectable thing (after letting her get totally trashed) and drops her off in front of your house. But because she's totally trashed, she knocks on the front door of another house. No one's answering, and she starts yelling "Mom! Let me in!" Not 5 minutes later, she's laying dead on the front patio/porch/stoop with 3 bullet holes in her head and a few in her abdomen/chest. Would you honestly say the same thing about that? "Well, I loved her, but her mental deficiencies coupled with her pathetic judgement render her a fine nominee for the Darwin Awards." Come on. Of course you wouldn't.

My point is, I sense this feeling of elitism over the drunk guy. Did he make a bad decision, both in getting drunk and in going outside to urinate? Obviously. But it shouldn't have killed him. I think that maybe if he had done something that's so obviously stupid and carries a very real possibility of, uh, being removed from the gene pool, then it would be "Darwin Award fodder". But that's not what happened. He made a little slip up that probably thousands of people have done and survived. He just happened to have an overly-eager-to-use-his-weapon neighbor.

I don't think we can judge him based on what we know. I don't think we can say any more than "it's a bad idea to get that drunk" and "it's a doubly bad idea to go outside when you're that drunk". Questioning his intelligence is beyond any of us.

[jaguar]

Now go do your homework or something. I'm not going to try to debate this issue with you any further, you're not prepared.

Just because you *state* something you think is obvious dosen't make it *true*, and challenging you to back it up with reason isn't "muddying" it, except to the extent that it forces you to focus on how muddy it was to begin with.

Well i did some homework, porvided solid statisical evidence with analysis by experts that a gun saturated society results in more shooting deaths which you then proceeded to ignore and instead branded me a troll for another minor comment. ah fuck this thread i'm sick of it.

Hey jaggy-poo -

mefinks she was making a condescending statement about your age. You know. Being 16, you probably go to school and have homework. "Go do your homework" == "get out of here, youngun, you have not the wisdom to participate in this conversation". Or at least that's how I interpreted it.

BTW, props for backing up your statement (at least somewhat) with some gathered facts.

[jaguar]

I know perfectly well she was.

Just to clarify the fire extinguisher analergy:

If you use a fire extinguisher to put out a fire it results in (as in a house fire in an occupied house - for the nitpickers here) a life or lives saved. Shoot an intruder and it resuls a life or lives saved - at the cost of one. That's a fundamental difference. I"m trying to find that report or some other stats etc but its harder than i thouhgt it would be. Mabye MaggieL would prefer if i quoted the NRL