Two recent news articles that show how not to deal with unwanted guests who are not presenting an imminent threat:
Ha ha, we posted the same story at the same time. Iāll delete mine. Hereās what I wrote.
Andrew Lester, accused of wounding Ralph Yarl in Missouri, will face two felony charges | CNN
TL;DR: a 16-year-old was sent to pick up his brother, but went to the wrong address (same street name, different suffix). When he rang the doorbell, the homeowner- an 84-year-old man- freaked out and shot him twice.
Thoughts on this story:
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The homeowner was frightened and shot thought the door. Know your target and what is beyond it.
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The homeowner freaked out because someone rang his doorbell. Folks, if youāre going to buy a firearm (and you should), you need training. Not just on how to use the firearm, but on how not to use the firearm, or when to use the firearm. If you shoot someone who rang your doorbell, youāre going to jail.
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The teen was black and the homeowner was white. No excuses. Itās still a story about an adult shooting a kid. Luckily the teen is still alive, but heās in pretty bad shape. This never should have happened.
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Great minds think alike;) Thanks for yielding the floor!
My linked story gives an account by the victim that the owner opened the door and said something along the lines of get out of here then immediately shot him. Your linked story with the home owners account says he opened the door was scared by the kids size and youth and shot him through the storm door.
Sounds like both stories are likely true. But does not sound like justifiable reasonable fear to me. Especially if there was a storm door in the way. Even if it wasnāt a sturdy security door they open out and it would have taken time for the kid to try to open it and get in.
Not to mention the fact that if you arenāt sure who is outside and are concerned they might be a threat then donāt open the door.
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My lead theory in both these cases is two people probably spending too much time watching and reading news stories choked full of crime and riots. If you do too much of that and donāt interact with enough people in the real world you might begin to think that the majority of people in the world are threatening criminals as opposed to the small percentage who are.
It is important to be cautious and threat aware but you canāt go around under the assumption that everyone is a threat that has to be dealt with immediately if they get too close.
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They might get their news from this forum. 
For real, though, I had a similar thought. Some people get obsessed with the news, but the news isnāt real. Turn off the news and go meet your neighbors. The world isnāt as bad as the headlines make it seem.
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These are completely different scenarios, but keep in mind that even the police can go to the wrong address.
Answered the Door with Gun in Hand - News & Current Events - USCCA Community (usconcealedcarry.com)
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If you live somewhere that you feel the need to answer the door with a gun in your hand, or are faced with a late night disturbance that causes you to do so it is a really good idea to not open the door at all until you positively determine the people on the other side are not a threat. Then you should put the gun away before opening.
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Just a what if, all we have is a biased media account of what happened. What if the innocent teenager was actually pounding on the door yelling for his MFinā brothers to get their MFinā buts out here right now? I get suspicious when the media uses a picture of a 12 y.o. instead of a current picture. And the car load of young people were they in actuality loud and obnoxious and maybe smokinā some crack in the driveway? Like I say just a āwhat ifā. This world has evil people in it and yes some people spend to much time listening to the news (or opinion), and may get spooked easily. And true they need to identify a serious threat before resorting to a firearm . But in the heat of the moment who knows what will happen. And yes to own a firearm you need training mental and physical. Iām not really defending what these homeowners did, all Iām saying is their juries should hear the rest of the story.
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I agree. I was very suspicious at the headlines at first. But at least in the 16 year olds case I believe both accounts align and the kid does seem like a good kid. And the account on the other story passes my small test as well for the moment.
As with all the other cases we discuss, all we can do is talk about the facts available to us. Everyone involved deserves their due process. But we can still discuss and learn from the hypotheticals.
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Possibly. But either way, you have a homeowner who shot a teenager trying to pick up his brother, and another homeowner who shot someone that was merely turning around in the driveway.
Regardless of whether the teen shouted obscenities (there is no video, according to the article) or whether anyone in the car was smoking, there was no threat to either of these homeowners from a reasonable person perspective.
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I had the same thoughts, mainly because the atty involved is Crump, who also handled cases of Travon Martin, Breona Taylor, George Floyd, Michael Brownā¦ All of them started with innocent, angelic even victim, and then the fog of lies blew away and really ugly situation became evident. I donāt trust 1 word out of the mouth of this atty or MSM at this point.
I donāt want to think ill of the 16 yo shot at this point either. At 84, the homeowner could have suffered dementia and didnāt know who was talking to him or what was happening.
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Highlighting bad, so you will not notice the exponentially worse.
As gun owners, we should care very much about these stories and the tragic events. Honestly though, both of these seem the result of staggeringly bad decisions and choices that are beyond the pale. At least as they are given to us to understand for now.
Absolute tragedies, and if you add in the armed homeowner shot and killed in his own house by police responding to the wrong address, you now have three āarmed homeowner tragediesā reported on in a single week.
When local tragedies get plucked out of the national happenings for highlighting on national news, there is a reason.
I have no worthwhile comments to make on what appear to be two incomprehensibly bad decision making processes that got someone hurt or killed. But when I consider how many young people are dying every day by the drugs flooding over our boarders, and how those stories never get āplucked outā of the national happenings, it gives me real pause.
These are both horrible events, but they are nothing compared to the rest of the horrible events going on at the very same time, you just donāt get it highlighted for you, or even see it mentioned.
And if you were wondering how AI could be so dangerous. AI can filter through an entire nations reporting to pick out the 5 out of 5 million stories that suit the purposes of the AIās programmers. Just imagine how that could be used to shape a national opinion, view, or form national beliefs.
Just a word of caution about todays ānewsā. In other words, you must think for yourself knowing that someone else is using the power of technology to try and do your thinking for you!
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Before I became a gun owner, I read about a driver that entered someone elseās driveway, turned off his headlights, then was shot at by the owner. This happened about 10 miles from my place.
Investigators say the homeowner felt threatened by the stealthy manner the car entered his property.
The driver says he turned off his lights as a courtesy. He merely wanted to make a u-turn.
Not sure how the courts decided on the case and couldnāt find any online results anymore.
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Look, gun owners are bad people!
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Iām waiting for the sudden rash of gasoline related tragedies to hit the nightly news as they ramp up efforts to outlaw internal combustion engines. Suddenly there will be scores of people dead or injured by lawnmower fueling accidents, and we will be hearing about bills set to pass through the legislature that makes getting caught with a gasoline container a felony, but at first, it was only high capacity fuel tanks that were banned.
I know right? Like, you think Iām kidding.
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I know you arenāt kidding. The push to all electric is here, so itās only a matter of time until we get our daily dose of stories with internal combustion engines rising up and killing innocent people. (We got something like this, once, when SUVs were considered evil.)
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I should add that, barring any new information thatās been unreported in these stories, these are two cases of firearm owners behaving badly. These arenāt manufactured stories, they were gift-wrapped and handed to the anti-2A crowd by firearm owners.
Groups like USCCA help prevent such stories, but we canāt force firearm owners to train.
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No more than we can force every car owner to drive responsibly.
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I think it is quite likely that these stories are being pushed to the national level in order to vilify responsible law abiding gun owners. And this is being done while all the hundreds of thousands of stories every year of people who use firearms to lawfully defend themselves and others are being intentionally suppressed, ignored and censored.
But I believe as responsible firearm owners we need to analyze these incidents and help to find ways to make them as rare as possible. We canāt solve all the worldās problems but many here have the knowledge, skills and experience needed to help reduce this one.
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We canāt force people to train but we can support organizations that help people learn and train which many of us here already likely are. But we can also offer help to those we see who clearly need some training and perhaps find some other inventive ways to help spread useful knowledge.
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