Q: What if Trayvon had gone on someone's porch for help?

[mick e]

A: Probably the same damned thing.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

[Grace62]

It's a tragedy that this homeowner, instead of letting police handle it, decided to shoot and kill an unarmed, otherwise non-threatening intruder in his home who was intoxicated and in violation of his parole, and therefore hiding from police on the person's back porch.
However, the circumstances, and the behavior of the person who was killed are so very different from what we know happened with the Trayvon Martin case that I wouldn't want to lump them together.

Each obviously deserves a close examination of facts by authorities.

[Lux Interior]

I need to know the HQ first.

(Hoodie Quotient)

[hal]

Geez... the same exact thing happened to me some years ago. The guy was shitfaced! I called the cops - they took him away. It never occurred to me to get a weapon and attack him. What the hell is wrong with people?

I sure hope that we are at the tipping point - gun freedom is WAY out of control.

[OWC Jamie]

hal wrote:
Geez... the same exact thing happened to me some years ago. The guy was shitfaced! I called the cops - they took him away. It never occurred to me to get a weapon and attack him. What the hell is wrong with people?

I sure hope that we are at the tipping point - gun freedom is WAY out of control.

Hand guns certainly make it much too easy, but take away the guns and the next waepon would be a baseball bat. Or something.
I think we have bigger issues address concern population density .
Violence isn't bred in the chamber of a weapon, it's bred in the hearts and souls of men.
Broken and damaged men.
I'd like to see no hand guns.
I'd also like to see no broken and damaged men.

[mattkime]

>>Hand guns certainly make it much too easy, but take away the guns and the next waepon would be a baseball bat. Or something.

Or something less efficient?

[hal]

A gun turns a 5'5" sniveling sh!t into a superman. A baseball bat turns him into a sniveling sh!t with a baseball bat.

[Dennis S]

You know the Europeans have been wailing on each other with baseball bats until it's a bloodbath over there.

[$tevie]

Dennis S wrote:
You know the Europeans have been wailing on each other with baseball bats until it's a bloodbath over there.

Aren't those cricket bats?

[DharmaDog]

I don't have faith that the police would have handled it. They are usually there to clean up and file paper work after the fact, not actually prevent the crime.

Did Morrison deserve to die? In hindsight, of course not. But how was the homeowner to know what Morrison's intentions were? The cops were called, and nothing was really done. I think Kind's belief that someone might be retaliating for busting up the party is reasonable.

I've had drunk people come crashing through a window. I've had people fighting right outside my door and one guy got clocked in the head with a wrench. I've had my locked/chained $1400 bike stolen from my fenced porch while I was home. Before I was born, my mom had two different residences broken into, once while she was there. I've been mugged at gun point. There are bad people out there. And not only did the police not prevent those crimes, but the perpetrators were never caught.

Morrison had FOUR pending criminal cases, was on probation and was not to be consuming any alcohol (his BAC was .19). If Morrison hadn't been running from the police at the time, he wouldn't have needed to break into someone's home. He apparently did not feel the rules applied to him.

I am sorry for the Morrison family's loss. I'm sorry that Morrison's own alcohol-fueled actions and poor decisions led to his death. I'm also sorry that Kind has to live with what he did. I don't think he was looking to kill someone that night.

I can't sit here and say I would have done the same thing, but I can understand why - at that time of night, under those circumstances - if he thought for even an infinitesimally small fraction of second that his family's or his his own life was in danger that he did what he did. There's really no choice or decision to be made then.

I don't think it's fair to expect a homeowner to assume that if someone has broken into their home (locked door or not) that the intruder has anything but bad intentions. Nor should the homeowner be expected to decipher how bad those intentions are exactly before defending himself/herself or their family.

Rather than expecting homeowners to simply call the police and hope everything works out OK in order to possibly spare a criminal's life, how how about we all expect to not have our homes broken into? And communicate to all of society that breaking into peoples' homes is not only illegal and morally wrong, but may also get you shot, so everyone's got fair warning on that?

I'm happy to live in a state with a Castle Doctrine, and I've never owned a gun.