The American Guesser

Woo Hoo! Good news in Peoria:

[Peoria resident Lonnie] Tinsley told police he was sitting on his porch when two males came around the side of his house just before midnight Sunday. Tinsley said Wells pointed a gun at him and told him to get inside the house.

Once inside, Tinsley tried to hold the door shut while being struck in the head.

—

Tinsley said he eventually went to retrieve his own gun from inside the house.

“I got to my gun, spun around and shot it,” Tinsley said, adding that he probably shot three rounds at the intruders.

When police arrived, witnesses reported seeing a man wearing a ski mask and holding a revolver. They said the masked man shot three times at Tinsley, who returned fire.

Wells was the only person shot during the exchange. Police did not say how many total shots may have been fired.

For those out-of-towners reading this, the mayor and other community leaders want the state’s permission to use Peoria’s home rule power and start letting citizens who qualify the power to carry concealed weapons. I’ll bet my next paycheck that neither of the two sociopaths who ended up getting shot at would qualify. And note that no law stopped them from carrying.

Cross posted to Peoria Pundit.

A U.S. Court in Utah thinks (.pdf file) so:

By itself, mere possession of a firearm in public is not unlawful and may well represent the exercise of a fundamental constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution….. See District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2799 (2008) (“There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.”)….. Salt Lake City’s asserted governmental interest in its police officers’ response to a report of a “man with a gun” in a public park cannot be weighed in isolation….there may well be more individual constitutional rights at stake than the Fourth Amendment freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Hat tip: Best magazine ever.

We need a law like this in Illinois:

Michigan residents could fatally shoot someone who breaks into their home or vehicle without facing criminal or civil prosecution under new legislation.

A two-bill package introduced today would assume that a person who forcibly enters or intrudes in a home or an occupied vehicle intends to kill or hurt the owner or occupant. It is patterned after a law signed earlier this year in Florida.

The bills also would eliminate the requirement that people who are being attacked have to retreat before responding.

It is completely unreasonable for prosecutors to expect innocent homeowners to be able to discern whether the maniac crawling through their window at 1 a.m. is only a burgler and not a rapist and killer. Actually, anyone who feels comfortable breaking into an occupied home at night is already a sociopath.

I would add the following: Any person who uses or displays a firearm to defend her or her person or property shall be considered immune to prosecution for any law regulating firearm ownership, possession or licensing stemming from any police investigation of that incident.

In other words, when a homowner shoots a burgler with an unregistered handgun, they can’t haul away the homeowner for not having a FOID card.

Hat tip: Liberty 1st Blog.