The Gun Counter

http://m.stltoday.com/news/local/crime- ... touch=true

...and the media gets it wrong.

Vonz90 wrote:http://m.stltoday.com/news/local/crime- ... touch=true

...and the [strike]media[/strike] police sergeant gets it wrong.

FIFY.

St. Louis County Sgt. Brian Schellman said police believe the teen who was killed and another suspect had tried to break into the home with the 11-year-old and his 4-year-old sibling inside at around 2:25 p.m.

"It's troubling to say the least and shows that too many young people have access to handguns and the results are usually tragic," Schellman said.

The story says that the dead perp was sixteen, the video says he was twenty.

No, it wasn't a matter of the police sergeant being wrong. The police sergeant is an asshole.

skb12172 wrote:No, it wasn't a matter of the police sergeant being wrong. The police sergeant is an asshole.

Nope that sergeant is a whole ass

We seem to be in violent agreement. Be interesting to see the look on the accomplice's face when the concept of "felony murder" is explained to him.

I'm not sure I'm following this. I only read the linked article, but:

- The media gets it wrong based on what?
- The sergeant is wrong why?
- What do we make of the two witnesses that said the 11-year-old initiated contact?

It sounds like whatever happened, there are conflicting accounts. I didn't see where the home invasion story came from except "police believe."

I don't see the wisdom in leaving an 11-year-old home with a gun to defend the homestead and the little sister. If home invasion is that real a concern, I don't think I'd leave the kids home alone.

I feel like there's something I'm not understanding here.

Weetabix wrote:I'm not sure I'm following this. I only read the linked article, but:

- The media gets it wrong based on what?
- The sergeant is wrong why?
- What do we make of the two witnesses that said the 11-year-old initiated contact?

It sounds like whatever happened, there are conflicting accounts. I didn't see where the home invasion story came from except "police believe."

I don't see the wisdom in leaving an 11-year-old home with a gun to defend the homestead and the little sister. If home invasion is that real a concern, I don't think I'd leave the kids home alone.

I feel like there's something I'm not understanding here.

Because we have a number of folks aggressively enthusiastic about self-defense here, and teenagers in bad neighborhoods being found shot dead inside houses that aren't theirs pretty strongly tickle the 'good self-defense shoot' reflex.

And also because we're all pretty damned tired of the media and political types portraying any example of self-defense as tragic awful destructive violence, that we ought to be ashamed of and do something about. And the newspaper and police sergeant pushed that button, too.

It's worth investigating.

It could be bad reporting, but there were a few folks, willingly quoted that the 11 year old wasn't a saint.

The article has been heavily edited since I first read it, possibly several times. Sounds like the locals are picking sides, and making statements that support whichever way their ax is ground.

If this was truly a home invasion, consider that while the parents of the 11 year old will likely never be nominated for parents of the year, self-defense is still self-defense. I know that I, and probably others here, had effectively unsupervised access to guns and ammo at that age. Granted, unsupervised use would normally have meant an ass-whipping, but 30 years ago gun safes were not exactly common, certainly not in rural AK.