Thank you for posting a link to this standard daytime urban breaking and entering burglary technique. For those unfamiliar with it, it goes like this:
1. Be a young, fit, male between 15 to 30 years old of any race.
2. Be intent on breaking into unoccupied homes to steal easily stowed small items that can be sold quickly.
3. Dress like a student, wear a hoodie to disguise yourself and carry a backpack for your burglary tools and loot.
4. Cruise the target neighborhood looking for homes that look like the owners might be away at work (cars absent in front being a prime clue)
5. Knock on the door/ring the door bell to see if the homeowner/occupant answers.
6. If someone answers, make some excuse about needing directions to X (part of your cover story) and leave looking for another possibly in occupied house.
7. If there is no answer, go around back where you are out of sight and check the back doors and windows to see if there’s one that can easily be broken into using the burglary tools in your backpack.
8. Glove up, break-in and steal sellable small items that can be easily carried in the backpack.
9. Depending on the value of the items stolen, assess whether you should continue trying other homes in the neighborhood.
10. Continue until you feel uneasy (two to three times) then depart the neighborhood on foot to your car/bus stop to make your escape
11. Sell your loot locally or on line.
12. Repeat until caught.
The problem is that up to Step 7 above, the lost student was indistinguishable from the daytime burgler. While the husbrand is responsible for shooting at the fleeing teen and will be called to account for it in court, let’s not discount the role of his wife in emotionalizing the situation and the role of past experience (both personal and in the neighborhood) in creating the emotional lens the couple were interpreting events through. And last, but not least, the police investigating this case have their own lenses and agendas in interpreting the evidence.
Here is where things get tricky. Unlike CCW, having a gun in the home imposes no training requirement. How, without impacting fundamental 2nd Amendment rights, do you “train” the average home defense gun owner about the proper use of the firearm in home defense and the severe liabilities they face if they get it wrong?
As a retired firefighter, the husband should have had a better capacity to manage the stress of the situation and controlled his impulse to shoot at the fleeing teen. That shot, fortunately a miss, is already proving very costly and the process has barely begun.