Roused from his sleep by the sound of gunfire about 4:30 a.m. Friday, the 67-year-old Gates took up his 12-gauge Browning automatic shotgun, stepped out onto his front porch and fired three blasts at men he said were drug dealers having a shootout in his front yard.I first heard about this on Michael Graham and later got an e-mail from Matt pointing to his note on it at Stop the Bleating!1
. . .
Gates said he heard his wife yell and fall to the floor.
"I thought they shot my wife," he said. "I went and got my gun and fired three shots."
Matt's note covered it pretty well. My only comment is that I'm not at all convinced that the man will ever see his guns again. My experience has been that when police take guns from people they are not returned. Even if the charge or potential charge is much weaker than this one, a condition of the charge not going forward is abandonment of the guns by their owner.
However, I suspect that Mr. Gates has probably already bought a new firearm:
[Mr. Gates] vows that he will be ready if friends of the three men try to retaliate, and he smiled as he said he planned to acquire a gun to protect himself.Y'know, if we had more of this happening (without prosecution of the citizen) I bet the crime rate would drop dramatically.
"They better make sure they get me if they come back, because if they don't get me, I'm going to kill all of them," Gates said. "I'm 67 and don't have that long to live anyway."
1 Sorry I took a while to reply - this week's been a little nuts and work takes priority (no one goes to jail if I don't post or answer e-mail for a couple days).
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