I’m a little surprised to discover this story comes from Montana but apparently gun control radicalism can sprout from any soil.
In his home Markus Kaarma, 30 year old father of one, heard sounds of someone burglarizing his residence. With his baby to protect Kaarma took out his shotgun and went to investigate. There he found 17 year old German exchange student Diren Dede going through his garage. Fearing for his life and that of his infant child from an unknown intruder in the night who may have been armed Kaarma shot and killed Dede.
Sounds pretty cut and dry to me. I mean, perhaps Dede forgot that he wasn’t in Germany and that Americans are armed and tend to take a less than hospitable view to burglars in the night.
And that’s what Dede was. He was a criminal, who broke into a man’s house at night in order to rob him. Should it matter he was only 17? Should it matter that he was unarmed? Should it matter that he was a German exchange student? The answer to these questions is no. 17 year olds have been killing people just as much as 18 year olds. Kaarma shouldn’t have to wait til after he is shot in order to protect himself, so inviting Dede in for tea and asking him his intentions and whether he is armed is a ludicrous notion. And just because he was German doesn’t mean he didn’t know that stealing was wrong. Dede just misunderstood that doing so to an American runs a higher risk of being shot.
To me, I see no case here against Kaarma. Yet, leave it to some radical anti gun prosecutor to push the issue. The trial against Kaarma for the April 27th incident is currently underway. The rationale for the prosecution rests on painting Kaarma as a paranoid gun owner who was on edge and acting erratically. Yet here’s the rub, the Missoula area that Kaarma resides in was under a string of burglaries of homes, including his own previously.
Let that sink in. The prosecution is arguing that Kaarma was paranoid even though he was RIGHT. Little surprise that after April 27th burglaries in the area ceased.
Kaarma’s defense is using Montana’s stand your ground law to justify the shooting.
Montana has had it’s stand your ground law since its inception as a state over 125 years ago.
The only change to the law in that time came in 2009 when the following caveat to the constitutional right to defend one’s home with force was removed; the aggressor must be entering the home in a “violent, riotous, or tumultuous manner.”
That removal was a huge protection bonus for Montanans because before that unless the bad guys stormed your home like cattle rustlers, kicking in the door and hootin and hollerin, you weren’t protected under the law. Little protection did it offer from burglars, rapists and murderers who don’t tend to announce their presence before committing their deeds.
Yet of course there are some Democrats who are raising all kinds of hell because a criminal got shot and killed.
Less than 24 hours after Dede was shot and killed inside a Kaarma’s home, state Sen. Ellie Hill proposed a bill changing the language of Montana’s castle doctrine. Basically returning it to only covering the aforementioned cattle rustling type of criminal or violent rioting mobs.
Sen. Hill has the gall to claim that the castle doctrine, as it stands now, “It doesn’t reflect 100 years of self-defense in Montana, and it doesn’t make Montana families safer” and that “What (Montanans) have now lacks common sense.”
If a person can’t defend themselves against a criminal who quietly enters their house then I don’t know how Sen. Hill’s suggestion would make ANYONE other than the criminals safer. If anything is lacking common sense it is Sen. Hill’s ideologically driven mindset. But trying to get a gun controller to follow logic is like trying to teach an owl to swim.
Hill then goes off the rails and speaks with such ridiculous hyperbole that it begs the question on how she was elected in the first place with anecdotes like this: “Before 2009, a person had to exhibit some sort of violent, riotous or tumultuous behavior. Now that he’s removed those terms, you could shoot a wayward trick-or-treater. It lacks common sense.”
Again she harps on common sense.
Really, trick or treaters are going to legally be mowed down?
This is the kind of nonsensical drivel that I would be surprised if Shannon Watts or Michael Bloomberg would even use.
Hill goes on to defend her lunacy by claiming to be a gun owner.
“Yes, Ellie Hill, a Missoula Democrat with three children, has a gun in the closet of her home,” said Hill. “This isn’t anti gun – it’s common sense. The organizations that we entrust, our police, our county attorneys and our sheriffs, they’ve all said our current law is a bad idea.”
If Hill does have a gun I wonder how far a intruder would have to subtly enter her home where her children are, and how accommodating she would be before she felt compelled to actually use her alleged firearm. Just because you are a gun owner doesn’t give you credence to demand that the 2nd Amendment be limited for other gun owners.
Let us not forget, this wasn’t some innocent wayward kid on a guys lawn who was shot. It was a serial burglar who violated the sanctity if Kaarma’s home and was killed while Kaarma was defending it. THIS is what Castle Doctrine was intended for. To protect people from litigation and jail time for simply protecting their own.
My hope is for the jury to see it the same way and that Markus Kaarma is found innocent of these trumped up charges that he is being railroaded with and that the legislators of Montana don’t follow Sen. Hill’s ridiculous suggestion that would serve to protect no one other than the criminals who would exploit it.
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