Even in a place as liberal as Madison, Wisconsin there are gun owners prepared to protect and defend their family from harm, as one intruder learned the hard way on Friday morning.

Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes says a masked and potentially armed man broke into an occupied dwelling around 2:30 a.m. on Friday but was shot and killed by someone before he could harm the man, woman, and child inside the residence at the time. Police say that “multiple weapons” were recovered from the scene, but haven’t specifically said whether the suspect was armed at the time of the shooting.

Still, when a masked man breaks into your home in the middle of the night, you can safely assume they’re not there to drop off cookies or a gift basket but instead mean to do you harm. And while authorities haven’t officially declared the shooting to be justified, all of the evidence that’s been publicly released to date points in that direction.

The Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office will release the identity of the dead man. Barnes did not release the names or ages of the people in the home at the time the man broke in but said they are cooperating with police. He said the girl is older than a toddler.

“She’s with her mother now and detectives are talking to them to try to figure out why this particular residence was targeted, what issues may have been involved,” Barnes said.

… Barnes said the home invasion was the second of two in that neighborhood overnight Thursday. He did not believe they were connected but said the area will get additional police attention over the weekend.

Friday’s fatal shooting is the seventh killing this year in Madison, Barnes said, although two were deemed justified.

If this shooting is also deemed to be a justified homicide, as appears likely, then that would mean nearly half of the homicides in Madison this year will have been the result of armed self-defense; something that gun control activists regularly assure us is incredibly rare.

Of course, the vast majority of defensive gun uses don’t result in the perpetrator being shot and killed. In fact, in most cases the trigger is never even pulled.

The 2021 National Firearms Survey, directed by William English of Georgetown University, surveyed more than 54,000 Americans and identified 16,000 gun owners. They were then asked a battery of questions related to their ownership of firearms. Five methods were used to ensure truthful answers. Mr. English’s survey utilized the largest sample size of any study that has ever been conducted on defensive gun use, being nearly ten times greater than that of the next largest survey.

Mr. English found that “guns are used defensively by civilian firearms owners in approximately 1.67 million incidents per year. Handguns are the most common firearm employed for self-defense (used in 65.9% of defensive incidents), and in most defensive incidents (81.9%), no shot was fired.” Mr. English found that more than half of defensive gun uses occurred in situations involving two or more assailants, highlighting guns’ importance as equalizers.

In a sense, then, justified homicides are rare, but the evidence suggests that’s because the presence of a firearm in the hands of an intended victim tends to prevent that crime from escalating any further. That wasn’t the case in Madison, Wisconsin early Friday morning, but at least the only person harmed in this home intrusion was the masked man who wasn’t supposed to be there.