Georgia man shoots, kills home invader

(AP Photo/David Goldman)

Police in DeKalb County, Georgia say a homeowner was acting in self-defense when he fatally shot a home invader in the pre-dawn hours Thursday morning. Officials responded to a call of shots fired at the home around 5:30 a.m., and when they arrived they found the intruder deceased inside the home.

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While investigators haven’t announced a motive for the home invasion or released the identify of the intruder, police say that the man did have a gun on him when he encountered the homeowner, who, as it turns out, was armed with a shotgun as well.

The neighbor said she heard two shots while getting ready for work.

“it’s kind of hard to believe. I’ve been living here my whole life, never had a break-in, never had anything like that,” the neighbor said.

But Sandy Mize, who lives next door, wasn’t that surprised.

“We didn’t hear the shots, but around here there’s shootings going on all the time,” Mize said.

Channel 2′s Tyisha Fernandes was outside the home on Thursday night when a group of women from the Salvation Army came to the home to pray over it and offer assistance to the family.

Neighbor Gary Casten had no idea what brought all the police to his neighborhood and was speechless when he heard what had happened.

“Wow, I didn’t know,” Casten said. “You don’t have stuff like that happen around here.”

Neighbors said the homeowner lives in the home with his girlfriend but aren’t sure if there was a reason they would be targeted, or if it was just a random crime.

Gehlbach said it appears the homeowner will not face any charges because he was defending himself and his property.

“I just think it’s a sad state of affairs for the country,” one neighbor said. “In this case, somebody having a gun was a good thing.”

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Indeed. If the homeowner didn’t have his Joe Biden-approved shotgun or another firearm available to use in self-defense, DeKalb County officers could easily have rolled up on the scene of a home invasion/double homicide rather than a justified use of deadly force in self-defense.

Still, don’t look for Biden or any other anti-gunner to acknowledge that this homeowner and his girlfriend are alive and unharmed thanks to the fact that he was able to protect them with a firearm. No matter how often they call themselves Second Amendment supporters who just want some “commonsense gun safety laws,” the gun control lobby and their elected allies are loathe to draw attention to any defensive gun use on the part of responsible gun owners. Using violent crimes to call for bans on “assault weapons” is more their thing, even when the crime in question didn’t involve the use of a semi-automatic rifle at all.

While the gun prohibitionists will ignore this armed citizen, it’s good to see that the local community is rallying behind him and showing him support. Even though he and his girlfriend escaped their encounter with a home invader unscathed physically, this had to have been a traumatic event for the homeowner. No gun owner I know is eager to have to exercise their right to keep and bear arms to defend their life. It’s a possibility we try to prepare for but hope to never actually experience. This homeowner didn’t choose to become the victim of an armed home invasion, and I’m sure he would have preferred never encountering the suspect inside his domicile at all. Ultimately though, that wasn’t his choice to make. It was the suspect’s poor decision to invade the home of an armed citizen that resulted in the loss of his life, and it was the homeowner’s decision to exercise his Second Amendment rights that enabled him to protect himself and his loved one.

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