Police in Sacramento, California say a man who was shot and killed in an apartment Sunday morning forced his way into the residence before those inside defended themselves with a firearm, and no charges are expected against the residents. 

Authorities say the suspect was the ex-boyfriend of a woman inside the apartment. He showed up around 1:30 a.m. Sunday morning and pounded on the apartment door for approximately 20 minutes before the woman cracked the door open in response. 

The man forced his way into the home and confronted the boyfriend. According to radio dispatches reviewed by The Sacramento Bee, the male resident of the apartment called 911 just before 2 a.m., telling dispatchers that the intruder had “choked” him. 

That’s when the male resident of the apartment retrieved his registered firearm from beneath his pillow and fired once at the man before calling 911.

Soon after deputies arrived, Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District personnel arrived on scene and pronounced the man dead, Gandhi said. While many details of the encounter were not disclosed, the Sheriff’s Office said it had submitted its findings to the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office, which “determined that no criminal charges would be filed.”

It can sometimes take months for that determination to be made, so the evidence must have been overwhelmingly in favor of a justifiable use of deadly force for the Sacramento County D.A. to quickly decide that criminal charges wouldn't be appropriate in this incident. 

This was just one of several shootings in Sacramento over the Memorial Day weekend. On Monday night, a shooting at another apartment complex in the city left five people injured. 

Among the five victims were three adult men, an adult woman and a teen girl, the Sacramento Police Department said. The severity of the injuries was not yet known, however, police confirmed that no one was killed. It happened at around 8 p.m. outside an apartment complex along Coral Gables Court, just off Meadowview Road. That area was blocked off for some time, but residents have since been allowed to return to their homes.

California's draconian gun laws aren't stopping violent crimes, but they are having an impact on those who want to exercise their Second Amendment rights to protect themselves. Thankfully in the defensive gun use mentioned above the woman's new boyfriend was already a gun owner, but if the woman herself had decided she wanted to purchase and carry a firearm to protect herself in response to her ex's threats she would have been out of luck. 

Thanks to the state's ten-day waiting period she wouldn't have been able to leave the store with a handgun, even if she passed a background check. And if she applied for a concealed carry permit, she would have had to submit proof of a 16-hour training course and the results of a one-hour mental health evaluation, along with more than $200 in mandated fees, before her application was even considered for approval. Sacramento County doesn't have the same issues with wait times as localities like Los Angeles or Alameda counties, but approval can still easily take a month or more before applications are approved. 

I'm glad that the state's repeated infringements on our Second Amendment rights didn't prevent at least one of Sunday's victims from lawfully arming themselves, but California's gun laws don't make it easy for the average citizen to keep or carry a gun for self-defense. It's much simpler to illegally get ahold of a gun than it is to lawfully acquire one, and Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento are doing everything they can to keep it that way.