Some excellent points all.
I think the overall story gets clouded by personal feelings. The intruder has a history of being rather whacked. Bird seems to be well-liked, and has his own stuff going on. Nothing I've read really seems to explain his behavior. Medication? Something she said we don't know about? I think he demonstrated poor judgment, over-reacted, and in a dangerous way. But the punishment is overboard IMO, given both the intruder herself, and most of the testimony and descriptions given.
As for the guns? Everyone would like to think that in a home invasion scenario, they'd go get their gun, find the hidden ammunition in a locked cabinet or safe, load the gun, then either scare off the intruder(s) or kill them. If someone had made it into your bedroom, you'd have about a half-second to do that. Sometimes you get lucky, wake up after hearing things, and have enough time to deal with everything else. (probably why I never fix squeaky stairs)
I'm sure every family man has thought about this type of incident while kissing the kids goodnight, staying awake just a few minutes pondering it, maybe even after waking up because of some little noise. I'll bet the majority of people have thought about what they'd do. And I'd bet even further that the vast majority of people would forget their plans after fear sets in.
But reading about horrific invasions, whether it be the Cheshire CT incident, or the savage and random attacks on the Dartmouth Professor and his wife that were savagely killed, or the recent trial of the guy who used a machete in a home invasion. Here's a recent one as well, involving handguns
http://www.wcax.com/global/story.asp?s=11577171
There are plenty of home invasions involving violence right in the northern NE area. For all of these cases, I support the death penalty, whether it's administered by the owner of the house, or the Court system. But then we get into the problematic storage of weapons, separate area for ammo, etc... It's probably for those reasons I've never owned a gun.