Quote:
Originally Posted by sa meredith
I'm very late to this thread...and have not read the whole thing thru...so if my question has already been addressed, I'm sorry.
But, as I read this story in the UL on Sunday, all I could think is, "what is this guy hiding?" I mean, you want to take a walk on my property? No big deal. I may ask if I can help you with something, but I'm not going to point a gun at you, and ask you to get out. I may invite you in for a beer, though. Now, granted, I don't have all the facts. There is probably more to it...something like, people are always passing thru there, and he is sick of it...or something like that. But if not, what is the big deal? Why does he feel threatened?
We all like to come across like nice, friendly, NH folk...but this sort of flies in the face....no?????
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I'm not sure if this particular question has been raised in this thread sa. I guess it's a valid question. I mean me personally I would not have done what Mr. Bird did. There are many on this thread that agree with the statement that you have made. If it were my wife that Ward Bird waived the gun at you can bet I'd be pretty pissed off. Especially if she was only lost looking for help.
Here's the deal though. This woman was most likely NOT lost. This woman was also most likely hostile. Ward was injured and probably physically in pain and limited. Maybe he felt her aggressions warranted a threat. I don't know if we will ever know.
Let's take all of the personal information out of the equation now. Let's go back to the root of this thing. We can never know for sure what Ward was actually thinking or feeling and we will never know 100% how the woman was behaving at the time. Anything I have said has been pure speculation and all my points have been raised in order to show a particular case in which pulling out a firearm might be justifiable. Here are my critical questions that I would like to have answered:
At what point is it legal for one to pull out a firearm in order to protect themselves on their own property? Is there ANY time where this is legal? What if Ward was a woman and the trespasser was a Man? If my wife was home with my kids and a large man was peering in the windows and he wouldn't leave could she pull a gun out? Would a case like that even be prosecuted? I have raised these question in a prior post but nobody has offered an opinion.
Finally sa and this is the absolute most important question, I pose this to you FLL and anyone else that has an opinion in this case: Does the punishment fit the crime? The Judge didn't think so. Do you?