It's not often that you can get our media to report on a "good guy with a gun" story, but since a New Zealander was on the receiving end, they didn't have much of a choice this time.
A New Zealand man who travelled to the US home of a 14-year-old girl he had communicated with online was shot by the girl's mother, a sheriff said yesterday. Troy George Skinner, 25, was shot Friday after he allegedly smashed a glass door and tried to enter the home [...]
Skinner bought a knife and duct tape at Walmart after arriving in the US [...]
Skinner, 25, was struck in the neck and remains hospitalised in the intensive care unit at VCU Medical Center, according to authorities. The sheriff said Skinner first encountered the 14-year-old girl using the Discord chat service.
Let's start by congratulating the mum, she deserves praise for defending her house and her daughter from a dangerous creep.
I do have a few criticisms for her though. She broke the first rule of shooting home invaders and assailants: when you start shooting, don't stop until the bad guy either (a) stops moving; or (b) asks you to please stop shooting.
Mr Skinner is still alive because she broke that rule, and now a mixture of American taxpayers' dollars and (more importantly) New Zealand taxpayers' dollars are at risk. The medical attention he's receiving is expensive, any court costs are expensive, any prison sentence is expensive, and any deportation process is expensive. In the USA, they probably won't let him out for a long-long time, but if he were to have the fortune to be returned to NZ, he'd be out on the streets again in no time.
Let's not forget to mention that any New Zealander who defends their loved ones like this would risk ending up in the slammer. We don't have legal self-defense, only a vague "proportionate response" defense. Since her gun was bigger than his Wallmart knife, he would have walked and she would have been prosecuted. A clever lawyer and a sensible jury will save you from jail, but not from the expense and emotional toll of being dragged through the system for simply doing the right thing.
Lastly, let this be a warning to parents: watch your kids on the internet and watch them closely. This mother found out too late what her daughter had been up to for the past few months and she'd given their location to a child molester. Thanks to the Second Amendment, she had an anti-paedophile device to do damage control with, but here in New Zealand most parents won't have that luxury.