My point from the beginning has not been legal. It has been about doing the right thing.
Sometimes--
sometimes--there may be a distinction between complying with the laws of man and doing the right thing.
For example, if you have just landed at an airport with medicines badly needed by victims of a flood or earthquake, and a corrupt customs official will not permit getting the stuff out of the heat of the tarmac before it spoils unless you pay him a bribe, you will have to ask yourself which is the "right" thing--complying with the letter of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act or letting the cargo spoil and letting people suffer and die.
However, when it comes to the use of deadly force, or any force for that matter, I have trouble envisioning any reasonable examples of such a conflict between law and morality (excepting, of course, laws that prohibit the right to keep and bear arms).
An awful lot of thought and intellect went into the development of the English Common Law, and our state laws (except for those of Louisiana) all stem from that body of law. The judges who sat at the time were focussed entirely upon what constituted the
right thing and what did not--not on coming up with a bureaucratic code just for the sake of doing so.
So--back to the social contract.
Suppose that a particular person might disagree with the morality of the Texas prohibition of using deadly force against a thief in the daytime (which, incidentally, is contained in Leviticus and I think, in the Code of Ur-Nammu)--can we let him decide what he thinks is right and wrong, and act accordingly? I think the answer is obvious.
And similarly in the State of Washington---and in Missouri where I live...
By the way, I would have been charged with a host of additional crimes had I performed the boneheaded act described in the OP, and rightly so.
How about shooting at trespassers? At people playing loud music (that must have been a heck of a subwoofer...I'll bet some folks are glad that that guy is off the streets for a while)?
No, we cannot all individually decide what is right and wrong in a civilized society.
We have laws against theft, rape, murder in all of its degrees, burglary, assault, aggravated assault, and a lot of other things. We charter peace officers to enforce the laws, prosecutors to bring changes, jurors to decide the facts based on the evidence and the law, and judges to instruct the jurors and pass sentence.
I guess the guy in Washington State thought he could assume all of those duties. Of course, it apparently never occurred to him that he, too, is subject to the law, as are all of us.
He may be back playing loud music after a while, but not with a gun, ever, barring an unlikely Presidential pardon.
The good news (other than maybe his very short sentence)? He didn't kill or maim anyone else.