Home Defense: Shotgun or Rifle?

[Vern Humphrey]

The criminal justice system is run by men, so you are correct that politics, public relations and ideology all play a role. However, Richard Jewel did not shoot an intruder in his home with an un-PC weapon.

And wasn't he lucky he didn't?

They were after him -- and pulled out all the stops. They went through his life with a fine-tooth comb, and re-constructed a Richard Jewell who was a criminal and a psychotic. They used everything they could find against him.

None of those cases you cite are self defense cases. Even in a place like New Jersey, where hollow point ammunition is banned, shooting an intruder with hollow point ammuniton in and of itself will not get you charged with murder if the circumstances of the case don't meet New Jersey's legal definition of murder.

We have a recent case where a man from Utah was arrested and jailed in New Jersey for having a gun and ammo declared in his baggage -- and he wasn't going to New Jersey!!

But because of an airlines foul-up, his luggage wound up there, and he had to re-declare the gun when he boarded a flight home.

Now, he wasn't charged with murder -- but he had an experience none of us would volunteer for. And he's out a bundle in legal costs.

If you have an anti gun prosecutor you might be charged with possession of hollow point ammunition, but you won't be charged with murder. Noting in the law says that you don't have the right to defend yourself with whatever tool is available to you.

When you're in jail, you're in jail.