I'd like to drag this back to something Jeff brought up in his first post:
WHY did this man do what he did?
If I were to interview this man candidly, I'd ask him that question repeatedly, through several layers of his answers, until I reached whatever "root cause(s)" could be found.
I was once told, by a very wise Master Chief, that if you ask "Why" 7 times, you're very likely to approached the REAL reason someone did something.
"Why did you shoot this man?"
"Because he was stealing my car."
"Why did you think you had to shoot this man for stealing your car?"
"Because I thought..."
"Why did you think...?"
For every person who shoots another, there are a plethora of reasons they could give. BUT...I submit that the fact that they are all human beings means that there are likely some common human behavioral traits that could be traced down.
Why do people do stupid things? (Or anything, really.) It's really a combination of emotional, intellectual, and training traits when you think about it.
Sometimes we do stupid things that we KNEW better than to because we allowed our emotions to overrule our intellect and training.
Sometimes we do stupid things because our intellect on the matter was somewhat wanting.
Sometimes we do stupid things because our training was deficient.
Most often, it's a combination of these things, and the exact specifics may be unique to each individual...because every individual is driven by human behavioral traits and a lifetime of character development.
I strongly suspect that this guy was pretty much an "average" guy. Basically a good guy whose primary interest in life involved the day-to-day routine centered around working and supporting his life and family. If it wasn't directly related to his income, taking care of home and family, supporting whatever recreational activities, he probably had little, if any, interest in pursuing actual, real knowledge on anything from authoratative sources.
In other words, he was lazy about learning substantial information if it didn't affect his immediate concerns. With respect to firearms, he likely had no interest outside the basics. Maybe he likes guns and shooting. Maybe he likes action movies with guns. Maybe gun magazines are exciting, because they feature lots of "exotic" or "beautiful" guns. The idea of being able to protect his family may have been attractive.
BUT...perhaps actually looking up and studying the actual laws on the legal use of deadly force was "boring", or maybe fell under the "everybody knows" category. Maybe he gleened his beliefs from hearsay or gun magazines. Maybe "that's the way dad believed".
WHATEVER it was, something resulted in either his lack of knowledge or understanding of the laws, or caused his emotions to overrule his knowledge/training, or his training was deficient.
If you really, HONESTLY, want to know the reason (s), you MUST conduct an indepth interview designed to work down all these layers to the actual root cause.
Here's a hint: outside an extremely narrow group of people with serious psychological issues, the actual root cause will NOT be something simple like "media disinformation on Castle Doctrine".
A few months ago, when I posted about an automobile accident I was in, hso asked me a very penetrating question: "So what were you thinking about at the time that you missed seeing the guy?"
The OBVIOUS and SIMPLE reason I hit the other vehicle was because I didn't see him. But that wasn't the root cause. Questions like this are designed to lead you to the key factors which actually lead up to the incident.
