Defending our Patch Part 2

On the news tonight - the guy charged with possessing a firearm without lawful, proper or sufficient purposes after shooting a maniac with a machete has had his first day in court. He has decided to face trial by jury with both himself and his father saying that they are going to fight the charges all the way. Good for him - let's hope he gets some justice...

His father has been pretty outspoken about the case and has made some good points, particularly:

The court case is ruining their lives (very stressfuly for the family etc) and that they are having to fund the defense themselves while the scumbag with the machete got legal aid.

It is good to see that they are receiving a lot of support and some donations etc from members of the public and in particular the Sensible Sentencing Trust. The SST has also got a pettition going around - hope I get the chance to sign it.

After seeing part of a 60 minutes doco on this (where the cop making the charges was made to look like a bit of an idiot) it seems that the reason that the charges were made was because of the way that the gun had been stored. The cops seem to be more worried about a gun around people who know how to handle them (gun retailers) than the high likelyhood that the nutter with the machete could have killed someone. I'd say they're already regretting pressing the charges - talk about bad PR...

I'm not really sure what to do if some scumbag breaks in to my house tonight and wants to kill me - do you fight back or just lay down and die so as you don't make any trouble? If I had a gun, there's no question I'd use it - first shot in the cretin, the next into the roof for a warning shot, whoops did I get that around the right way?

See more here: http://stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3890625a11,00.html