I think there's a 75 percent chance the homeowner had the shotgun.


Or, "I saw a man in the distance with a pair of binoculars."

The biggest pain in reading questions posed by people is that if something is obvious to them, they presume it's obvious to everyone else as well. We often have to figure out from the context of the question whether "bathroom tile" means wall tiles or floor tiles. It doesn't occur to people that they need to specify things like that because it's blindingly obvious to them what they're referring to and so they see no need to state the obvious.

I know that this isn't going to be a popular comment, but I think it's a tragedy that someone only 20 years old got shot and killed. The kid was up to no good with breaking into people's homes and hijacking cars, but still, it would have been better for all concerned if the homeowner phoned the police and they came and arrested the intruder and he ended up going to jail for two years where he took a welding course and ended up getting a job with a local farm equipment manufacturer and never committed another crime in his life. I know it's naive to think that things would always work out for the better that way, but it's a better ending for all concerned if it did.

Kids brains aren't fully developed until they're fully mature, and while most 20 year old women are fully mature, many 20 year old men aren't. Their brains are still developing, and they don't make rational decisions like they would at age 25 or 30. Unless this kid was breaking into homes to feed a drug habit, often the reason why people commit crime is that they want (but don't actually need) money, and what's important to immature men is their "rep" or "street cred" amongst their friends, and the thrill of doing something dangerious. So, while they could go back and live with their parents, that would be their last choice as long as they could support themselves by selling drugs or selling stolen stuff. Truth is that what lots of young kids like that really need is a few years in jail to protect them from themselves until they get mature enough to start thinking straight. Then, they become no different than the rest of us.

Yeah, I know, people are going to bark at me for having such a wuss opinion about it, but it's true. In 5 years time, that criminal kid could have been a totally different person. I saw that myself when I was growing up and saw that the "crazy people" I knew in high school started to change between the ages of 17 to 23. People that I believed were headed for either prison or an early grave ended up getting jobs, getting married, having a kid, saving for a house and I never heard much about them any more.