The homeowner who fatally shot a 20-year-old University of South Carolina student who tried to enter the wrong home on the street he lived on Saturday morning will not face charges because the incident was deemed “a justifiable homicide” under state law, Columbia police announced Wednesday.
Police said the identity of the homeowner who fired the gunshot that killed Nicholas Donofrio shortly before 2 a.m. Saturday will not be released because the police department and the Fifth Circuit Solicitor’s Office determined his actions were justified under the state’s controversial “castle doctrine” law, which holds that people can act in self-defense towards “intruders and attackers without fear of prosecution or civil action for acting in defense of themselves and others.”
To be fair, here’s the thing. If you replace a gun with a knife, while that doesn’t erase the chance of death by any means, it does lower the chance of death significantly. Because despite what a lot of people might think, in a fight, you’re a lot more likely to survive if your attacker has a knife than you would if your attacker has a gun. If you hadn’t recognized your maintenance guy right away and attacked him, then he’d still be better off with you wielding a knife than if you’d been wielding a gun instead.
And in a country with less guns, both you and a potential robber are less likely to have guns. Maybe you would use a knife, but clearly not everyone would, and saying “there’s not as many as you’d think in a lot of areas areas” is all fine and well, but the statistics show that the US has an absolutely mind boggling amount of guns per capita compared to any other country. The US literally has more guns than people. In other countries, it’s not just in some areas where guns are less common, it’s every area, and most have less than even the areas in US’s that have less guns. Countries that are literally at war have less guns per capita than the US does.
Obviously that doesn’t mean you’ll never be in danger without any guns around, but you will generally be in less danger over-all, and even when you do get into danger you will still be less likely to die.
Gunshots are actually less deadly than knife wounds btw.
That’s not true, gunshot wounds actually have a significantly lower survival rate than stab wounds. I can provide some studies on the topic if you’re interested.
Can you support that statement…?
Source?
Lot more likely to shoot somebody before you have a chance to stop vs stabbing them.
People don’t just drop when they get stabbed and a stronger person can pretty easily take a knife from a weaker one. If you’re trying to defend yourself from a real attacker with a knife you’re probably going to have a bad time.