One Georgian man did some horrible things to a few teenage robbers. He brought out his assault rifle to stop the kids from robbing his house, but ended up killing the teenagers, one being 15 years of age.

The altercation started with the teens approaching a couple residents at 4 a.m. and firing at a resident before they could shoot back. Shortly after these shots, a home owner ran out to see what was going on and heard a couple handgun shots rang off. Immediately after these initial shots, an immense amount of assault rifle shots began to pop off. Those assault rifle bullets pierced the teenagers and ended up killing them. The man easily could’ve shot towards the robbers but not trying to deliberately hit them. The real question is if this Georgia man was protecting him and his fellow residents and if it could be classified as self-defense.

People in the area of the incident are horrified because of this event happening, but it brought up an old but serious topic for debate, self-defense laws. Over half the states in the U.S. have stand-your-ground laws in places and a few more have the law in practice. One of these states with a stand-your-ground law is Georgia. When states started enacting stand-your-ground laws, more and more people would be going to court for alleged “self-defense.” This got out of hand quick and would continue to happen. The exact Georgia law states that someone could use deadly force if the person deems it justified to possibly “prevent death or great bodily injury to himself or herself or a third person or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.” Under the Georgia law, this man could potentially walk away free of any charges. The one thing that is concerning is that he used a military grade assault rifle to defend himself.

You have to also take into account that it’s 4 in the morning, it’s pitch black outside and nobody can really see what is going on. Potentially the man could have seen the kids under a streetlamp of sorts. Nevertheless, the man honestly couldn’t have noticed that they were teenagers in the dark so he just assumed they were adults attempting to rob his neighbor(s). He was only attempting to protect his neighbors from a few teenagers who had a single handgun with a military grade assault rifle. That just doesn’t sound correct at all and certainly didn’t turn out well either. Two 16 year olds and 15 year boy died that night. Even though they were attempting to harm others, none of the neighbors got injured at all during the robbery, only the three teens. It is a tough situation to sort through and talk about.