Friday, 19th December 2008 - 08:05CET
Update 2: Man shot dead in Qormi
The residence where the murder took place.
Neville Baldacchino, 28 of Qormi was shot dead in his home town early today.
The police said the shooting took place on the roof of a private residence at Triq id-Drama shortly before 1 a.m.
The owner of the residence, another 28-year-old man from Qormi, has been held for questioning. The police said he had said he went up the roof to investigate after hearing noises.
No further information was immediately available.
This was the second fatal shooting in just over a week. A businessman died soon after he was shot twice in cold blood in Xemxija on Thursday evening last week.
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For more information on gun ownership and death vide http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/TheCaseForGunControl.html
one has to investigate more about the case.
As regards this particular case, the suspect is saying that he heard noise on the roof and went to check what happened, leading to many to link it to self-defence - yet, for all that matters, we have no proof yet of whether the victim really entered the property from the roof or whether he was inside for any particular reason
What is this phenomenon of rage so rampant in Malta? Altough we have never killed ,how many of us can claim that we have never vented the inner rage and frustration brought on by life's many inevitable disappointments by directing wounding remarks to those near to us and our friends.Destroying someone mood or his day is obviously not to be confused with taking life, but it is also an example of engaging in destruction for it's own sake.This type of behaviour which we all witness in our daily encounters on our Maltese roads is an expression of rage that has slipped free of the control of reason, and as such, it is also evil. A difference in degree, not a difference in kind.
Crimes of the heart are never known to others.
The evil of destruction rage is alive and well in all of us.
As far as this case goes it's still too early to comment. and it's not fair for the investigation that is being carried out.
What is wrong with this little blessed Island of ours, is the fact that we have so many self proclaimed experts on any field imaginable. Be it football, be it economics or whatever subject, we seem to know it all and want to tell everyone else how to do it.
Let the authorities get on with their job and conclude on the facts. Presently, their are many people (family and relatives of victim and house owner) who are going through hell. I doubt that they are consoled by such ideal chatter as goes on here.
People using such tragic moments in order to ply their lobbying against gun ownership is cheap propaganda.
Most serial killers use knifes, ropes and duct tape.......... shall we ban them all to appease your reasoning?
Most deaths are caused by traffic accidents or dangerous driving...... shall we ban cars and motorcycles?
A very high percentage of deaths and injuries are caused by sports....... shall we ban sports?
Shall I go one more...... Alcohol.....
If someone wants to kill plenty of people, guns are probably one of the least efficient ways to do it. No guns were used in the Oklahoma City bombing, and neither were they used in 9/11.
To clarify misconceptions, locally it is simply not possible to walk into a gunshop and walk out of it with a firearm, so comparisons with countries where this is possible are not realistic.
You do not kill a man just because he is on your roof at 1 am !
Even if you are armed, you would not go out for him or shoot him unless he tries to enter inside your house.
In the U.S. the discussion is a completely different story. The U.S. constitution brought down from the founding fathers grants the right for U.S. citizens to bear arms. This was done so in recognition of the fact that the U.S. obtained her freedom from her former colonial masters the U.K. thanks to the citizens militia.
Back to little Malta ... short of sleeping in your rocking chair on the porch the gun is as usefull as a toothpick.
In Malta's case due to homes being so close to each other and therefore can be accessed from the roof proper security measures should be in place.
The less guns there are the easier it would be for the authorities to control them and the less accidents that would happen. Not to mention birds would be happier too :)
As a family man, I would like to get a gun for use solely when I need to defend my family and for no other reason.
How can I go about it ?
one may cherry-pick statistics to make a case as one pleases. Granted, the case you brought up may lend strength to the fact that banning guns leads to a drop in crime. On thr other hand, the situation in Great Britain would seem to prove otherwise as the incidence of firearms-related death has skyrocketed, even though handgun ownership was banned.
What this means is that we should look elsewhere for causes of violent crime and not stop at the first, simple solution, which in the long run would not be any solution at all. The term "hysteria" was not meant as an insult, but was an attempt to get people to stop and think about all aspects before firing off suggestions for facile solutions.
If one does not like guns, one is perfectly free to say so. However, it is pointless to use incidents such as the one under discussion in an attempt to abolish something one disagrees with, when this would not lead to the solution of the problem which brought about the incident in the first place.
The intent remains the same!
As regards limiting the amount of ammunition a person can keep at home, I can't see how this can help to reduce crime, let alone stop it, for 2 main reasons: 1) illegal ways to buy bullets will always exist for criminals, and 2) even 1 bullet is enough to commit homicide if there exists the intent. So I suggest to focus on the individual case and wait for more information before being carried away emotionally against gun owners who have full respect of the law.
We do not know the circumstances here and therefore we can jump to all sorts of conclusions. (Who had the weapon in the first place, was the intruder armed and was shot in a struggle, did the intruder attack rather than run when disturbed) There are so many possibilities without knowing more.
That someone was killed is very sad but if it was murder or an accident, self defence or not has yet to be decided after the evidence has been collected in full.
Irrespective of the circumstances of this particular case, I personally hope that this might put off some of the thugs that have been breaking into houses and brutally terrorising the occupants (usually defenceless senior citizens).
That the law is often more on the side of the intruder than the owner/occupier in the case of an injury to the intruder whilst committing a crime is ludicrous.
assuming the situation is of an intruder in a law abiding citizen's home:
- the intruder will most likely have a firearm or some other weapon whether it's legal or not!
- on the other hand the law abiding citizen will not have a choice of owning a weapon should this be illegal!
in my mind it's simple... the criminal/intruder is breaking the law with intentions of harming others for his own benefit ....therefore if there has to be a dead body i would rather it be the criminal/intruder!
self defence is very much underrated by the law!
in any case this is not an analysis of this case as for now we don't know for sure what the scenario is/was...
all we know is a man was found shot on an other man's roof...
and just because i can't help the black humour of it all... doesn't anyone find it funny that this happened in triq id-drama... ?
Criminals do obtain a fire arm illegally but as I said before half of the murders are done by normal people like all of us.
It is one of the situations where it is legally considered to be justifiable homicide
@Maria Schembri
The incident you described took place in the Uk where they have a particular perverted sense of justice,where self defence laws are heavily stacked in favour of the criminal and not the law abiding
@D vella
I suggest you read some history on the origins of the 2nd Amendment before making such comments.It is an additional system of checks and balances between citizen and state to keep a government in check and to prevent it from becoming a tyrannical regime.Remember that a rogue government always starts by disarming its own populace.
Criminals will always have access to guns, whether these are banned or not. As for the poster going on about US crime rates, it's a fact that the states such as Washington which have very stringent gun laws have a crime rate which is often many times higher than those states which have more lenient legislation.
A higher rate of violent crime points to much deeper things than the presence of guns. Of course, it's very easy to indulge in cosmetic (and totally ineffectual - just ask the British) solutions such as banning guns.
On the other hand, can all the law abiding gun owners assure us that they will not go birzurk if lets say, they find their wife in bed with someone else? or his/her child is hit by a drunk driver?
It is not fair to comment on this particular case before the facts are known, but generally speaking I would prefer having the potential victim of a crime being able to defend himself and stop the crime from happening.
Actually that's not correct. The way the law is structured, even if you find someone in your own house stealing your stuff, you still cannot do anything unless they attack you. There are cases were actually the thief sued the victim for cutting himself on the broken glass put up on top of a wall, when trying to get in or get out of a house. And obviously, because it makes a lot of sense (read: the law if stupid) the thief won the case in question.
So unless he has proof that he shot the other guy for personal defense, then it's won't be that easy for him to be acquitted. It won't be considered as intentional, but still a murder.
restrict their availability only in licenced shooting ranges
It's really really sad....