The Fort Hood shooting - could it happen here?

From my Examiner.com piece:

There is an ongoing discussion of the detection, motives and profile of Major Hasan, the accused gunman in the Fort Hood shooting. As often happens, once the person has been identified, a look into his or her background shows many indicators that might have pointed to their future actions. E-mail, blogs and chat rooms postings all make sense now....if only......

What rarely gets discussed is that the victims were made defenseless in "Gun Free Zones."

There's a history of mass murder in "Gun Free Zones".

Now at first glance, the concept of a gun-free zone makes sense -- put up a sign and people will heed.

For the concept to make sense, you'd have to accept that someone bent on mass destruction is going to be stopped by a "No Trespassing" sign.

For the concept to make sense, you'd have to accept that someone bent on mass destruction is going to be stopped by a "No Trespassing" sign. Not surprsingly, this hasn't worked out well.

The shooter at Fort Hood elected to use the Soldier Readiness Center for his attack rather than the rifle range, the police or headquarters building. Is it surprising that the Readiness Center is a place where firearms are not allowed and the rifle range or headquarters buildings involve soldiers with guns? Shouldn't be.

There's a history of mass murder in "Gun Free Zones".

• In 1987, at the Luby's Cafeteria in Texas, a gentleman drove his truck into the window of the cafeteria and proceeded to kill 23 people. At the time, restaurants in Texas were Gun Free Zones.


• Columbine High School was a Gun Free Zone.


• Virginia Tech was a Gun Free Zone.

Gun Free Zones just don't work.

Fort Hood, like the bases in the Puget Sound, Fort Lewis, McChord Air Force Base, do not allow people to be armed. What better people to allow themselves to be armed to protect themselves. Soldiers in the field are armed around the clock. They litteraly live with their guns, yet when at home they aren't allowed to have them.

Despite the futility of "Gun Free Zones", Seattle Mayor Nickels is establishing them in parks in the city. He is doing this despite the State Attorney General's opinion that he does not have the authority under Washington States preemption law.

This is a policy that needs to be eliminated not only on military bases other public buildings, and **gasp** colleges and university. It will make us all safer.

And Now McDonald

No, not the place with the Golden Arches.

The next piece of litigation that will be critical in continuing to protect our right to protect ourselves will be McDonald v Chicago. But first, a little background.

On June 26, 2008, in the Heller decision, the Supreme Court

Held:
1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess
a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm
for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

Prior to this ruling, the District of Columbia had a prohibition to handgun ownership. From the text of the Heller ruling:

The District of Columbia generally prohibits the possessionof handguns. It is a crime to carry an unregistered firearm, and the registration of handguns is prohibited. See D. C. Code §§7–2501.01(12), 7–2502.01(a), 7–2502.02(a)(4) (2001). Wholly apart from that prohibition, no person may carry a handgun without a license, but the chief of police may issue licenses for 1-year periods. See §§22–4504(a), 22–4506. District of Columbia law also requires residents to keep their lawfully owned firearms, such as registered long guns, “unloaded and dissembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device” unless they are located in a place of business or are being used for lawful recreational activities. See §7–2507.02.1

So as far as the DC was concerned, no handguns, and no working long guns anyhow. Parenthetically, they did not even allow law enforcement officers from surrounding jurisdictions to carry firearms off duty.

This ruling, however, only applied to the District of Columbia; this is where Mr. Heller lives and the District was named in the suit. The District of Culumbia is a Federal District (it is outside of the states of Virginia and Maryland from which it was carved).

Self protection activists have known that the next step was to return to the Supreme Court and have the Court rule through the 14th Amendment that the Second Amendment is incorporated, or applies, to the rest of the States.

On September 30th, the Supreme Court granted a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, which asks them to consider the question:

Whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is incorporated as
against the States by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities or Due
Process Clauses.

Representing McDonald and the Second Amendment Foundation is Alan Gura, who successfully argued Heller before the Court.

Let us hope and pray that the Court incorporates the Second amendment through this litigation so that some of the legal impediments to our ability to protect ourselves and our families are removed.

In addition to prayer, I'm sure the Second Amendment Foundation would appreciate some financial help in their ongoing work. The Second Amendment Foundation is at http://saf.org/.

Arthur Frommer Boycotts Arizona Until Civil Rights are Restricted

In his travel blog, writer and travel guru Arthur Frommer is boycotting the State of Arizona until it is more restrictive of Civil Rights.

Frommer says, "I will not personally travel in a state where civilians carry loaded weapons onto the sidewalks and as a means of political protest."

Of course, what he is referring to is a few people doing open carry while they were at a political protest near (but not in) President Obama's visit with the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Whether or not the people carrying openly was meant as a "means of political protest" or just how these people, like many others, choose to protect themselves is not clear.

"The continued tolerance of extremists carrying guns is a frightening development which strikes at the heart of the political process and endangers the ability to carry out a reasoned debate," Frommer contends.

Acceptance of people exercising their First Amendment rights to petition the government and their Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms does, indeed, strike at the heart of the political process. It is the heart of the political process. Frommer and others' hoplophobia should not be allowed to shape the debate.

The debate that the people were engaging in was about health care reform and what shape it would take.

The debate that Frommer and others want to have is about restriction of Civil Rights.

If Frommer feels that extortion of a State until it restricts its citizens Civil Rights is appropriate, it says more about Frommer than those carrying the guns.

Ted Nugent of the Personal Responsibility

Victory in Congress: Gun Ban Repealed!

Individual Congressional Representatives' Vote available.

From: Gun Owners of America

Victory at Last
-- National Park Service Gun Ban Repealed!

Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408
http://www.gunowners.org

"Gun Owners of America was the most consistent and loudest voice on
Capitol Hill in support of the effort to repeal the National Park
Service gun ban." -- Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK)

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Good news!

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill today that included an
amendment to repeal the gun ban on National Park Service (NPS) land and
wildlife refuges.

The amendment, sponsored by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) and attached to a
credit card industry reform bill, passed the House overwhelmingly by a
vote of 279-147.

For decades, law-abiding citizens have been prohibited from exercising
their Second Amendment rights on NPS land and wildlife refuges, even if
the state in which the land is located allows carrying firearms.

With some limited exceptions for hunting, the only way to legally
possess a firearm anywhere in a national park is by having it unloaded
and inaccessible, such as locked up in an automobile trunk. A Bush
administration regulation partially reversed the ban, but that action
was singlehandedly negated recently by an activist judge in Washington,
D.C. The Department of Interior decided not to appeal that ruling.

Senator Coburn believes, like you do, that Americans should not be
forced to sacrifice their Second Amendment rights when entering NPS land
and wildlife refuges.

GOA worked with Coburn on an amendment that simply allows for state and
local laws -- instead of unelected bureaucrats and anti gun activist
judges -- to govern firearm possession on these lands.

The anti-gun leadership in both the House and Senate went berserk and
fought to keep the Coburn amendment from being attached to the
underlying bill. Sparks were flying on the floor of the House of
Representatives today.

Anti-gun Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) whined that a "very
good" credit
card bill had been "hijacked" by the Coburn amendment. To
this, Rep.
Rob Bishop (R-UT) pointed out that gun control is the policy of tyrants,
as evidenced by the British attempt to confiscate firearms at Lexington
and Concord in 1775.

Congressional leaders and entrenched bureaucrats have fought GOA over
the NPS gun ban for the past eight years.

But your activism has finally broken through. The late Senator Everett
Dirksen said, "When I feel the heat, I see the light!" Well,
you have applied a lot of heat. Members of Congress know that they oppose your Second Amendment rights at their own peril.

As it stands today, both houses of Congress have now passed the Coburn
amendment -- and President Obama is expected to sign the provision into
law (only because it is part of a larger credit card bill that he really
wants).

So, congratulate yourself for winning this long, hard battle. GOA was
the leading, and often only, national gun group involved in this fight.
You involvement was absolutely vital to achieving this win.

Of course, many more battles lie ahead. President Obama continues to
push for the Senate to ratify massive international gun control
treaties. There is a battle over a Supreme Court nominee coming up.
Anti-gun zealots in Congress are aggressively pushing to renew the
Clinton gun ban and close down gun shows.

And as the health care debate picks up steam in the coming weeks and
months, GOA is battling efforts to create a computerized national
healthcare database. Such a database can be used to deny people their
Second Amendment rights in the same way that so many veterans have lost
their gun rights based only on the diagnoses of a doctor for things like
combat-related stress.

GOA will be calling for action on these and other Second Amendment
issues as they move through Congress.

In the meantime, have a safe Memorial Day as we remember those who gave
the ultimate sacrifice so that America would remain "Land of the
Free."

****************************

What's Your Current GOA Status?

Obviously, we now face years of invigorated attacks on our gun rights.
Shutting down gun shows, prohibitions on specific calibers, another
semi-auto ban, and the anti-gun extremists' Holy Grail of mandatory
federal licensing and registration of all gun owners -- these are just
some of the horrors that we already know we'll have to defeat head-on.
Meanwhile, we'll take every opportunity to go on offense and advance the
Second Amendment.

It can't be done without every single voice being counted. That's why we
are asking you to consider making the commitment of becoming a Gun
Owners of America Life Member. By doing so, you put the politicians on
notice that neither you nor GOA is going away -- that no matter who's in
the White House, there is always going to be a solid wall of resistance.

Now is a perfect time to become a Life Member. And if you aren't a GOA
member at all, isn't it time you became one?

Please go to http://gunowners.org/ordergoamem.htm to upgrade your
participation in GOA.

Economy limiting services of local police

Ever wonder why people are buying guns and ammo? Here's another reason. We realize that we're the only people responsible for ourselves.

Economy limiting services of local police

By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY

The recession is altering local law enforcement in the U.S. by forcing some
agencies to close precincts, merge with other departments or even shut
down.
Once largely spared from the deepest budget cuts, some police
departments are struggling to provide basic services, police officials
say.
"For the first time, because of the economy, police departments ... may
have to change how they do business," says Chuck Wexler, executive director of
the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement think tank. "People will
see a change in the basic delivery of services," from longer police response
times to a dramatically reduced police presence in some communities.
Harlan
Johnson, executive director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, said
political leaders are "choosing whether they keep the streetsopenor the police
on patrol," though it's too early to tell whether the changes will increase
crime.
The Obama administration's $787 billion stimulus plan gives about $4
billion to local law enforcement, including $1 billion to hire and retain
officers. But the hiring money has not been distributed, and applicants have
requested more than is available.
Among the recent cuts:
• In
Pennsylvania, 19 suburban and rural police agencies have closed in the past 15
months, and seven others have cut patrols. The "unprecedented" closures and cuts
have forced the state police — who face their own budget struggles — to assume
full or partial public safety responsibility for about 54,000 more people, says
Lt. Col. Lenny Bandy, deputy commissioner of operations for the state
police.
• In Minnesota, nine small police agencies have closed in the past
five months, leaving sheriffs' departments to protect the public. The Elko New
Market Police Department was briefly the 10th shuttered agency, until residents
last month demanded that the City Council reverse its 2-week-old decision to
eliminate it. "A lot of people felt that we were sending a potentially dangerous
public message ... without a police department," says Mayor Jason Ponsonby, who
opposed the closure.
• In Portland, Ore., police are consolidating operations
by eliminating two of five patrol precincts. Portland police spokesman Greg
Pashley says some residents fear response times will rise and established
officers will be replaced by others who are unfamiliar with local problems. He
says the move, which takes effect in June, was needed to cut costs, but he
believes it will not compromise safety.
• In Southern California, Indio and
its neighbors Palm Springs, Desert Hot Springs, Cathedral City and Beaumont have
merged some key functions and also plan to combine dispatch operations to
increase efficiency. "It's the legacy of the budget crunch," Indio's Capt.
Richard Banasiak says.



Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-05-17-police-closure_N.htm

Copyright
2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Concealed Carry and National Parks

On May 12th, the Senate voted to include the "Colburn Amendment" on to a bill from the House to better regulate credit card companies. The two Washington Senators, Murray and Cantwell, voted Nay. Not a huge surprise, as they are usually voting lock-step with Democrat Party Instructions. It puts them with an esteemed anti-gun crowd which includes Senators Boxer and Feinstein of California, Senators Durbin and Burris of Illinois, and Senator Kerry as well as others.

Here is Senator Colburn discussing his amendment:





The history of this issue is interesting, but not surprising. The Bush Interior Department rescinded a rule which prohibited concealed firearms carry in the National Parks after a lengthy (and extended) public comment period. The rule, itself, was issued late in 2008, but the process had gone on for a couple of years. The rule states that concealed carry laws in a state extend into the National Park within the state border. For those of us in Washington, it allows those who can legally carry concealed in the state to continue to carry concealed in Mt. Rainier National Park, for example.

The anti-gun (anti-personal-responsibility) groups protested the rule change arguing that:

1. There would be outbreaks of gunfights in the parks


2. Poaching would increase

The Congressional Representative from Washington's 6th District, Norm Dicks, strongly opposes the change.

The supporters of the rule change argued that law enforcement is very sparse in the parks and that crime in the parks is increasing.

Despite the popular support for the change in the rule, the Brady Campaign and others sued in court for an injunction. Citing a lack of an Environmental Impact Study on the effects of carrying a concealed pistol, Federal District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued a preliminary injunction reversing the rule. Certainly the environmental impact of an unfired gun pales at the impact of mosquito spray in the

The Obama Administration has not elected to appeal the ruling, but the National Rifle Association is appealing.

It is likely that the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act of 2009 (HR 627) will pass. After all, it has strong support from the White House.




Let us just hope that the Senate/House Conference Committee doesn't strip the Colburn Amendment out.

Watch Out at Your Local Drug Store

This is nothing other than drug crime out in suburbia. It has been a problem on the East Coast for years.

Good work to the pharmacies that aren't allowing these thugs to run things!

Of course, "The Authorities" don't want people fighting back. Security cameras are going to do little to make the employees safer.

Hey, Dianne Sawyer

Recently, ABC (owned by Disney) did what can be called nothing other than a "hit piece" on gun owners on 20/20. The episode was called "If I Only Had A Gun" (http://abc.go.com/player/index?pn=index&show=166626&season=166625&episode=197494). The basic premises were that guns are bad, no one other than police should have guns, and that we should all be cowering victims.

John Lott's excellent commentary on the piece is on this blog at http://firearmslegislation.blogspot.com/2009/04/john-lott-abcs-shameful-2020-experiment.html.

Today, news comes from Atlanta of yet another example of private folks -- college students, no less -- protecting themselves from slaughter. http://www.wsbtv.com/news/19365762/detail.html

Seems that they were the victims of a home invasion in which males and females were segregated and the invaders made sure that there was enough ammunition for the victims present. One of the potential murders was with the females, starting a rape.

Fortunately, one of the potential victims was armed and independent enough to take care of matters. Appropriately, he shot the felons.

Thank goodness he had a gun and wasn't caught just wishing he had one.

A good argument for self-protection, and a good argument for allowing licensed college students to be allowed to also carry when they are on campus. http://concealedcampus.org/

JOHN LOTT: ABC’s Shameful ‘20/20′ Experiment

John Lott, PhD, economist at the University of Maryland, recently posted an editorial on Fox. It is an excellent review of ABC's biased report on firearms, so I'm presenting it in it's entirety.

Note that ABC is owned by Disney, who, despite Florida Law which allows employees to have firearms locked in their personal vehicles while at work, still forbids it. Disney lobbied the Florida State legislature to amend the bill to exclude employers who had explosives on their property from allowing gun owners to have their Civil Rights. Disney's explosives? Fireworks....but I digress.....

ABC’s Shameful ‘20/20′ Experiment

By John R. Lott, Jr.

Gun control advocates look desperate. Last Friday night, on April 10, ABC aired a heavily promoted, hour long “20/20″ special called “If I Only Had a Gun.” It is ABC’s equivalent of NBC’s infamous exploding gas tanks in General Motors pickups where NBC rigged the truck to explode. With legislation in Texas and Missouri advancing to eliminate gun-free zones at universities, perhaps this response isn’t surprising.

The show started and ended by claiming that allowing potential victims to carry guns would not help keep them safe –- not even with hundreds of hours of practice firing guns.

No mention was made of the actual multiple victim public shootings stopped by people with concealed handguns nor did they describe who actually carried out such shootings. Instead, ABC presented a rigged experiment where one student in a classroom had a gun. But sometimes even the best editors can’t hide everything the camera sees.

The experiment was set up to make the student fail. It did not resemble a real-world shooting. The same scenario is shown three times, but in each case the student with the gun is seated in the same seat –- the center seat in the front row. The attacker is not only a top-notch shooter –- a firearms expert who teaches firearms tactics and strategy to police -– but also obviously knows precisely where the student with the gun is sitting.

Each time the experiment is run, the attacker first fires two shots at the teacher in the front of the class and then turns his gun directly on the very student with the gun. The attacker wastes no time trying to gun down any of the unarmed students. Thus, very unrealistically, between the very first shot setting the armed student on notice and the shots at the armed student, there is at most 2 seconds. The armed student is allowed virtually no time to react and, unsurprisingly, fails under the same circumstances that would have led even experienced police officers to fare poorly.

But in the real world, a typical shooter is not a top-notch firearms expert and has no clue about whether or not anyone might be armed and, if so, where they are seated. If you have 50 people –- a pretty typical college classroom –- and he is unknown to the attacker, the armed student is given a tremendous advantage. Actually, if the experiment run by “20/20″ seriously demonstrated anything, it highlighted the problem of relying on uniformed police or security guards for safety: the killer instantly knows whom to shoot first.

Yet, in the ABC experiment, the purposefully disadvantaged students are not just identified and facing (within less than 2 seconds) an attacker whose gun is already drawn. They are also forced to wear unfamiliar gloves, a helmet, and a holster. This only adds to the difficulties the students face in handling their guns.

Given this set-up the second student, Danielle, performed admirably well. She shot the firearms expert in his left leg near the groin. If real bullets had been used, that might well have disabled the attacker and cut short his shooting spree.

Nevertheless, even terrible shooters can often be quite effective. Despite all of ABC’s references to the Columbine attack, the network never mention the armed guard at the school. He had an unusually poor target shooting record –- indeed it is reported that he couldn’t even hit a target. Yet, his bravery still saved many lives because his poorly aimed shots forced the two killers to engage in gunfire with him. This slowed down their killing spree and gave many students a chance to escape the building. The guard was only forced to retreat and leave the school himself because of the homemade grenades that the Columbine murderers had.

The Columbine murderers strongly and actively opposed passage of Colorado’s right-to-carry law, particularly the part that would have allowed concealed handguns being legally carried on school campuses. What goes unnoticed is that the Columbine attack took place the very day that the state legislature scheduled final passage of the concealed handgun law.

Time after time the attackers in these multiple victim public shootings consciously avoid areas where people might be able to defend themselves. In the attack on the Jewish community center in Los Angeles in which five people were wounded, the attacker had apparently “scouted three of the West Coast’s most prominent Jewish institutions—the Museum of Tolerance, the Skirball Cultural Center and the University of Judaism—but found security too tight.”

In the real world, even having a gun and pointing it at an attacker has often convinced the attacker to stop shooting and surrender. Examples include high schools in Pearl, Mississippi and Edinboro, Pennsylvania, as well as the Appalachian Law School in Virginia. Street attacks in Memphis to Detroit ended this way, too, without any more shots fired.

Even if the cases don’t get much attention, gun permit holders stop these multiple victim attacks on a regular basis. Ironically, just this past Saturday, the day after ABC’s broadcast, a permit holder in Columbia, Texas stopped a mass robbery by fatally shooting the criminal. Some Web sites have started collecting these and other defensive gun use cases (e.g., see here, here, and here).

ABC’S “20/20″ exaggerates “the danger of accidentally hitting a friend” when confronting an attacker. The show cites as an example is a man who mistook his wife for an intruder. Obviously that case is a tragedy, but those cases are exceedingly rare. But why didn’t they present a single multiple victim attack as an example? Simple, because it has not happened.

ABC pushes the notion that gun show regulations, rather than arming potential victims, can stop these attacks. But very few criminals get their guns from gun shows: a U.S. Justice Department survey of 18,000 state prison inmates showed that less than one percent (0.7%) of prisoners had obtained their gun from a gun show. Even adding flea markets and gun shows together raises the number to just 1.7 percent. There is not a single academic study showing that regulating private individuals selling their own guns — the so-called “gun show loophole” — reduces any type of violent crime. What the regulations have accomplished is cutting the number of gun shows by 25 percent.

The show ends with this claim:

“If you are wondering where are all the studies about the effectiveness of guns used by ordinary Americans for self-defense, well keep searching, we could not find one reliable study and the ones we found were contradictory.”

Yet, “contradictory” is an overstatement. There have been 26 peer-reviewed studies published by criminologists and economists in academic journals and university presses. Most of these studies find large drops in crime. Some find no change, but not a single one shows an increase in crime.

You would think that if gun control worked as well as ABC implies, there wouldn’t be these multiple victim public shootings in those European countries with gun laws much stricter than those being publicly discussed in the United States or by ABC. Yet, multiple victim public shootings are quite common in Europe. In just the last few days, there have been a shooting at a college in Greece and in a crowded café in Rotterdam. Of course, the worst K-12 public school shootings are in Europe.

Given the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent annually in the United States for police officers on campus and other programs, one would hope that this relatively inexpensive alternative, where people are willing to bear the costs themselves to protect others, would be taken more seriously.

ABC never mentions a simple fact: all multiple victim public shootings with more than 3 people killed have occurred where permitted concealed handguns are prohibited. Rather than studying what actually happens during these shootings, ABC conjured up rigged experiments aimed at convincing Americans that guns are ineffective. Unfortunately, ABC’s advice, rather than making victims safe, makes things safer for attackers.

John Lott is a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland and the author of More Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press, second edition, 2000) and The Bias Against Guns (Regnery, 2003). Much of the discussion here is based on both books. John Lott’s past pieces for FOX News can be found here and here.

Self Protection is Not Vigilantism

There's a discussion going on about reduction of funding for law enforcement and how people should respond. In a recent dust-up, State Senator Tim Sheldon from Mason County suggested that

"There's always an open season on criminals in Mason County... I think the Mason County citizens are very well aware of how to protect themselves in a situation that might need a response."

The Mason County Sheriff, when asked for a response, " told the [Mason County] Journal he found Sheldon's remark inappropriate, adding that he doesn't want to promote vigilantism."

Sheldon denied Friday that he is urging people to take the law into their own hands, and he claimed that news reports, including Seattle-area television accounts, already are

"driving some criminals back to Pierce and King counties...Our sheriff thinks we're a magnet for crime, because we're a rural county. My point is our citizens are probably better armed than any other county. So the message is, don't attempt a home invasion in Mason County or you may get a hot Mason County lead enema," Sheldon said.

So what is the case with people defending themselves? Are they "taking the law into their own hands?" Do they become vigilantes?

What is vigilantism, anywho?

Vigilantism is

a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate) ; broadly : a self-appointed doer of justice

Self-defense is

the act of defending oneself, one's property, or a close relative

It is sad when in the course of sensationalizing something, but the journalists, who should be word smiths, and law enforcement, who should know the law better don't seem to know the difference.

In Washington State, we have the following enumerated in the Constitution:

SECTION 24 RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS.

The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain or employ an armed body of men.

Now this doesn't allow or condone the extra-judicial law enforcement, it only allows a person to defend oneself.

State laws (RCW 9A.16.020 Use of force — When lawful.) allow the use of force for, among other things,

(3) Whenever used by a party about to be injured, or by another lawfully aiding him or her, in preventing or attempting to prevent an offense against his or her person, or a malicious trespass, or other malicious interference with real or personal property lawfully in his or her possession, in case the force is not more than is necessary;

(4) Whenever reasonably used by a person to detain someone who enters or remains unlawfully in a building or on real property lawfully in the possession of such person, so long as such detention is reasonable in duration and manner to investigate the reason for the detained person's presence on the premises, and so long as the premises in question did not reasonably appear to be intended to be open to members of the public;

Again, the use of force is legal to defend yourself, and in self-defense is different from the vigilantism to which the Sheriff and the media refers. Vigilantism is not legal.

What the Sheriff knows, or should know, but doesn't tell you is that law enforcement is not responsible for your safety. This was last re-stated by the US Supreme Court in Castle Rock v Gonzales, in which they held that,

The town of Castle Rock, Colorado and its police department
could not be sued under 42 USC §1983 for failure to enforce a
restraining order against respondent's husband, as enforcement of the
restraining order does not constitute a property right for 14th Amendment purposes.

In other words, law enforcement is not responsible for your safety. You are.

However, you are also responsible for your own acts. The height of irresponsibility is illustrated in the comments by one person to the Mason County Commission meeting,

“And I’m a kind of bad shot, so if I have to protect myself and I miss when I go to court, I guess I can say my state senator told me to do it,” said resident John Strasburger.

No, sir. You are responsible not only for your own protection, but for your actions, also.