Minnesota: Candidate holds robber at gunpoint: "A guy in a white shirt almost became a historical footnote about 4:30 last Sunday morning. He almost was the first guy to get himself shot by a candidate for mayor of Minneapolis. 'I'm in the dark, holding a gun on him and telling him to get on the ground, but he keeps backing away from me,' Mark Koscielski was saying. 'Then the guy points at his shirt and says, 'I have a white shirt on, and it'll get dirty if I get in the mud.' And I say, 'It's going to get red if you don't get on the [expletive] ground.'' In the end, the guy got muddy, and he got arrested, too, charged with attempting to break into Koscielski's Guns & Ammo .... Koscielski, 51, was a distant also-ran in Tuesday's mayoral primary. His campaign to keep open his heavily secured gun shop, watched over by electronic surveillance and a pair of raucous parrots called Toto and Cleo, may be running out of ammo, too: The Minnesota Court of Appeals is scheduled next month to decide whether the city has acted illegally in trying to zone Koscielski into oblivion."



Indiana: Shooting deemed self-defense: "The owner of a discount tobacco store on South Lafayette Street was justified when he shot a man police said was trying to rob the business, the Allen County Prosecutor's Office has determined. Prosecutor Karen Richards said store owner Mike Venable acted in self-defense when he shot Lee J. Church after Church pulled a gun and demanded cash. Richards said she watched a videotape of the incident, and was convinced Venable had reason to believe he would be harmed if he did not comply with Church's demands."


Illinois: Unsolved murders frustrate police : "Springfield's latest homicide, that of Reginald Brown on Aug. 21, was an exception to what is becoming the rule. It was solved. Brown was shot during an attempted drug robbery, police say. Jason Marshall, 28, is thought to have shot Brown in self-defense."