CO: Homeowner justified in shooting but faces charge: "A Fort Collins homeowner who shot a man on a stoop outside a side door was justified in doing so, the District Attorney's office decided Wednesday, but the homeowner still will face a misdemeanor charge related to the incident. Steven Ray, 58, faces one count of prohibited use of a weapon stemming from the early-morning shooting .... Ray said barking dogs woke him around 1:30 a.m. and he noticed someone in the backyard when he looked outside. The power was out because of an unrelated outage, and when David Ebner refused to identify himself when asked by Ray, the statement said, Ray retrieved a .45 caliber handgun from his basement. According to the statement, Ebner was reaching for a door handle when Ray returned, a struggle ensued and Ray fired three times. ... the third shot, Abrahamson said in the release, was an un-aimed shot fired several seconds later and Ray had no idea as to where the bullet was going. This shot, Abrahamson said in the statement, placed all those within range at risk and warranted the misdemeanor charge."




Can Bloomberg's firearms initiatives hit target?: "Mayor Bloomberg's high-profile campaign to keep illegal guns out of the city is drawing return fire. Earlier this year, he dispatched teams of private eyes to collect evidence against what he called 'the worst of the worst' of small-time gun dealers in states like Georgia, South Carolina, and Ohio. In the process, he has set off a turf war with the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which normally handles the interstate gun beat. And some criminal charges Bloomberg initiated against New York gun dealers are mired in the courts. Joe Green, a senior special agent and the New York spokesman for the ATF, questions the initiatives' effectiveness. 'It was useless,' he says. 'We didn't even know they were doing this until the day of the press conference' in May, when the mayor announced his sweeping civil lawsuit against fifteen out-of-state gun dealers he claims sold guns that were traced to New York crimes. 'They never told us at all.' Green says that federal authorities subsequently had to sort out whether their own undercover investigations may have been jeopardized. Then again, the ATF might just be angry at Bloomberg for calling it 'asleep at the switch' in a news conference."


AL: Elderly man kills attacker: "Police say a 34-year-old Montgomery man was shot and killed when he allegedly attacked a 72-year-old man Friday night in west Montgomery. Captain Huey Thornton, a police spokesman, said Jack Sanchez was pronounced dead around 10 p-m. Thornton said the shooting occurred after Sanchez kicked the man's truck as he drove by. He said when the older man got out to inspect his vehicle, Sanchez attacked him."