Kevin Monahan, 65, shot 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis after a car she was riding in with friends made a wrong turn on his property
A man was convicted of second-degree murder Tuesday for fatally shooting a young woman when the SUV she was riding in mistakenly drove up his rural driveway in upstate New York.
A jury found Kevin Monahan, 66, guilty of second-degree murder for shooting 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis on a Saturday night last April after she and her friends pulled into his long, curving driveway near the Vermont border while they were trying to find another house.
The group’s caravan of two cars and a motorcycle began leaving once they realized their mistake. Authorities said Monahan came out to his porch and fired twice from his shotgun, with the second shot hitting Gillis in the neck as she sat in the front passenger seat of an SUV driven by her boyfriend.
I wrote a post on Nextdoor.com about this sort of situation. “Use of force” laws in my state, with a few easy-to-digest links and quotes.
Post basically said, “Your rights may not be what you think they are, and if you fuck up, you may find yourself in a concrete and steel box for life.”
Nothing combative, controversial, derogatory, political or non-factual. Shot down within 30-minutes for being “insulting”. Yeah. LOL, I even quoted Masad Ayoob, a world-class expert on the subject, and quite conservative if you read between the lines. Not good enough around here.
I’m a LiberalGunNut™ who studies these things. I have guns at the ready, in my home, and sometimes on my person. It behooves me to know the law.
Part of the reason I wrote that post:
A man had been seen on another man’s lot fucking about, trying to get in an empty trailer. A lot next door, not the shooter’s domicile.
Next night, the shooter setup a chair just inside the tree line and hunted. When the other man came back, he popped 5-rounds of 5.56 at him (AR-15). Hit him a time or two, guy lived.
Next day the cops question the shooter. He lies, gets his story mixed up, gets arrested for 2nd-degree attempted murder. Well, fucking obviously!
About 40% of the Nextdoor.com comments defended the shooter. To sum: The homeowner saw a man trying to break into an empty trailer, on the homeowner’s land, hid himself the next evening and decided to execute this man for trespass when he came back. Think on that. Death for breaking into an empty trailer.
I’ll tell you what my conceal-carry instructor told us, a very conservative gun nut. “If you pull your weapon, you’re shooting to kill. Whatever situation you’re trying to stop, be aware, think, is it worth 20-years, maybe life, behind bars? Because that may well be the outcome, not matter how justified you think you are in the moment.”
Honestly I think my biggest frustration with guns in America is the culture around them. When I was a kid learning about guns in scouts you didn’t get to touch one till you’d learned what felt like 12 different times what the rules are and how to be a responsible gun owner and it feels like so many people really needed that handling.
Sorry to hear you live in an area where people’s perspective on guns is that they’re entitled to attempting murder with a deadly weapon if anyone interacts with them in a way they don’t like. That wouldn’t exactly make me very comfortable with the folks I live around
I’ve often said, America doesn’t have a gun problem, America has a culture problem.
I’m 53 for reference. When I was a kid there were guns everywhere, and they were hilariously easier to get. FFS, one of my vintage shotguns was rebranded by Mossberg to be sold in Western Auto Stores. No one would bat at eye at some dude in his pickup with a rack full of long guns in the rear window.
And we didn’t have these problems.
seems like some folks just get really excited about guns and they want a situation to use them in so bad
If the problem for you is that you could go to jail, rather than that someone else dies - I don’t know what to tell you.
Deliberately misunderstanding my post? Point being, even in obvious self-defense, it can be a tricky thing. But yeah, there are very certain circumstances where I would take a life. Namely: Home invasion (while someone is home) and attacking myself or my family. I would defend a stranger, but it would have to be a clear case of “stop this or that person dies”.
In no case does property damage of theft justify a shooting.
As another Liberal gunowner with a carry permit, what nearly everyone with a defensive firearm seldom understands, is even IF it’s a “righteous shoot”, it’s going to cost well north of a $100,000 dollars to prove it in court. If nothing else, it would be financial ruin for the overwhelming majority of those people who are most vocal about self-defense that want to mentally play Rambo.
Question from someone outside the US who’s genuinely curious about why law-abiding citizens feel the need to carry guns to begin with:
If you’re aware of this, how often are you carrying a gun in the first place? When/Why?
Following what you say, there’s obviously the scenario where you have to defend your life (not your property).
On the other hand, as I see it, the victim in the article would not have benefited from a gun in the car and the odds of a shell-shocked BF turning the whole thing into an actual shootout would’ve been >0.
I’m not trying to argue crime statistics or morals here, I’m genuinely interested in a gun owner’s perspective.
I carry, (when I do carry), because I live in a very rural area of my state where cell service is poor to non-extant in most areas and law enforcement can be an hour away even IF you can call or text. And in order to buy and carry a handgun outside of a legal hunting season, you need a carry permit.
So the reason I have a carry permit is to carry outside of a hunting season, (when it is legal to carry for any hunter), because I spend a good amount of time being out and about in 10,000s of thousands of acres of forest land. And it isn’t the idealistic vision of forest you might have. There be wild critters out there that will eat you if hungry enough or attack you if you bump into them and they feel threatened. The wolves and bears and even bumping into Bambi can go south quickly if you are very unlucky, but I don’t mind any of those critters too much. Because they are mostly afraid of humans and will try very hard to avoid them if at all possible. And that might not always be possible. But what is becoming more of an issue for me is the number of cougar sightings, (and not just the ones at the local bar), and despite our local fish and game department’s years long flat statement that there are no cougars here, there is now too much photographic evidence and reports otherwise. And I personally have bumped into one of them 3 times in the last 4 years in the forest and my wife nearly hit one with her car going to work.
The only time I will have my pistol on me in town is if I’m passing through on my way to go foraging in the forest or during a hunting season. If I’m just going to town to shop or do other business, I have no need of it.
And to answer your next question - No, the sight of an openly carried handgun doesn’t bother anyone here. The knowledge of guns, and more importantly gun safety, are a part of everyday life. Children often start deer hunting and bird hunting, (under direct adult supervision), at age 11 or 12 and this includes the girls too. So firearms are viewed as tools and NOT weapons of destruction for killing other people. And oddly enough, we just don’t shoot each other out here despite there being at least one firearm in virtually every household and often multiples. Perhaps “city people” are just mentally incapable of being trusted them. Who knows…
When people have the wrong idea in their head it’s so exhausting to change their mind. You need to treat them like delicate children. Like I believe you should debate respectfully and not be condescending, but most people are so sensitive you need to bend over backwards to bring up facts in a ridiculously delicate way. Meanwhile they’ll bring up absolute bullshit in the most rude and condescending way possible, often just leaving arguments out completely and just cussing you out. Discourse is completely broken.
I can’t believe in 2023 we are still in the position of having the only convenient capable way of incapacitating someone from a distance being to destroy their body.
I’m not trying to sound super anti-gun, it just seems like it’s not the right tool for the job most of the time, and it sucks that that is the choice we have to make.
I was really hoping we’d have the phasers from star trek by now, and we could just use the ‘stun’ setting for defense. Though, I’m sure conservative gun nuts would make a little club dedicated to only using the ‘kill’ setting on their phasers, because it’s their God given right to murder someone over inanimate objects.
