On Sunday morning at about 4 a.m. in Glen St. Mary, Florida, a group of seven masked home invaders barged into a mobile home located on County Road 125. A shot was fired by one invader. Two of the home’s four occupants responded with armed force.

One of the residents had an AR-15 style rifle. The person with the AR said they fired over 30 rounds while repelling the invaders. One invader was killed and others wounded. None of the residents were injured.

As soon as the gunfight stopped, the residents called 911. Baker County deputies immediately responded, stopping a car they found fleeing the scene at a high rate of speed. Five people were arrested and a 16-year-old juvenile was taken to the hospital.

From news4jax.com:

GLEN ST. MARY, Fla – Deputies arrested five people, two of them teens, after a home invasion Sunday in Glen St. Mary escalated into a deadly shootout, according to the Baker County Sheriff’s Office. The Sheriff’s Office said the five were among seven masked individuals armed with guns who barged into a mobile home on County Road 125 about 4 a.m. to confront four people staying there over a feud.

I have long maintained the AR-15 or other modern sporting rifles make excellent home defense firearms. The reasons are many, as was illustrated with this case.

The rifles are light, easy to use, and reliable. The cartridges used are adequate for home defense. There are several ammunition choices available to limit potential over-penetration. The magazine capacity is especially valuable when confronting several attackers.

The intimidation value of an identifiable platform such as the AR-15 can also help prevent a gunfight…or stop one in some cases.

Investigators found a mask with a bullet hole in it and considerable blood at the scene. While over 30 shots were fired by the defenders, only one of the shots appears to have resulted in a fatality. We know at least one shot was fired by the intruders, which didn’t hit any of the residents.

People who obtain their personal defense information from television dramas often think only one shot is needed to stop an attacker. The reality is, in the heat of a tense situation, many shots miss. Some will wound and few are fatal. That’s the reason people who study combat and self-defense don’t put a limit on the number of shots that may be necessary.

The victims told deputies they acted in self-defense when they turned their guns on the intruders, with one of them estimating he fired over 30 rounds from an AR-15 before the threat was over. Afterward, the victims retreated to another part of the home before they dialed 911, according to the report. None of them was hurt during the shooting. The same cannot be said for the intruders, several of whom were inside a vehicle deputies intercepted as it sped away from the mobile home off County Road 125. One of them, Corey Lauramore, died of gunshot wounds to the head. An unidentified 16-year-old remains hospitalized, and a third suspect, William Lauramore, was treated and released to police.

The AR-15 type rifle is the most popular rifle in the United States. Uninformed commentary to the contrary, they are seldom used in crimes because rifles are rarely used by criminals. The vast majority of homicides and other crimes involving guns are committed with handguns, because handguns are much easier to conceal and transport.

Recent use of AR-15 type rifles in mass murders is cited as a reason to ban them. But AR-15s have been commonly available to the public since 1965. None were used in a mass murder until 2007, and that was a police-issued rifle.

What happened to increase the use of AR-15 rifles in mass murders? Very likely it was media coverage where the exposure created incentives for socially marginal individuals to achieve celebrity status by becoming mass murderers. Since 2012, much media focus has been directed at the AR-15, as many in the media want to see them banned.

From politifact.com:

Among other factors also worth considering is media coverage of mass shooters, which Adam Lankford, a criminology professor at the University of Alabama, said rewards perpetrators with fame and can lead to copycat effects. “Although firearms availability is the primary reason why the United States has more public mass shooters than other countries, media coverage of perpetrators may largely explain why the United States has seen more public mass shooters and deadlier incidents over time,” Lankford said.

As this weekend’s home invasion in Florida demonstrates, the AR-15 makes an excellent home defense weapon.

©2018 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch