Well-Regulated POS Fatally Shoots 20-Year-Old Woman Who Pulled Into His Driveway

This is what happens when guns are everywhere, and Republicans spread fear.

Just two days after 16-year-old Ralph Yarl was shot in the head and back because he rang an asshole's doorbell, 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis was shot and killed in upstate New York Saturday night after she and her friends, who were lost, turned into the wrong driveway.

"This is a very sad case of some young adults who were looking for a friend's house and ended up at this man's house who decided to come out with a firearm and discharge it," Washington County Sheriff Jeffrey Murphy told a news conference Monday.

No, this is another damning example of what happens when paranoid, unhinged men have unfettered access to firearms. They look for the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it's almost anyone else.

“Going to the wrong address shouldn’t get you killed. But 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis was shot to death when she pulled her car into the wrong driveway. This is the NRA’s propaganda at work—a world in which everyone is the enemy and you have to take up arms against them.”

— GIFFORDS (@GIFFORDS) 1681823439 

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 Kansas City Confirms It Is Crime To Shoot Black Teenager Who Rings Your Doorbell 

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Gillis and her friends had turned down a driveway on Patterson Hill Road in Hebron, New York. Although it was poorly lit, they quickly realized they were at the wrong address and attempted to leave. No one left the vehicle or came anywhere near the house, but the homeowner, Kevin Monahan, stepped out onto his porch and fired two bullets at the car, one of which struck Gillis. According to the Times Union newspaper, the bullets were large lead slugs fired from a 12-gauge shotgun that is typically used to hunt big game.

Her terrified friends tried to call 911, but it was a rural area with poor cell service. They had to drive five miles to the unfortunately named Cemetery Road in Salem before they could reach anyone. The responding medical personnel couldn't save Gillis, and she was pronounced dead at the scene.

Gillis's cousin Haleigh Eustis, also 20, told The New York Post, "She was just so young and she still had so much to live for. She had a very loving boyfriend, and she was so in love with him."

According to Sheriff Murphy, when the police arrived at Monahan's house, the 65-year-old was "not cooperative, he would not talk to patrols." Murphy added, “We had a bit of a situation there” after Monahan refused to exit his home. After an hour of tense negotiation through a 911 dispatcher, police were able to take him safely into custody. Yes, he's white.

Murphy was booked into the Warren County jail on a charge of second-degree murder. New York state doesn't have Missouri's absurd "stand-your-ground" law, so residents have a duty to retreat, if at all possible, before resorting to force. There's no duty to retreat within your own dwelling, but Monahan willingly left his house and shot at a departing vehicle from the comfort of his front porch. That rightly doesn't qualify as self-defense.

New York Republicans, obviously, have tried to MAGA up the state's self-defense standard. State Sen. George Borrello from Chautauqua County proposed a measure last year that would scrap the duty to retreat requirement, so long as you're someplace where you're legally allowed. He said this was because New York “has become a much more dangerous place." It has not, and even if right-wing rhetoric about New York were true, a Wild West, last-man-standing society is no reasonable person's idea of a safe society.

Monahan hasn’t said anything of substance to investigators nor has he shown much remorse. His attorney told theNew York Timesthat the car turning up on Monahan’s property "certainly caused some level of alarm to an elderly gentleman who had an elderly wife.” He added that his client "sincerely regrets this tragedy,” as if he overflowed the toilet at a friend’s house. Instead, he murdered a woman for no good reason.

Gillis’s family describes her as a “kind, beautiful soul and a ray of light to anyone who was lucky enough to know her.”

They said the 20-year-old was an artist and a "Disney fanatic" who was looking forward to starting college in Florida so she could become a marine biologist.

"Our family will never be the same but we will be guided by Kaylin's positivity, optimism, and joy as we learn to live with her loss."

Republicans should stop humping guns long enough to consider the impact of their out-of-control violent crime propaganda, which Fox News injects into the veins of paranoid mental shut-ins like Monahan. Washington County is also Rep. Elise Stefanik's district, and she made only a generic statement late Tuesday.

Yet, we know that if Gillis was shot down while driving through the South Bronx, Stefanik would've been on Tucker Carlson last night. She'd be speaking on the House floor, but instead she'll remain silent about the senseless violence in her own backyard. Whatever conscience Stefanik has left should never forget what comes from the fear she helps spread.

[ New York Daily News / BBC ]

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