Florida — A 22 year old man was arrested on the charges of attempted murder, aggravated battery, felonious possession of a firearm, armed burglary, and shooting into an occupied dwelling.
According to police, Travis Love attempted to break into the house of his ex-girlfriend at about 3 in the morning on Valentine’s Day.
The ex-girlfriend then took her three month old baby upstairs, as Love tried to open a sliding door. The current boyfriend retrieved his own firearm at some point during this time and opened the curtain to look through the sliding glass door.
The ex-boyfriend reportedly pointed the gun at him, causing the current boyfriend to shoot. He was able to get one shot off before his firearm jammed up on him. Love then returned fire, hitting the boyfriend in the leg.
He was treated at the hospital for non-life threatening injuries.
It is being reported at this time that Love made threats to the couple leading up to the shooting, and that the gun Love used was a pink handgun that belonged to a female friend of his. She was questioned and said she didn’t know he took the gun from her.
Love is being held in Brevard County Jail without bond.
Analysis:
This is a strange story with quite a bit going on in it. First, the current boyfriend’s tactics were flawed. If someone has made threats to you, going and answering the door may not be the best decision. And, while we don’t know how the house was set up, opening the curtain to look through the glass door is clearly not the best move.
If he had to look to see who it was, taking a different angle so there was at least a wall, or partial wall between them would have yielded a better outcome. Again, we don’t know the setup of the house, so this can be a hard call.
Then again, the argument can also be made that he shouldn’t have looked through the curtain at all and done something else entirely.
There is the whole isolate and defend rule to home defense that would have been a much better option. What this speaks of, if you’ve never heard of it, is that you stand a better chance at not getting shot if you have an aggressor trying to gain entrance to your home if you can retreat to an area you can defend.
If you can force someone to entry say, through a bedroom door, they bottleneck up and have to enter through the door. This makes it possible for you to effectively defend yourself because you know where that person will be.
Again, they have to come through the door. And when/if they do, you can be ready.
Also, it’s imperative that you practice malfunction drills. We don’t know why this gun malfunctioned, but I have a sinking suspicion that he had no clue what he was doing. Sadly, many people don’t know what they’re doing.
When you’re shooting, you should try to work malfunction training into your repertoire as much as possible so that you’re prepared when your gun breaks.
And, it will break as all mechanical devices eventually do.
We’ll put out another article on this in the near future, but until then, we recommend using snap caps or dummy rounds to help you. These ones available on Amazon work well.
Leave your thoughts on this in the comments below.
