As a general thing, I oppose Kansas farmers shooting down Iowans, but I'm not unreasonable on the subject. Even a good herd benefits from an occasional and careful culling.
That leads me to applaud the actions of the sherf and prosecutors down in the Free Soil country of Sumner County where an unnamed farmer ended the career of a probation jumper from Creston, Iowa. They're giving him a self-defense pass, and knowing my fellow rustics as I do, I suspect his neighbors will throw a barbecue in his honor.
Kansas has a stand-your-ground law, and it appears to me that it was written specifically to cover cases like this where fugitive Joe Lamasters died in barn after making a bad tactical decision -- to leap from behind a pile of feed sacks into the enfilade area of Farmer's shotgun. As the sheriff reported, the perp "deceased right there."
Cops across the area had been looking for Lamasters and added the courtesy of going door-to-door to tell citizens of a bad guy skulking around. (in a county with a rural population density of maybe four per square mile, "door-to-door" takes on a special meaning.)
It's worth noting that Farmer had Lamasters under the gun twice. The first time the fugitive turned and ran. Farmer decided to have no truck with back-shooting. But the perp made the mistake of fleeing toward another farm where the good citizen believed a woman might be home alone. Farmer went there, found the house empty, and decided to check the outbuildings.
Courage, good judgement, and the shotgun did the rest, but please don't take this as an endorsement of Double-Barrel Biden. My take on the subject would be just the same even if the Kansas farmer had used a Bushmaster with a shoulder thingie and 40 bullets in the clip. But he probably didn't even own one.
Ain't no call for that plastic crap when a feller's got a real nice 12-gauge hanging over the back door. :)
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