Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 16, 2012

Georgia resident John McNeil shot and killed an armed trespasser named Brian Epp in December 2005. Epp had threatened McNeil?s teenage son with a knife. When he arrived, McNeil fired a warning shot into the ground in an attempt to drive the intruder from his property. Several eyewitnesses confirmed that McNeil fired the killing shot after Epp reached for his knife and charged at him.

The police concluded that McNeil had acted in self-defense, as provided for under Georgia?s ?Stand Your Ground? law. A jury rejected a lawsuit filed by Epp?s widow, concluding that Epp was responsible for his own death. Yet in 2006, the Cobb County Prosecutor indicted McNeil for murder, wrangled a conviction out of a jury, and sent McNeil to prison for life.

Unlike the killing of Trayvon Marin by George Zimmerman, there is no ambiguity about this episode: John McNeil?s shooting of Brian Epp was an act of self-defense against an armed and violent aggressor. As it happens, McNeil is black; Brian Epp was white. Whether or not bigotry is to blame for this patent miscarriage of justice, John McNeil, rather than George Zimmerman, should be the focus of gun rights advocates seeking to defend the ?Stand Your Ground? principle.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.