Aren't the new gun laws supposed to protect people instead of having them murdered by nascent serial killers? At least the police got this one right and arrested a Minnesota man who murdered two teenagers in cold blood on Thanksgiving day, 2012.

This reminds me an episode on Hill Street Blues, season 5 episode 10 called the Rise and Fall of Paul the Wall. One of the plots revolved around a Councilman's mother, who planted her TV so as to attract a teenage burglar into her window so that she could execute him in cold blood. And she did it with a smile on her face.

Atrios:

As I always say, all gun nuts - not all gun owners - have vigilante fantasies. They're basically serial killer wannabees, though fortunately most don't have the guts.

This is a sick, sick, sick story. Is Byron Smith more or less deranged than say, "Dexter?"

Wonkette:

In another case, just concluded, Byron Smith of Little Falls, Minnesota, was convicted of premeditated murder Tuesday after claiming self-defense in a somewhat similar situation — his home had been burglarized, so in 2012, he decided to set a trap and kill him a burglar, a neighbor girl he believed responsible for the break-in. So he made his house look vacant by parking his truck away from the driveway, then waited in his basement with snacks, his guns, and a novel, because even when you’re staking out your own home to kill a teenager, you need some entertainment. He even had a tarp ready in the basement to wrap the intruder’s body in — smart fellow, thinking ahead like that. He also set up an audio recorder to capture all the excitement.

And so, as it turns out, two teenagers, 18-year-old Haile Kifer and 17-year-old Nick Brady, broke into his house through a window, and eventually made their way down to his basement, where he shot them dead:

Brady descended the basement stairs first, and Smith shot him three times, saying “You’re dead.” He dragged the body to another room and waited until Kifer followed, and he shot her. “You’re dying,” he told her, according to the audio recording.

After killing the teens, Smith also said, on the recording, “I don’t see them as human. I see them as vermin.” No, he doesn’t seem nice at all.

The jury didn’t seem convinced by Smith’s defense that he was in fear for his life in the little sniper’s nest that he’d set up, and sentenced him to life in prison without parole. His attorney, Steve Meshbesher, said that he plans to appeal, since the judge hadn’t allowed the introduction of evidence that the teens had been involved in previous burglaries in the area, on the grounds that Smith could not have known anything about his targets’ history at the time he was filling them with holes. The prosecutors said that protecting yourself is one thing, but setting up a shooting gallery is quite another. It’s like these prosecutors think there are limits to the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to kill people who piss you off.