A Quick-Trigger Tragedy

A man’s home may his castle, but something is terribly wrong when irritation at its being violated turns to tragedy. In Buena Park this week, an incident that easily might have passed with a few choice words or even a shrug has left two families devastated. The killing of a 17-year-old by a homeowner aggrieved at the theft of his plastic pumpkin is yet another example of what happens when guns are in the hands of those who are not thinking clearly.

Brandon Ketsdever, a popular Kennedy High School senior, has been robbed of his future, with family and friends left to ponder the price paid for petty vandalism and the errant judgment of teenagers on the loose in a car. Pete Tavita Solomona, a man who by various accounts lived according to the precepts of his religious faith, now finds himself arraigned on murder charges. All this because using a .357 magnum handgun became an option for conflict resolution.

After confronting and allegedly shooting the young man, Solomona was said by one neighbor to have been stunned, as if he didn’t compute that having a loaded gun was not simply an abstraction. The lesson has repeated itself over and over in homes and work settings in Southern California in recent years: Introduce a gun to the dynamics of a tense situation, and there is a devastating possible outcome.

This case likely will focus as it moves into the courts on whether the gun was intentionally or accidentally discharged. We have heard this debate before. So many children and spouses whom weapons are supposed to protect end up being their victims. Once the trigger is pulled, by design or by accident, no remorse or explanation for how the gun went off can bring back the dead.

The Times has argued long and vigorously for more effective gun control. This case illustrates some of those concerns in one pre-Halloween horror story from a typical neighborhood. It is precisely the kind of devastating misuse that is a consequence of having so many weapons in our midst.