I agree that no one should get shot over a plant, but we really don't know what was going on. Had the homeowner had stuff stolen before? Was the homeowner scared for their safety? I lived in a really nice area right on the edge of a bad area before I moved back to Texas - cars broken in to, I did indeed have my hanging baskets stolen & potted plants stolen (I had paid several hundred dollars for them and they were sold at flee markets I was told). I did, when pregnant, come very close to shooting a man over snow blower. I had been blowing snow, went in the house to warm up for a bit, left the snow blower on the sidewalk in my unfenced front yard within about a foot of my porch and saw a man stop his junky pickup in front of my house - initially I thought he was coming to see if he could finish shoveling for money, until he just started dragging the thing to his pickup. I blame the pregnancy hormones for how very near I came to shooting him. He was smart enough to stand very very very still while we waited over 20 minutes for the police to arrive. They only came that fast because I made it clear to dispatch that I was PG and standing in the snow with a gun on a man. We couldn't count on police to arrive in any kind of a hurry. He was actually quite happy to leave with the police when they showed up to discover that he had several outstanding warrants. My Yankee neighbors started calling me "Annie Oakely" after that. While I am not proud of the incident, it does help me to appreciate that one can get fed up enough that one would, indeed, shoot someone over a pot plant.
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