Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?

I like to think that this is a victory for some kind of sense in this country, but it's flawed for sure.

The father of two testified he thought his family was being attacked by home invaders when a police team swarmed his house on March 2, 2007.

Nine police officers smashed down the front door of Parasiris's home with a battering ram in the pre-dawn raid.

Tessier and his colleagues ran upstairs to the master bedroom with their weapons drawn.

Parasiris testified his only thoughts during the chaos were to protect his wife and children.

He grabbed his .357 Magnum and was confronted by Tessier, who was dressed in dark colours with nothing indicating he was a police officer, according to testimony in the trial.

I take only the most obvious facts into account in making my appraisal of this being a good result, that is some guy waking up disoriented in the wee hours of the morning with a bunch of guys in ninja/SWAT gear thumping up his stairs waving guns and yelling.

Apparently the cops were yelling "Police, warrant" or some such, which is all well and good, but a) buddy had to hear that, b) he had to register it (he was rudely awakened after all) and c) he had to believe it.

A jury of his peers have already ruled that his action was reasonable in the circumstances, and I for one agree. He's most certainly going to be charged (and convicted) for not following the safe storage laws mandated for restricted firearms, which is definitely what happened here. He would not have been in any position to wake up and shoot some intruder otherwise. It's also highly questionable that he kept loaded firearms in a house with children, but these matters are before the courts as I write this so 'nuff said on that.

For the record, I share his appraisal of the .357 revolver as the ideal CQB weapon for countering home invasions. It will stop anyone in their tracks, is more manageable than a .44 for follow-up shots, and as a revolver you can keep it loaded forever with no poxy magazine-spring fatigue to cramp your style.

No; in case you suspected sarcasm, I'm quite serious. It is very much against Canadian law to be prepared to defend yourself effectively so I will not suggest you rush out (to wait months or more) to get a permit to buy said pistol. You do however know, in case it's ever relevant, that a .357 Magnum is capable of taking down a fully-equipped SWAT trooper at close quarters, and your average punk home invader would be a much softer target, dusted/cracked out or not.

It is a tragedy for the family and friends of Officer Tessier that he lost his life in this manner, but it's a dangerous job and we take our chances. There are hopefully some questions being asked of the Laval PD that will avoid a repeat of this event. From a professional standpoint, it was an operational failure that this guy got the drop on him and was not neutralized as soon as he presented a weapon.

If you talk the talk, you had better be able to walk the walk; what I mean by that is if you're going to go charging in SAS style you are presumably expecting to need that sort of kinetic, lethal action, and you'd better be bloody well ready to use your training to the full. A guy swinging a gun at you certainly warrants a lethal response, and I note that Officer Tessier's fireteam partner (or whatever the cops call them) didn't empty a magazine into Mr. Parasiris, the tactically correct response to one of your buddies getting capped.

So, to sum up:

• a very unfortunate loss of a police officer in the line of duty
• an excellent precedent to reaffirm our legal right to use up to lethal force to defend ourselves and our families from home invasion, etc.
• an expose of the questionable choice of targets by the local PD
• some serious questions could be asked about all these SWAT-type officers and why they are parading around with all this kit and doing these assault operations if they aren't either properly trained for that sort of thing or not prepared to use their training when circumstances warrant.

I doubt that anyone at the trial was thinking about this the way I did, but this is after all MY blog, and I'm special as we all know...