Targeting the elderly. (Exercising the Right).

For much of this year, Dentsville, Alabama, resident Arlo Gilliam, 65, has been ill. When he heard a knock at his door on March 11th, he thought it was his son coming to help care for him. Instead, when he opened the door a man pressed a gun to his stomach and ordered him to lay face-down on a couch. Gilliam complied, after which the armed intruder called to several accomplices who also entered the residence. They ransacked Gilliam's bedroom and left with, among other things, five guns. The thugs were believed part of a home-invasion ring specializing in elderly victims who presumably cannot fight back. Fortunately, Gilliam was unharmed.

A few days later, Dentsville resident Bobby Drum, 68, and wife, Dorothy, 64, heard someone breaking into their home through a screen door. Mr. Drum hurried to a back bedroom, retrieved his Glock 9 mm handgun, and fired a shot that grazed the intruder's neck. The man fled, but later that night detectives arrested Jack Maurice Austin, 18, when the wounded suspect called for help and claimed that he had been shot in the neck while walking to a friend's home.

On March 29th, detectives also charged four other teens suspected of being involved in the home-invasion ring. Eddie Washington, 17, and Bryan Darnell Lake, 18, are believed to have been accomplices of Austin at the Drum home. They and Jason David Evans, 17, and Curtis Walton Jr., 18, are suspects in the March 11th robbery of the Gilliam residence.

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott told staff reporter Lora Hines of Columbia, South Carolina's The State newspaper that "Mr. Drum is a hero. He probably not only saved his wife and his life, but the lives of other people as well." The sheriff speculated that if Austin "had not been shot by Mr. Drum," the gang would still be doing home invasions.