As a once-kid who used to take shortcuts across open ranch land, this bill would give land owners a license to kill:
The bill comes as an Arizona rancher awaits trial after he was arrested and charged with second-degree murder and aggravated assault for killing 48-year-old Gabriel Cuen-Butimea after he shot at a group of unarmed migrants walking through his 170-acre ranch outside of Nogales. Under its provisions, 73-year-old George Alan Kelly would have been justified for allegedly killing any of the migrants.
You make a good point. Maybe there’s some court decision that he wants to address (or preemptively avoid) by making the wording of the law clearer?
I’m not going to research Arizona legal precedent myself but maybe someone knowledgeable will come along and clear things up.
It seems the difference is in how people are allowed to interpret the law. Before you had to be both on someone’s land (“real property”) as well as in (or at least approaching with intent) some kind of domicile fit for habitation. Now, with the wording being changed to “or”, a person who owns several acres could shoot someone for just cutting through the property without the landowner having any reasonable expectation that the trespassers even knew they were on land that is privately owned and certainly without the impression that the trespassers were approaching their actual domicile that’s been inspected and zoned for habitation.