Why are Americans being shot for knocking on the wrong door? | Francine Prose

It's hard to imagine someone being shot for knocking on a stranger's door in Finland, Spain or Canada

In the past week, two people have been shot, in separate incidents, for making an innocent mistake. In Kansas City, Missouri, Ralph Yarl, 16, was shot in the head and critically wounded by 84-year-old Andrew Lester, whose door Yarl knocked on, in error. Yarl had come to pick up his younger brothers, who turned out to have been with friends at another house with a similar address. In rural upstate New York, 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis was shot and killed when she and her friends, having lost their way, drove up Kevin Monahan's driveway. The car was turning around to leave when Monahan, 65, fired two bullets through the car window.

I live in the country. It's easy to lose your way. Mailbox numbers flake off. Satellite signals vanish. Our packages have been delivered to the raccoons in the empty house down the road. I can't count the times we've gotten lost en route to a friend's, taken the wrong turns, stayed on the wrong dirt road until we could turn around. What would have happened if one of those driveways had belonged to Kevin Monahan, who, according to neighbors, had a short fuse" and was enraged about trespassers?

Francine Prose is a former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.