You have way more faith in the reasonableness of people than I do. I foresee this turning into people beaning each other with bats because they looked at them funny, and then claiming, "He was breaking into my car!" Or shooting a Jehovah's Witness because "That heathen was making an assault unto my castle!" We don't let people take the law into their own hands because people are fucking idiots. I sympathize with self-defense, but am wary because I just don't trust the general populace. There's also the issue of whether property is ever worth the loss of human life, but that's a discussion probably best left aside for now. Lastly, how does one draw the distinction between indecent people and desperate people? Desperate people do desperate things.
Well shit I guess I had better get me a gun so I can defend myself. I can kind of see defending the house thing. You don't know if they have plans of rape/murder/ etc. But I would let my car go rather than risk turning an act of thievery into violence.
I fully agree with you that it's unwise to put yourself in physical harm. However, if you elect to do so...you're saying it's better to do nothing? If I phoned the police and said that I was in no danger but that someone is presently breaking into my property, there's no way they could get here in time. Given that the loss was minor, they are not going to investigate it. It will go down as a report and if shit surfaces at a pawn shop or something, maybe I'll get it back. So the consequence of following the rules is...the thief wins. There is no consequence to him. You're okay with that? Personally, I don't know if I'd have the guts to approach him. Maybe if I had some kind of training. Rest assured, if I WAS trained in hand-to-hand combat (or even baseball), it would be a much easier choice. What I dislike is that the courts, in this circumstance, would punish the victim.
I disagree with basically all of your assumptions. You have no idea what kind of person they are, and how much they contribute, and why they're doing what they did. They're doing a shitty thing, and they should be punished for it. If you trespass on a house with a big dog and that dog bites the shit out of your face, well, that's your fault. If you get too close to somebody's kids and they feel they have no choice but to shoot you, well you made a grave mistake. If you enter somebody's personal space and you get a crotch full of knee or an eyeful of mace, well, it comes with the territory. But I'm not going to jump on board with ending somebody's life over some fucking stuff. And there's a huge difference between theft and rape/murder. I can't even imagine putting those two things in the same sentence. I'm pretty far on the other side of this whole "certain people aren't worthy of life debate" from somebody like Nett.
Correct. If a burglar breaks into your home, you are allowed to defend yourself, your family, and your property. If a reasonable person would conclude that you are in danger, then you are also allowed to use lethal force to do so. However, this starts to get hazy very quickly. Let's say that the burglar is in your living room and has his hands occupied by your TV. Is he a threat? A reasonable person would say "No," so you aren't allowed to shoot him in the back. However, if you say "Freeze" and he drops your TV and books it, a reasonable person would say, "I don't know whether he's trying to run out the door or trying to run into my kid's room so he can hold a knife to his throat. Thus, running away CAN be construed as a threat, especially if your kid's room is right next to the living room. However, this depends on the state. What I described is castle doctrine for most states. In my home state of Massachusetts, you are only allowed to use lethal force if the burglar presents an "imminent" threat to you or your family. When I took a home defense course, their presented home invasion plan consisted of grabbing the kids, bringing them into the bedroom, and barricading the door. If, and only if, the burglar tries to get into the bedroom, you are allowed to shoot him. Otherwise, you can't do shit. Interestingly enough, the civil injury laws as well as our laws on aggravated assault basically say that if you're going to shoot someone, you'd better kill him. Otherwise, you're opening yourself up to lawsuits and charges, especially if the "victim" decides he wants to lie his ass off and nail you to the wall. If you're gonna shoot someone, empty the mag and hit him a dozen times. Hitting someone once is just asking for trouble. My own opinion: It's not about the stuff; it's about the person. Most burglars (99%) choose to break into someone's house when no one is there. They don't want a confrontation, for obvious reasons. When someone makes the decision to break into someone's house while people are there, it shows one of two things. 1. They're coked out on drugs or mentally ill, and thus unable to make the rational decision to only burglarize empty homes. 2. They don't give a fuck. Would you want either of these people around you or your kids? I don't care about the stuff. The stuff is replaceable. What I care about is the fact that someone is so indifferent that they are willing to invade a home with people inside it and take stuff by force. That's a danger to society, and it needs to be stopped.
You don't know what their intentions are. They're breaking into your home...to what? Who knows? Do you ask the perpetrator, "Excuse me, sir, are you here to take my television or are you here to rape my wife?" Given that you cannot know their intentions, do you not have to assume the worst? Again, as I said before - I don't know if I'd have the guts to actually act. If I did, though, I would like to think the justice system wouldn't punish me for simply defending what was mine.
I was the first person to say let criminals get away with stealing from an old lady on the streets, it's not worth it because they might be packing, but on your own property? You do that to me and you're either getting a mouth full of lead or a sword in the back of your neck.
You have a sword? Between this, LARPing, and the dragon shirt, you are a walking dork stereotype sir.
...And I have a math degree, play video games and do Tae Kwan Do, I'm not running for prom king, don't worry.
I'm a walking contradiction. I'm socially liberal and economically conservative. When it comes to shit like this, I intensely disagree with having loaded weapons in the home. However, I vehemently agree that if someone sets so much as a toe on your property without your permission, then legally all bets should be off. Why we go to such an extent to protect CRIMINALS is beyond me.
Please, please, please be a Klingon sword. In Florida, if you shoot someone, make sure he's in the house and you shoot him in the front, and you make sure he's fuckin' dead. My uncle likes to tell the story when he lived in Nashville. His house kept getting burgled. The sheriff came by and gave him the best advice ever "if you shoot the bastard outside, drag him into the house." Simpler times. Better times, when you could shoot a fella "just cuz he needed shootun."
Because once we become our own judge, jury, and executioner, it changes what sort of society we are. We're now the sort of place where a private citizen has been given the authority to decide who lives and who dies, without trial. Whether it is for better or worse given the inefficiencies of modern justice systems is probably a matter of personal conscience. Personally, I'm uneasy with giving the average person that sort of power, and think it would be abused too often to be conscionable. But I see how one could very easily arrive at the opposite conclusion.
Katana or claymore. Claymore is for intimidation, katana for when shit gets real (not that it has and I doubt it ever will).
Semi-rural Connecticut is a pretty dangerous place, after all. I can see why you would take these precautions.
The government does not trust the people with life-and-death power, and only gives it grudgingly. This statement is pretty qualified. When I went to that self-defense class, I was pretty surprised by the level of retardation there. About half were mothers who wanted the ability to protect their kids. A quarter were like me, taking it in order to get an FID card and completely indifferent to actually using a firearm in self-defense. The other quarter were a bunch of idiots spouting off cliches like "Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six." They weren't looking for any sort of information on home defense; they just wanted authorization to kill people. They were the kind of people who bought a gun and thought, "Man, I can't WAIT to use this thing on a real person." The decision to end someone's life should not be a spur of the moment decision, which is why it's so difficult to make self-defense laws. Personally, I think that the best sort of law is the following: 1. You are allowed to defend yourself, your property, and your loved ones. 2. You are allowed to apprehend anyone who is attempting to take these things. 3. If someone presents a threat to you or your loved ones while trying to take your property, you are allowed to use available measures to prevent that from happening. In a nutshell: Just stealing your stuff isn't cause for shooting him. However, you are allowed to stop him... and if he presents a threat to you when you try to stop them, you can kill him.
My personal property loss this morning aside, I try and look at it from a third-person perspective. If I read a news article that detailed a guy catching someone breaking into his car and braining the burglar with a chunk of wood that was laying around, I would NOT want that person to go to jail. We aren't talking about hunting down someone who allegedly broke into your car; we're talking about catching someone red-handed. If, on the other hand, I read a police crime synopsis for the month of August and saw that 130 break-and-enters were reported and that no arrests had been made and no action was being taken, well...that would piss me off. I personally like Option A better, but that's me.
No, I find my wife and try to protect her. And if I think I can't get there, I give a warning, maybe a warning shot. If I really think she's in imminent danger, then I do whatever I have to protect her and my kids. But there's a continuum, and I'm really not much down with killing people. Also, I don't think that "assuming the worst" should be a legally defensible doctrine for killing somebody.
Hey, I'm only 15 minutes from Hartford, you never know what kind of drunk vagrant can stumble upon my shit.