Sabretooth
No Ordinary Rabbit
Funny. Now I'm starting to wonder if you even read my posts.
Another Responsible Gun Owner Stands His Ground
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Polaris
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I'm disabled. Now what?
Metullus
Forum ¾-Wit Pro Tem
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I am not using the fact that I can't read their mind as a defense. I am saying that if someone breaks into my home while I am there the default presumption is that the intruder means me harm. There are a variety of ways that he can convince me otherwise: he can fall to the floor with his hands behind his head, he can turn around and run away, he can put his hands in the air and explain that he is in the wrong house and will quietly wait until the police come, he can show me his badge. The point is that the onus is and should be on him to satisfy me that he is harmless. The onus is not on me to determine what, in fact, are his intentions. This I cannot do.
Who has said that they "agree with KILLING them in favor of other methods as if killing is the safest option and the only option need considering"? My position, and I think that of many of the posters in this thread, is that when someone breaks into a person's home they have forfeited any claim to the benefit of the doubt. My position is that a person has the right to be secure in his own home. My position is that I should not be required to allow an intruder to strike first before I am entitled to act to defend myself or my family.
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An attacker has all the advantages. They know when the attack is going to take place, how they are going to complete the attack and are prepared with the needed weapons.
The difference between ontology and epistemology was never such a deadly gap as when it comes to law, liability, and self defense.
When a person wants to legally defend themselves they must accept liability for their choices. Increasing that liability only further hinders the defender.
Liability deals entirely with what a third party can know about a situation.
Defense deals with what is happening in that situation and what the defender knows about the situation.
Setting extremely high liability standards on a defender is a quick way to get them killed, and or a way to put people in prison who only wanted to protect their own lives against an unwanted aggressor.
Placing clear guidelines, and setting up places which society considers sacred, like the home, is a way for all of society to acknowledge the facts above, while telling those that would forcible enter a home they must be on notice to loose their lives and the government is not going to harm the defender for a lack of epistemic justification for their actions.
Sounds good to me.
Also acknowledging this is not the same as saying the person breaking into my home deserves to die, that I will necessarily shoot them, or that ethically one choice or another is justified.
We could role play the encounters till the end of time and probably never assemble a complete set of conditions, and appropriate justified actions, no less have everyone agree. So why try?
The difference between ontology and epistemology was never such a deadly gap as when it comes to law, liability, and self defense.
When a person wants to legally defend themselves they must accept liability for their choices. Increasing that liability only further hinders the defender.
Liability deals entirely with what a third party can know about a situation.
Defense deals with what is happening in that situation and what the defender knows about the situation.
Setting extremely high liability standards on a defender is a quick way to get them killed, and or a way to put people in prison who only wanted to protect their own lives against an unwanted aggressor.
Placing clear guidelines, and setting up places which society considers sacred, like the home, is a way for all of society to acknowledge the facts above, while telling those that would forcible enter a home they must be on notice to loose their lives and the government is not going to harm the defender for a lack of epistemic justification for their actions.
Sounds good to me.
Also acknowledging this is not the same as saying the person breaking into my home deserves to die, that I will necessarily shoot them, or that ethically one choice or another is justified.
We could role play the encounters till the end of time and probably never assemble a complete set of conditions, and appropriate justified actions, no less have everyone agree. So why try?
Me 2.
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Belz...
Fiend God
It's either all black or all white, right ?
The guy in your pool is not threatening you in any way. Different situations call for different solutions, but many posters here don't seem to see that. It's much easier for them to construct a strawman version of someone's position, then apply it to every situation in the universe to make sure it sounds ridiculous. Except in real life, that's not how the law works.
Belz...
Fiend God
One thing I've learned in my years on this forum is that even 'skeptics' have some amazing abilities to ignore reality, particularily when it comes to subjects that are not about the supernatural or woo science.
I mean, I'm sure you and I would disagree quite a bit about gun laws, but even my revulsion for firearms (the very thought that people on the street as I go to work may be armed chills me) doesn't make me argue for nonsense. Lowpro's posts seem, as I said, more idealistic than realistic. If he were in that situation, and I hope he never is, I think he might not act the way he says one should.
Another thing I've learned on these forums is to avoid extremes. Especially in social issues, the people shouting "white" and the people shouting "black" are almost always both wrong. So I try to point out the wrong on both sides.
Belz...
Fiend God
Yeah, if Steven Seagal has taught me anything, it's that it's easy to disarm people with firearms.
Nessie
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Reasonable and a rising scale of force works in practice as well. Maximum force against an unknown is reckless.
Polaris
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Yeah, if Steven Seagal has taught me anything, it's that it's easy to disarm people with firearms.
Yup, he just sings to them and they blow their brains out.
Nessie
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There should be a defence of took all reasonable precautions. So if the police attend and see a gap in a wall where a gun safe used to be, or a prized open gun safe, no charges.
Lowpro
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Then you absolutely should be the LAST person who gets to make the call on whether he lives or dies. Of course you should put your life first and protecting your family too but you're also going to kill someone in summary execution which is what it is. There is so much dissonance in saying it's defense of your life when you life isn't in danger and if you were incapacitating it wouldn't be so bad but you're killing with absolute intent to kill which you made sure you said clearly.
You posted again later and I'll address your questions in this one too:
(1) I have an alarm system ( I know not everyone does but the system is there as a measure to deter an intruder and also to receive quick response to a break-in. If they sought me out even if an alarm was going off I would actually be with you that they're probably breaking in to get to me. I would lock my bedroom door (I've had one break in where my alarm went off and I did that first thing). I could also just run outside of the house, that is an option. Other than that I have a canister of bear spray but I want to make it clear: I don't have intent to kill at that stage, I don't have any significant demonstrable threat to my life unless it's clearly telegraphed. I will not seek out the intruder (not saying you said that but I wanted to make it clear)
(2) If he comes upon my hiding spot which would be my room then either he breaks down my locked door. Right about there I'd definitely spray the can empty or hell I'd just run out through my patio door. If he broke down my door using a weapon or shot through the door then while I don't have a firearm of my own if that happened to you at that point kill the intruder. You have my eternal blessing on that.
(3) Incapacitate runs the gamut but what I really am implying is that I am not choosing to kill to protect myself unless I am in danger of losing my life. What you describe isn't danger to your life in any tangible sense. I know you disagree but somehow you think that by only being in your house and ignoring your warnings means your life is in immediate danger so you intend to kill them would not fly anywhere else but we make that exception for the home. I know it's a damned blurry line but killing someone because of that doesn't sit right to me. In no way have I ever attempted to compromise your safety in this discussion, or remove your ability to defend yourself but the rubric by which you're deciding to intend to kill someone seems lacking.
Oh yea I forgot I was answering how I'd incapacitate them. Using methods without intent to kill. Honestly if you shot him in the leg with a live round I am not really all that opposed to it because your intent is to cripple not kill. But you aren't saying that's how you will defend yourself, you're saying straight up shoot to kill. I don't know if civilians are allowed to purchase nonlethal rounds but they aren't off the table. Even if you killed an intruder on accident say you hit them with a baseball bat and the blow killed them that is an accident (a foreseeable one of course but unless the killing blow was also the 20th blow to the skull I probably won't consider it intentional killing). You don't have the ability to tell an intruders intent. You can infer by their actions and you seem to be doing that such as inferring that if they ignore your warnings then either they're deaf or don't understand you or they don't intend to obey you. Outright killing them for that is too far and is not proper force for defense at least in my eyes. I don't know how it came to be codified that way and I wonder if it'll ever be reassessed. I think it definitely should be.
(4) What happens after I incapacitate? Well the first thing is if they are incapacitated I'm still calling the police (again I use an alarm system and ADT will call my home and I'll explain. The first thing I would think of is if there are more than this one intruder and if I used bear spray that's not necessarily going to incapacitate them by knocking them out though I imagine it probably would do a lot to nullify their ability to do what they want (especially if it requires them to see. It could backfire, say if they had a gun they would possibly start shooting blindly but IF they have a gun then like I said all bets are off and you can shoot to kill. This all assumes I haven't just run out of the house still, another option. I imagine that because I live alone that option is easier. You live with a family (I assume) so it's harder to gather them up to run away.
(5) am I willing to lose my life to show the world that I am a "better/more moral" person. I'm not willing to kill someone in summary execution and I don't think anyone should. The fact that you don't value even the life of a criminal and intend to kill them does little to separate you from any other killer. You don't kill people because of an assumption as weak as them just trespassing into your house (I know you also have an assumption that they've heard your warnings and ignored them). That doesn't even make me a "more" moral person because that's just the standard we're supposed to be living in as law abiding citizens. For some reason your household becomes a weird exception where you become the arbiter of the situation and how you handle it without any kind of due process and can actually just kill someone without much recourse. I get there's an immediacy to the events and you don't have the time/mind reading capabilities but to me that makes it sound like you don't have good reasons then to kill them either. It's a bit of a rules of engagement and you shooting them first absolutely is a preemptive strike with intent to kill without any real assessment that the intruder has intent to kill; that's all in your arbitrary rubric ( you said that past your warnings you will assume they are there to harm you or your family...that's your assumption which = kill the guy) and your rubric doesn't involve what I would consider proper leverage of force especially deadly force. The same rubric that you could use to kill a guy who may actually be there to kill you but you killed him before any real tangible intent to harm occurs.Let's say you did kill him and in his pocket was a note that said "Someone's going to die tonight and it's either me or you, and if you're reading this then dammit I lost" With hindsight it's easier to call what you did "the right thing" but then if you used that same rubric to kill a guy who broke into your house to make a sandwich or was honestly lost/confused and having a gun pointed at him escalates the situation by a lot (he does less flight and more fight because hey, you just provided VERY clear intent to harm and if you're like him then well the situation gets flipped though the law does not support him in any way, doesn't mean it magically changes the way he will behave) that probably isn't defense of your life, that's "trespass and die".
Don't preach to me saying that I'd rather die with a clean conscience. I just think it's prudent to leverage proper force rather than use cowboy logic. When my life is in real danger like they do have a gun or an edged weapon (the classic deadly weapons; macguyvering it with proximity weapons I'm probably fine with too because that's still being involved in an attack) I don't personally want to intend to kill them but I won't say you shouldn't either. But when it's trespassing and they haven't telegraphed that (in a reasonable way like ones I've mentioned. Yours about ignoring verbal warnings and maybe coming at you even AFTER you have a gun pointed at them I'd like to say shoot to cripple before shoot to kill; rather don't intend to outright kill them) then you're killing preemptively. Just because they're criminals and may behave like criminals means you get to behave like one too or at least we should hold you to a law abiding standard rather than change the law to lower standards because again we prefer dead criminals over dead homeowners given the choice.
Nessie
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That makes you sound like a gun salesman intent in putting the fear into me.
You are creating fear scenarios to justify shooting first and asking questions later. That is the fear that resulted in the OP incident.
Yes. I wish more people would consider if they just have the fear and that is not a good enough reason to have a gun for self defence.
If you'd only written that, your post would have been a lot better.
Lowpro
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In what way? Do intruders somehow lose their ability to feel the same fear a homeowner does? Do they not undergo the same thoughts of the homeowner "What if he has a gun and intends to kill me" etc etc.
The law doesn't protect the intruder but neither does it change the way he may think either.
So no there was no dissonance in that.
Lowpro
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You are again conflating defense with intent to kill here which is what I am trying to say needs proper leverage. I didn't say you need them to strike first before you can defend yourself I said that you should meet it with proper leverage. Instead it goes all the way up the ladder to "Kill" without any requirement to assess when you can kill them. You don't have to give them the benefit of the doubt but killing them for intruding doesn't seem a proper response either. But not only do we allow it we seem to say it's the only safe option to homeowners. Because again no one likes to hear about dead homeowners and we love to hear about dead criminals. But when we are also expected to utilize proper force in everywhere EXCEPT the home I don't see why the home becomes the exception.
Polaris
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Who cares what the intruder feels? He shouldn't have broken into someone's house.
Lowpro
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You're missing the point. I'm not saying he should get some protection in the law on whether he's breaking into a house but that doesn't make his life forfeit or at least it shouldn't. We require a lot more evidence before we can justify killing a criminal even in self defense OUTSIDE the home. But inside where it's almost some crazy Schrodinger's Cat where you don't know what to expect so you expect the worst it's fine to just straight up kill him for trespassing and the "what ifs" fear homeowners have. They are the ones who get to decide that all on their own.
Oh and the intruder cares about what he feels. At that moment his behavior actually matters a lot, in fact its his behavior that telegraphs intent to the homeowner. The fact that we think it's fine to ignore that seems weird to me.
Lowpro
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Again you're trying to avoid the point especially with the disabled category (Unless your disability means you're blind then you probably shouldn't be shooting a gun anyways but I digress) If the intruder is in your home and does everything we talked about you still have a right to defend yourself but defending yourself by killing the intruder still should be tempered with an actual assessment of your life being in danger. If they broke in and were stealing your crap your life probably isn't in danger. If they walked into your room with a knife (and no steak ) then right about there you can unload lethal or nonlethal that one's up to you.
Nessie
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I agree with Lowpro. You cannot leap straight to deadly force in self defence. The problem with a gun is that as soon as you draw it, you are pretty limited as to what you can do and too many gun owners escalate non deadly incidents into deadly ones.
I think armed citizens who shoot and kill people they are scared of, but not immediately and directly threatened by with deadly force (which is what happened in the incident in the OP and with the Texan who shot the Scottish tourist) are wrong and I think need to be held accountable and punished.
There is clearly a huge training gap in how to deal with self defence and I am convinced anyone who wants a gun for defence should have to obtain a licence to get permission and go on a thorough training course with refreshers.
The aim would be to reduce inappropriate shootings (such as in the OP), shootings of innocents (such as accidents) and guns at home getting into the wrong hands (such as Adam Lanza).
Having to be licensed and trained would also be a way of weeding out nuts who want guns.