Assume someone breaks into your house and you confront them. They refuse to leave. You have a gun. The only way to dispose of this threat is to shoot them. Nasty business but there’s no alternative.
Yet in his Ethics of Liberty Rothbard states that “under libertarian law, capital punishment would have to be confined strictly to the crime of murder. For a criminal would only lose his right to life if he had first deprived some victim of that same right.”
OK so this isn’t really capital punishment as the intruder hasn’t been convicted but the same principle would seem to apply. The question is, under a libertarian law code, would a homeowner have no choice but to allow an intruder to ransack his home if he couldn’t find a “proportionate” way to remove the intruder?
I’ll be the lone dissenter here. I’d say you have the right to use deadly force only if you legitimately have a reason to think that this person is a threat to your life, not your property. However, legally, if you claim you thought you were in danger of your life, the presumption would have to be that you are not lying - considering after all that this person had broken into your house. So legally I’d be against punishing someone for doing it, but morally I have some questions.
Perhaps you can meet the minimum necessary requirement for the use of force, if deadly force is the ONLY way to get them out - although that situation is so rare that I doubt it’s met in any particular case. What seems definitely not met, though, is proportionality. Suppose deadly force is the minimum action that will get you to stop stepping on my toe. Even though it meets minimum necessary, I’d say it is not justified, since it isn’t proportional. You’ll have to accept a person on your toe as the price of not committing a greater wrong. Same with an intruder, unless that intruder threatens your life.
I agree that everything must be proportional, but I’ll deviate a bit from your position.
I think you should use the least amount of force you feel is necessary to keep you safe and protect your property (and that includes your toe).
If you would feel safe shoving someone to the ground or punching them in the face as a means of self-defense, then do it. If you feel those would result in retaliation, then you can use more.
Is this meant as a legal or moral position? As a legal position, I might be inclined to agree, although hesitantly. As a moral position, though, I’m not clear on what is being ruled out here. Is there any response to aggression that you might agree would be overboard? It seems that there are circumstances in which you’d approve of killing someone to protect your toe from being stepped on. Given that, I doubt there’s much you’d rule out.
Certainly, I like your position more than I like a Randian “they have no rights” position, but I don’t think that my emotions - my feelings - give me a moral blank check to do whatever I like to people. In fact, isn’t the introduction of feelings very dangerous in and of itself? I realize that you mean to also include real aggression, but hasn’t your argument justified the use of force in response to a simple perceived danger? Haven’t you justified preemptive aggression?
My impression of your position is that you are inclined to take the minimum necessary rule strictly, but that you are not inclined to consider proportionality. I know you said you respect proportionality, but I don’t see any weight given to it in your criteria. What you’re advocating appears, if I’m not mistaken, to be a strict minimum necessary position. If you do see the importance of proportionality, how is it respected in your moral prescription?
Certainly you must have an obligation to attempt an arrest of an intruder before you shoot him. Your possession of a firearm, afterall, evens out the force relationship between you and the intruder. If you threaten him with a firearm, there isn’t much that he can do back to you without dying himself.
This is the same principle that says that in war you have to give your opponent the option to surrender.
But if he is also armed, shooting premptively to disable would certainly be the more prudent decision. An armed intruder on your property? If that doesn’t say “clear and immediate threat”, nothing does.
How about if there’s more than one of them? You’d lose your advantage by declaring yourself.
I would say that shooting to disable is a good rule of thumb, unless the intruder is NOT armed, or is a child or crippled or something like that.
warning: this post is scattered and difficult to read
My “everything must be proportional” comment makes sense only in the context of the threat that is posed to you; I shouldn’t have said it.
I realize that you brought up the toe-stepping example as a bit of a joke, but let’s look at it:
Under what circumstances would suspect that someone is about to step on your toe and feel confident that the toe-stepper would do nothing else? Maybe if someone is walking towards you while looking at her cell phone? In that case, no one would reasonably fear any violent backlash by saying, “excuse me” to alert her of your presence.
Not all cases are like that, of course.
If you are attacked by a man who you suspect is armed, firing a shot at his leg could easily result in your own death.The law should side with the victim, not the coecer/aggressor, and trust him/her to use necessary force to pretect his/herself.
If we are talking about intruders, it’s cruel for the government to force you (at gunpoint, we are talking about a legal system) to sit idly by as someone else carries away your belongings (and to be honest, you have no guarantee that you will get them back). If you warn someone and he/she doesn’t stop, you have every right to follow-through on that warning.
However, should you even be forced to warn? What if the intruder already has a weapon drawn, but you are hidden out of sight? In that case, again, the law should trust the victim to use necessary force.
The thing is that the law expects non-criminals to always use astute and keen judgment when confronted with criminals who may or may not be a threat to one’s life. This is expected even though the experience can be suprising and terrifying.
Most people would never go into a person’s dwelling uninvited and most people would not take things that do not belong to them and that simple order makes life pleasant and safe (asside from accidents in the shower and chokeing on unchewed meat.).
Sometimes though there is a person who ignores this natural order and they impose themselves upon us. We are supposed to be able to “know” that this person who is outrageous enough to violate your home is harmless or is a threat that goes beyond just being where they are not supposed to be?
This is quite a burden the State places on the non-criminal. It is assumed that we are supposed to be the protectors of those who behave in an unexpected manner and be able to tell what is a real threat to our lives and what is not. In situations like this the rational response is to think of your life and safety first and not be at all concerned with the intruders life and safety (since they were not concerned with thiers and yours to begin with).
In my world the intruder’s family would owe the victim a free carpet cleaning.
Of course, I think you should have said it, but that’s beside the point.
Actually, I didn’t mean it as a joke, but that’s ok. Once you’re basing justice on my emotions, though, just what does protect the cell-phone talker in this scenario? If I do use more violence than is necessary, but maintain that I, subjectively, felt unsure that she would not retaliate, are we obligated to say that I am still acting justly?
This sounds reasonable, which is why I asked if you were talking legally or morally. If you’re asking what the law should do, then it might be reasonable to allow the use of deadly force in this context. I still have questions as to the details, but I’m not in major disagreement. It’s when we get to the moral question that I may or may not differ, since you’re only presenting your legal suggestion.
Ok, but is it cruel for a moral code to “force” me to do so? I’d say not.
The law has to employ some reason. Someone might be so paranoid as to think that someone glancing at them constitutes a threat, and that is not acceptable. Lines have to be drawn regarding what constitutes a threat in any legal system.
As twirlcan mentioned, if someone is outrageous enough to break into your home, the law shouldn’t say anything that would deter the victims from acting in self defense.
Yes, but you’ve suggested drawing the line based on the subjective mental state of the person who does the shooting. I don’t think that’s a good way to draw it.
Keep in mind that the principle of defense we are establishing applies to all property. If we can kill someone who is intruding in our home, then can’t the police kill someone who is intruding in a street? A warning has to be given first. A threat is established if the warning is defied.
Well, I’m suggesting drawing the line based on a reasonable judgement of threat. I have faith in individuals to act fairly in self-defense.
Whenever gun laws are relaxed, leftists always warn us of “blood baths in the streets”, yet crime and violence generally go down. I don’t think there’s a need to be too concerned.
The doctrine of proportionality does not apply to self defense, only to post facto punishment. Are you willing to bet your own life on the fact that the intruder actually is unarmed or that he could overwhelm you and grab your gun if you don’t fire first? If you are willing to take that bet, I hope that the odds turn out in your favor. I am unwilling to take that bet. Somebody breaks into my house, they are getting a slug in their upper body.