My claim is simple - shooting an unarmed person is a criminal act. You’re supposed to address that, not to change the subject.
Says who ?
She can use any weapon she wants to arrest him, but she can’t simply kill him on sight unless he has threatened her life. What if the man is only a drunk?
In many cases, using a firearm is the only way a weaker victim is able to defend his/herself against a stronger aggressor. There is nothing criminal about it whatsoever.
If you are the kind of tyrant who would prosecute an old woman for using a firearm in self defense against a physically fit male intruder, you belong at DemocraticUnderground.com.
What about rape victims? If an unarmed naked man is trying to rape a woman, would you want to prosecute her if she shot him? What kind of person are you?
There’s no need to resort to ad hominems. In The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard addresses a tangential point - the treatment of suspects by the police. He actually allows for all manner of torture, but only if the person turns out to be guilty. That is, the cop can do what he wants to the person in custody, but with the understanding that if the person turns out to be innocent, the cop can be prosecuted. It seems that all your concerns about the lack of knowledge apply here too, so if Juan’s, and my, reasoning is mistaken, then so is Rothbard’s.
We have been told, again and again, that proportionality does not apply to self-defense, but we have yet to see a defense of why proportionality does not apply to self-defense. In its place, we’ve seen all manner of consequentialist and utilitarian defenses, which I think we can all agree do not answer the question.
Of course the doctrine of proportionality applies to self defense. I don’t think anyone would argue that it’s justified to shoot someone for walking across your lawn on the way to the neighbor’s house.
The question is, of the range of options available to the defender, which can justly be employed in a given situation.
And yes, this can depend to some degree on the mental state of the defender - especially from a moral perspective, maybe less so from a legal one.
Ego,
I love name calling and such. You said someplace else that socialist anti-war protesters should be jailed - that hardly adds to your libertarian credentials.
The title of this thread is clear - shooting intruders. You can argue that it’s OK to kill somebody who is trying to kill you - I have no problem with that and I’d call it self-defense. Now, the idea that it’s libertarian to kill any intruders is in my not so humbly opinion, nonsense.
He was insulting, condescending, and anti-victim, so I called him a leftist tyrant. No biggie. [:)]
I have explained why punishing victims for defending themselves is evil. There is nothing wrong with being “utilitarian” about defending rights. Tell me, what would do you want to happen if a weak old woman shot a physically intimidating unarmed intruder? Punish her? What about my rape example? Would you punish the victims, too?
Please, please, please don’t make things up out of thin air. Thanks, it’s really misleading!
Here is the post:
And could you address the two examples outlined in my response to you? What would you do?
Not if the intruder is a strangler. Proportionality does not equate to playing fair.
Edited.
Excuse me ?
What I said was concise and clear. Shooting intruders is not self-defense. If you can’t address such a claim, fine. It may suggest that you need to reconsider your position.
Do you read what I write ? I already said
"You can argue that it’s OK to kill somebody who is trying to kill you - I have no problem with that and I’d call it self-defense. "
The problem is being utilitarian in determing whether or not a rights violation has occurred. Your argument, including the rape case, boil down to consequences. If we’re going to be consequentialist about it, then, I should point out that your criteria make it very difficult to prosecute any murderer at all. The person accused of murder would need only to establish that they had a subjective feeling of threat - and how exactly could the prosecution disprove this claim?
No one, as far as I know, would disagree with you that “punishing victims for defending themselves” is evil. The question is just what are the bounds of self-defense. Specifically, I didn’t disagree with you all that much on the legal question, certainly in the case of an intruder. I support the Castle Principle, which gives the legal benefit of the doubt to the homeowner. Having agreed, at least in obvious cases, on the legal question, the moral question remains open, and relevant. The law needs to be, in a sense, algorithmic - it needs to come up with answers in every case, and in cases where it’s unclear, we need to know ahead of time which way it will lean. Morality doesn’t have this pressing nature, and allows for, in my opinion, more fruitful discussions. Having established that the homeowner shouldn’t be punished for his action, it still remains a question as to whether or not he acted correctly, whether or not his act was just, and what he should do.
FYI, as I discussed on other threads, I am not an Objectivist, and one of my strongest points of disagreement with Objectivism is the moral value assigned to life. I simply don’t think that protecting my life outweighs other moral concerns - and I think most people can be pushed to a point where they agree, as well. Demonstrating that adherence to what I claimed as a moral conduct would lead to death will not dissuade me.
That is impossible. There are an infinite number of situations that would need to be accounted for. A legal code cannot specify exactly what is legal and illegal in every conceivable situation. In fact, the attempt to do so would result in less justice, not more.
The purpose of a legal code is to establish the general principles of justice. The application of those principles to any specific case must be done by human beings - juries, judges, arbitrators, etc.
I agree with the rest of your post though.
Let me tackle that.
Proportionality always applies, but actions during a crime and actions after a crime have different relations to the same crime, because of the factor of time.
If Joe is trespassing, I can use physical force to remove him and end the trespass. However, If I found out that Joe has previously trespassed I can not find him and batter him. My compensation would be financial only.
I’d say that deadly force is proportional during the commission of a murder, but never as an after the fact punishment.
Then it seems you are not arguing that proportionality doesn’t apply to defense. In any case, though, I fail to see just how you can see death as proportionate to trespass.
I did not intend to prove that it is.
Proportionality requires the response you give to an intruder in your front yard be different than to one in your bedroom.
Probability must play into this, and the benefit of doubt must fall towards the inhabitant. Its kind of like being robbed by someone with an unloaded gun. If someone threatens you with a gun, the assumption is that it is loaded. If we find out later the gun was empty that does not change how we look at the crime, or invalidate any attempt towards self defense.
In a fight, you do not want even odds. The idea of a fair fight does not exist. You don’t know what your opponent’s assets are, and for every second you take in a “fair fight” that is one seconds’ less endurance that you have to fend the person off if they present a weapon - be it a knife, a gun, or even a stick. Sorry people, but that’s just the facts. I’ve been trained in hand-to-hand, grappling, stick fighting, swordplay, and firearms. I’ve never been in a fair fight, not even in sparring match. Speaking with other martial artists has convinced me that fair fights don’t exist. The best thing you can do is find something immediately that makes the fight unfair. Grab a stick, a knife, a gun, whatever, (or even go do some serious combatives/martial arts training) but make it clear to the person that he needs to leave or it’s going to result in very serious harm, or even death. If that person refuses to leave - as the original poster clearly stated in his hypothetical situation - then his refusal implies that he has the means to press an attack against you in spite of your obviously superior position. He could be drunk, on drugs, or he could have a weapon. (Sorry, but the only time a rational person stands and fights against a weapon is if they are either desperate or armed themselves. In either case, your life is threatened. That individual is clearly either derranged, desperate, or armed.) Your only recourse at that point is to incapacitate him, that is to remove - temporarily or permanently - his ability to fight. If you fail to incapacitate them from the onset, you will in all likelihood lose. Remember: you are being attacked. You don’t have the initiative unless you either have superior fighting skill to seize the initiative, or the ability to cheat to take the initiative - such as presenting a weapon.
Further, shooting to wound doesn’t happen. Believe me…it looks great in the movies, but it is extremely rare off the silver screen. First off, handguns aren’t that accurate. Second, your adreniline will be pumping, so your fine-tuned hand-eye coordination will be off. Yeah, you may be able to empty an entire magazine under a quarter at the shooting range, but can you do that under stress? In most cases, I’m sorry, but I’m going to say I doubt it. You always shoot center mass (chest cavity right around the heart), and you shoot in a steady pattern until the person no longer presents a threat.
Though I think we can all agree to disregard logic such as this, the participants in this thread all need to clear up their stances and be aware of any arbitrary distinctions that arise. I don’t believe that anyone here is against self defense. If an “intruder” is heading directly at you with a gun drawn, we are in agreement that shooting him is okay. If he were to instead have a knife, still I think some would agree that the shooting is justified. Where we seem to be coming into conflict, and it is probably all semantic, is if the “intruder” is unarmed. If he is charging at you with a raised fist and mad glint in his eye, some think shooting him is acceptable. Some of you, however, point out that it is possible that even though he is obviously attempting to hurt you, he may not be intending to kill you, and therefore shooting him in the head is unacceptable. With the Gun scenario, it is clear that shooting him in the leg will hardly curb the intruders ability to kill you, so lethal force is allowed. With the others, it could be argued that a leg shot is all that is necessary.
There have been some jabs and jokes about toes and neighbors walking across your lawn, but I want to make one thing clear: if your property is in question, under normal and guilt-free circumstances, you have complete jurisdiction over it. But before you decide that I must be that guy with the “trespassers will be shot” sign on my fence, hear me out. If I have jurisdiction over my property, I therefore have the right to make sure that any unwanted persons will be removed. I have a right to not have you sitting in my living room, yes? Or can you barge in whenever you please, like a sitcom?
If an intruder entered your house and attempted to assault you, they are clearly demonstrating a complete lack of recognition of your jurisdiction over your property–he refuses to leave, and on top of that, tries to attack your own person. Is he not, according to Rothbard, implicitly declaring a lack of jurisdiction over his own? So what’s wrong with shooting him? I believe the answer is nothing.
I also get the feeling that many of you are making a moral distinction between killing and maiming, which is not necessarily wrong, but very interesting to me. In your nonlethal scenario, once we’ve shot the intruder, there are obviously an infinite number of ways of removing the knife from the suspect and incapacitating him, not merely shooting him in the head. But if killing is inhumane, does that mean that anything shy of it is not? What if we then worked out a plan to shoot every major tendon in his body, as well as his hands, feet, kneecaps and elbows (oh, and shoulders!) so as to minimize the risk to our person as much as possible before rolling him out the door? I believe you all are making a mistake in determining that killing is objectively worse than maiming. Yes, it happens to be that in 99% of healthy people, their number-one priority is living. Their life is the most important thing. But haven’t you seen movies with torture scenes, etc.? When situations change, people’s priorities change. Suddenly, when before they were screaming “Stop, you’re going to kill me!” they begin screaming “Stop! Please kill me!” Your body is your property, whether your most valuable or otherwise. And its value is subjective. And if the value of your property in your mind can change, is it not reasonable that your permitted abilities with regards to protecting it should be constant, no matter what its value to you at that particular moment? Protecting your carpet or T.V., no matter how insane it will inevitably make you [look], is actually the same as protecting your physical well-being.
Obviously this scenario isn’t exactly realistic, as one would actually leave a body to be documented to help prove your innocence, etc. And obviously this can all be taken to extremes, but I suppose I should address the most likely scenarios that will be brought against me. Scenarios of people walking across lawns and therefore giving me the right to shoot them through my living room window are fallacious. Why? Because there is a social subtext to things like yards and walkways that lead to front doors. People use that to approach and attempt to communicate. There is a general understanding (at least in most societies) that one may walk up to your door and knock without being fired upon. Now, if I haven’t taken my medication and I respond to the knock, and open the door brandishing a loaded gun and demanding that they get the F*** off my “propertaye” they would hopefully do so. If they refuse they find might a bullet in their chest. Yeah, I won’t be making friends or getting invitations to community picnics, but that’s purely because I stupidly chose to sidestep any and all social courtesies.
The verbal warning is not a necessary prerequisite to the use of force, especially in cases like a man with a gun barging into your bedroom. What it is, is a very effective tool for determining whether or not someone intends to harm you, steal something, or any other form of violating your jurisdiction over your property. Because in all honesty it can be very vague, and telling them that you are going to stop what they are doing by any means necessary unless they get the hell away from you or off your property is a FANTASTIC way of clearing it up. But it is, as I said, a social courtesy and nothing more.
Saying that will likely rile up some angry responses, and some will say that I’m advocating rampant, thoughtless violence, etc. But consider this: people get away with murder all the time. You may not like it, but they do. All it takes is being alone, and you can often do what you want. There’s no way to fully stop that on a civilian-to-civilian basis, aside from Big Brother, but that adds a whole new slew of problems. And I think we can all agree on that.
This is what Rothbard really said
Secondly, we may ask: must we go along with those libertarians who claim that a storekeeper has the right to kill a lad as punishment for snatching a piece of his bubble gum? What we might call the “maximalist” position goes as follows: by stealing the bubble gum, the urchin puts himself outside the law. He demonstrates by his action that he does not hold or respect the correct theory of property rights. Therefore, he loses all of his rights, and the storekeeper is within his rights to kill the lad in retaliation.
I propose that this position suffers from a grotesque lack of proportion. By concentrating on the storekeeper’s right to his bubble gum, it totally ignores another highly precious property-right: every man’s—including the urchin’s—right of self-ownership. On what basis must we hold that a minuscule invasion of another’s property lays one forfeit to the total loss of one’s own? I propose another fundamental rule regarding crime: the criminal, or invader, loses his own right to the extent that he has deprived another man of his. If a man deprives another man of some of his self-ownership or its extension in physical property, to that extent does he lose his own rights.[5] From this principle immediately derives the proportionality theory of punishment-best summed up in the old adage: “let the punishment fit the crime.”
Though your quote is about punishment (Post Facto), you bring up an interesting point. But there is something in my above post that you failed to note that is incredibly relevant: the fact that value is subjective (something I doubt you disagree with). Most people in the Western world are familiar with the concept of “let the punishment fit the crime.” And of course, it is not meant to be taken literally–conversions must be made. Smashing a window no longer means that the State will in turn smash your window. But how does one accurately create equivalent punishments for a crime? With human guesswork. They can never really know the true intensity of the infraction because whatever was damaged held a subjective value to its owner that was probably unique when compared to anyone else’s in the world. True, it is easier when it comes to things that get damaged, but it is not always so simple. I am not disagreeing with you necessarily, but I don’t believe that system is any more exact than the human guesswork that goes into deciding whether or not someone is a “threat.”