Sword-wielding resident confronts alleged thief

[Internal Boxer]

"My weak nitpicking points are the same points that people who don't agree with US use in courts and the Houses of Parliament. If you don't argue more objectively, you're gonna be stuck on the net while they erode your liberties further. "


"My post was based on knowledge of the workings of local govt, communities, police etc: when you've researched the stats and talked to some of these people instead of wittering on about your ****ing dreams and putting up a black and white 'poll', then you can have an opinion as 'subjective' as mine! LOL"

Your right and your post was purely objective........ BWAAAAHHAAAAAA. Mate practice what you preach, post objective posts yourself not the ramblings of a feeble mind.

Working in Local Gov, I have more contact with Councillors, MP's political machines, I think you over estimate your own mental ability and intellectual capacity, reasoning and logic.


"Man, forget gassing old people, bomb Manchester!"

LOL your about 8 years too late you plonker rodney, the IRA already did it, must be nice in you unreality bubble, mmm wish the rest of us could hide away in la la land like you!!

[KC Elbows]

Aside from the flames, interesting dicussion.

It always amazes me how good discussions pop up on this board from initial articles that don't really apply.

I mean, we are talking about the aryan dude who shot the gypsy kid in the back, an attempted execution, right?

And those kids ARE being tried for their crimes, those that survive, right?

That guy's not being charged for defending his home, had he just successfully defended his home, he wouldn't have nearly as much to worry about.

It was that execution bit that put it over the edge.

I mean, self defense advocates need to start putting more attention on the positive examples of problems with the law, and stop making use of weirdos like Bernard Goetz and this aryan dude who WERE NEVER on trial for defending themselves, but for taking part in executions AFTER defending themselves. Bit of a difference there.

However, it's good that a better discussion can come out of it than it deserves.

[Christopher M]

Originally posted by Mat
He should not have been allowed to keep a gun. In fact, his licence had been revoked some years earlier, so it was illegal anyway, regardless of his mental state.

I don't think anyone's complaining about the possession charge. It's more the murder thing that people are upset about.

Now read my posts again very carefully. This is important. I was not implying any alternative in regard to culpability of people with a moral dysfunction.

Then what are you implying?

You went out of your way above to make sure your statements about his moral state were very explicit, and very explicitly related to how the law treats him, so I have it on good authority (yours) you're trying to say something on this topic. What is it?

To clarify, I was trying to point out previously that when the sense of right and wrong is diminished in criminal cases, culpibility is also meant to diminish. You've clarified above that you don't propose any alternative.

However, the opposite has occurred here; at least, and I mean this specifically with respect to your original comment on the thread: "Regardless of who the kid was or what he did, Tony Martin is a borderline psychotic with regressional tendencies and obsessive compulsive disorders and a dangerous sociopath."

So it's not clear what you're trying to say.

you had implied in your previous post that I knew little about the case

Could you point out the section of my previous post where I did that, please?

I'm sorry that I offended you.

[Christopher M]

Kung Lek

On the practical front, and per my previous post to you, I'm still very curious as to what you recommend a home-owner do.

This seems to me to be the very crux of the issue, including Internal Boxer's and Watchman's points (re: Jedi-like powers).

[GeneChing]

Yeah, you *******s would have plugged me if it was your house. Don't deny it. That's the thanks I get for keeping this forum running for y'all.

Seriously, I think the issue here is about knee-jerk reactions and martial myopia. Surely if your space is invaded in a potentially life threatening way, you must defend. I mean, this is a kung fu forum, after all. So to me, the question is whether a home intruder automatically constitutes a life threatening home invasion. If you think it is always so, I'd have to suggest that your spending too much time in a fantasy world. There are so many possible scenarios that wouldn't warrent such a reaction. Give the forum and the net a break and go outside.

Here's another real life scenario. No, not me breaking into friend's houses again. Quite the opposite. I used to live in this funky old house in SF - it had been turned around so my front door was actually the old back door and split into two rentals. We had the upstairs and there was this nice family downstairs. One day I was kicking back and these two kids I'd never seen before walks right into my bedroom. They were around 10 or so. It turns out that they were friends of the kids downstairs and got mixed up as to which door was the right door and went into mine, which I had accidently left open (it was a funky old house and the front/back door lock didn't always work right.) So should I have clobbered them with my nunchuks? Of course not. As soon as I saw them, I knew they were not a serious threat. It was a bit shocking, but a decent martial artist trains to think when shocked, not react by killing everybody. Any decent human being would have made the same judgement, irregardless of training. Now my two breaking and entering scenarios are clear examples, but I could certainly imagine scenarios that are more ambiguous.

[Laughing Cow]

Here is another example, I have quiet often witnessed.

At one stage of my life I did quiet a bit of sharing of premises with friends.

At times it happened that one of my friends brought a drunk buddy home to crash on the couch in the communal area, coming home late and the other occupants being asleep nobody was informed.

Come 04:00 the drunk Guy needs to hit the loo and starts looking around for it, ebing unfamiliar with his surroundings he knocks things, etc.
You wake up and hear someone moving around the House, you know it is none of your mates.

What do you do now??
BTW, at that time everybody in the house owned a Firearm, burglar bars and other preventive measures did exist.
As we were living in an area with a very high crime-rate where 10yr old Kids got killed for their bicycles.

[Christopher M]

Originally posted by GeneChing
So to me, the question is whether a home intruder automatically constitutes a life threatening home invasion. If you think it is always so, I'd have to suggest that your spending too much time in a fantasy world.

This isn't anyone's position.

The question is: how can you tell if it's a life threatening situation?

And if you can't tell, who get's the benefit of the doubt, you or the criminal?

Until you address those points, you're only arguing with yourself.

[David Jamieson]

And if you can't tell, who get's the benefit of the doubt, you or the criminal?

I think that's the point that was made with the example of the kids walking in mistakenly.

The benefit of the doubt tends to go to the property owner, but there is always evidence that is weighed against a humanitarian factor dependent entirely on the Judges interpretation of the written law.

And what do you mean by "what is a homeowner expected to do?" Is this an out that by default allows people to shoot other people that are on their property regardless of the scenario?

Do you think there is a solution to every scenario that can be outlined in minutia as to how a person should act in any of a thousand given situations?

I think that every society has an underlying social ethic and based upon that, the behaviour of it's citizens can be more or less peaceful. I also think that if we expect the worse en masse, then that's all there is going to be in our minds and it will perpetuate into a manifest reality. Kind of Orwellian, but there you have it.

So where do we draw the line when it comes to citizens shooting each other for stealing property, or even citizens becoming vigilantes at the other end?

The more that a society becomes a grouping of camps the worse it will get. The root of the problem is deeper than being prosecuted if you shoot a burglar. It's at a socio-economic level as well. The criminal element will only get hardened as it adapts to the hardening civilian protectionists.

cheers

[Christopher M]

Originally posted by Kung Lek
I think that's the point that was made with the example of the kids walking in mistakenly.

How does a situation where it's utterly obvious what's going on address the problem of what to do in an ambiguous situation?

Is this an out that by default allows people to shoot other people that are on their property regardless of the scenario?

No. That seems like quite a silly position to me. Don't you think so too?

Do you think there is a solution to every scenario that can be outlined in minutia as to how a person should act in any of a thousand given situations?

No. But that doesn't invalidate asking about a specific situation.

I think that every society has an underlying social ethic and based upon that, the behaviour of it's citizens can be more or less peaceful.

Everyone here believes that, so far as I can tell.

I also think that if we expect the worse en masse, then that's all there is going to be in our minds and it will perpetuate into a manifest reality.

You don't expect the worst en masse.

You expect the worst when the cost of not expecting the worst is the death, torture, and/or rape of your loved ones.

So where do we draw the line when it comes to citizens shooting each other for stealing property

The only one here who has suggested citizens shooting each other for stealing property is you. This is what I meant by "you are only arguing with yourself."

[Laughing Cow]

Originally posted by Christopher M

The only one here who has suggested citizens shooting each other for stealing property is you. This is what I meant by "you are only arguing with yourself."

Are you saying that (for example) a US Citizen that commits a burglary, break-in or similar all of a sudden is no longer a US Citizen with all the rights & privileges due to him as a US Citizen?


Pls, provide sources that substantiate this type of thinking.

Cheers.

[Christopher M]

Here's an analogy:

If someone pulls me into an alley and draws a knife on me, some possibilities as to his intentions are: he won't hurt me but will try to take my wallet, and he will kill me.

If the latter is true, it seems we all agree I have the legal right to defend my life with equal threat against his. If the former is true, it seems we all agree that I do not have the legal right to kill him to save a few of my dollars.

Let's hypothesize further that there is some distance between us and he is closing, but I have the acumen and circumstance to react against him.

I have a choice here. I can either choose to assume my life is in danger, and respond with the appropriate force. Or I can choose to assume my life is not in danger, and similarly react appropriately.

Let's assume in either case my assumption is wrong. The cost in the former situation will be the assailant's life. The cost in the latter situation will be mine.

This is what I mean when I say: who gets the benefit of the doubt, the criminal or the victim?

This is what I mean when I say: when the cost of not expecting the worst is the death, torture, and/or rape of you or your loved ones.

So, I've established a model here, and I am furthermore putting forth my personal opinion: that we give the benefit of the doubt to the victim. I am saying explicitly that if confronted with a knife in an alley, the victim has the right to assume his life is being threatened and react appropriately, even though this may not be the case, because the cost of doing otherwise is his own life, and is too high a cost to pay.

Does this mean that if you and some buddy's are fooling around on your way home from a bar, and one of them shows you the new knife he bought, you're legally obliged to kill him? Of course not; this is not at all the situation described.

Does this mean that if you're legally obliged to kill someone over the contents of your wallet? Of course not; this is not at all the situation described.

Now... apply this analogy to the house-invader situation.

Instead of the "implied but ambiguous threat" of someone pulling a knife on you, there is the "implied but ambiguous threat" of someone breaking into your house with criminal intent.

Apply the exact same logic as above, and you'll find my (and I presume Watchman's, Internal Boxer's, and Blackjack's) positions on this topic.

Similarly, are we saying that it's ok to kill people over property? No. That it's ok to kill criminals? No. That it's ok to kill kids who walk into your house? No. That it's ok to kill drunks your roomies bring home? No. As with the two "silly" examples brought up in the knife-alley situation, none of these situations are described by this position for home-invaders.

I hope that clarifies things.

[Christopher M]

Originally posted by Laughing Cow
Are you saying that a US Citizen that commits a burglary, break-in or similar all of a sudden... no longer [due] the rights & privileges due to him as a US Citizen?

Yes.

Pls, provide sources that substantiate this type of thinking.

Substantiation: that burglars are thrown in jail. To my knowledge, despite the efforts of the office of Homeland Security, this is still against the rights & privileges due people as US citizens.

Cheers.

[Laughing Cow]

Christpher M.

May I suggest you re-read the US Consitution and Homeland Security act with a Lawyer at hand, who can explain it to you.

I think like with many other discussion I see you holding here, you are insisting that your viewpoint is correct and the true one when in reality it is slanted and skewed by what your perception of what you would like it to be.

This is not an attack, but an observation based on your posts on this board.

[joedoe]

Originally posted by Christopher M


Yes.



Substantiation: that burglars are thrown in jail. To my knowledge, despite the efforts of the office of Homeland Security, this is still against the rights & privileges due people as US citizens.

Cheers.

I think you will find that legally this is not correct. They are still considered US citizens, but their criminal status means that they are incarcerated. If you kill a man in jail, you are still charged with murder.

[Christopher M]

Originally posted by Laughing Cow
May I suggest you re-read the US Consitution and Homeland Security act with a Lawyer at hand, who can explain it to you.

Yes you may.

May I suggest that if you disagree with something, you state that disagreement rather than making an ambiguous appeal to a percieved authority along with the assumption of other people's knowledge?

you are insisting that your viewpoint is correct

I'm insisting on having a viewpoint, on being able to explain it, and being able to repond to arguments against it.

I'm not sure why you believe that to be inappropriate.