How do you feel about using spring guns/ lethal booby traps to protect unoccupied property? In most places, that is illegal and the property owner can be held liable for injuring the burglar. The burglar is in some sense still responsible for their injury, but we’ve also decided that protecting property alone does not justify lethal force.
“The case is notable for the proposition that, although a landowner has no duty to make his property safe for trespassers, he may not set deadly traps against them, holding that “the law has always placed a higher value upon human safety than upon mere rights in property.”
This is the end of my participation in this discussion. Frankly this is EXACTLY what conservatives say when they want to blame victims, and it’s not a defensible position. If you can’t see that you are saying up is down, there’s no point continuing. You’ve accepted a transparently incorrect idea because of cognitive dissonance - you want it to be the case that it’s okay to lash out in violence at some people in some circumstances, so you’ve created a twisted illogical narrative to support that.
I’ve had this discussion before with gun owners, and almost all are pretty okay with shooting and killing someone robbing their home, and it’s just so fucked up to me.
In order to match this situation it seems like they would need to be ok with the robber shooting the gun owner because the robber’s life was in danger.
They definitely don’t believe this because eventually the idea comes down to “it’s morally justifiable to hurt someone if they had it coming”. This is circular reasoning because it presumes that the “bad” person deserves the punishment that they have brought on themselves. It’s emotionally appealing because we like narratives where people are punished for their bad acts. But it’s a bad idea that we recognize as bad when someone overreacts to a minor offense.
The real insight here isn’t that proportionality is a good principle, that’s a time tested and almost universally accepted idea. The insight is to recognize the pyschological frailites that we all have and that give rise to these bad ideas. Social media is a powerful tool for exploiting behavioral and pyschological biases, it’s how misinformation and hate are spreading unchecked.
I agree 100%, I’m just pointing out the absurdity built into the entire premise. Pretti was the one following the law, he was the homeowner/gun owner.
ICE were the ones breaking the law in multiple ways, they then shot Pretti who was obeying the law.
In order for the premise to be 1:1 the robber could shoot the homeowner for legally having a gun and protecting their home. People have already pre-decided the outcome by assuming ICE was in the right to begin with when at no point were they.
Or they should go to jail and serve a sentence in line with the damage they caused their victim. This isn’t hard. You aren’t pro-crime when you say “I don’t think it is right to kill someone for being on my property uninvited.” All you have to do is say “no, I don’t think it’s alright to cripple someone who calls you a name.”
Nope, you are saying they deserved to die, just in a cutesy way, like saying they “committed suicide” or something. They are not dead because they broke into someone’s house, they are dead because someone valued their stuff higher than a human life and murdered them. What we’re trying to say is that this is not desired behavior and should not be enshrined in our laws.
The concept of proportionality is as universal as the psychological resistance to it. Our founders were so concerned about the topic that they devoted an entire amendment to the Bill of Rights to it.
Its odd and I dont agree with it, but I understand it. We have a whole thread dedicated to delicious comeuppance for Trump voters that suffer because of Trump policies. I realize these arent exactly the same thing, but I recognize in myself the desire to see villains punished.
You don’t get free passes to break into other people’s homes while people are there to do god knows what just because you’re poor. Plenty of poor people manage to not break into other people houses. GMAFB
I’m not saying this is wrong. It’s not really a matter of right or wrong. It’s an opinion and a value. But, what if your employer is stealing your wages and you shoot them?
And I’m not saying you don’t have the right to force a trespasser to leave your home. That’s a different thing. I’m talking about the shooting.
