Reply #3: just wondering [View All]

Had he known <that the intruder had choked his daughter unconscious>,
he would have shot the intruder, Bruun said yesterday.

"Every parent I've talked to said they would have shot him.
It's the basic instinct to protect your child," said the Marysville man."

How exactly does shooting a person who has assaulted one's child but who has stopped doing so "PROTECT" one's child??? (See later for the alternative scenario.)

We do all have a lot of basic instincts. One of mine is to acquire and eat chocolate. Nonetheless, the law tells me that I may not acquire chocolate unless I have paid the person who owns it. It calls "acquiring chocolate without paying the person who owns it" "theft". And my "basic instinct" just isn't a defence to a charge of theft, last time I looked.

The law also calls "killing or seriously injuring the person who is assaulting your child, where killing or injuring that person is not necessary in order to protect your child from death or serious injury," "culpable homicide".

We make rules and require that people follow them, and require that if they do not follow them they present the appropriate justification for not following them. If they can't do that, we punish them for breaking the law.

This, much as so many don't seem to like the notion, is the very hallmark of a civilized society. It is, precisely, the rejection of vigilantism and the adoption of the rule of law in its place. Vigilantism is rejected, and the rule of law adopted, precisely so that people who are innocent of wrongdoing are not wrongfully harmed, and also so that people who are guilty of wrongdoing are not disproportionately harmed.

Shooting someone who is not engaged in, or on the point of, harming someone else is simply vigilantism. There are just plain no two ways about it.

Vigilantism can be a symptom of a society in which people do not trust one another or their government to do what they want done. This, of course, does *not* mean that what they want done is acceptable to other people, or consistent with the overarching rules that they have all agreed to live by -- things like respect for the right to life.

A really civilized society has the sophistication to make exceptions to its rules for truly special cases. Self-defence is one of the early exceptions to the rule against homicide and assault. Necessity is a defence to the rule against theft.

Exceptions can also legitimately be made on an ad hoc basis, by a process governed by accepted principles. If the society really does believe that it is an almost irresistible impulse for parents to shoot people who have just assaulted their children, which it could be, then the society could refrain from imposing mandatory minimum sentences for homicide, and allow people who shoot their children's attackers, and are properly convicted of homicide, to serve two years on probation instead of life in prison. Nothing wrong with that at all, in principle.

But a civilized society does have to require respect for its rule that people don't get to kill or injure other people unless they have no alternative, and letting some people do that with impunity simply does not foster respect for that rule. We really are all required to rein in our "basic impulses", and when we don't we really do have to suffer some consequence, lest everyone else follow our lead.

In this case, we have perfect hindsight -- we know that there WAS an alternative. The warning shot apparently worked just fine.

Now, let's say that the householder had caught the intruder in the very act of choking his daughter -- when he *would* have been justified, under the rules, in shooting and even killing him. What kind of an idiot would shoot in that situation? How possible is it that we would now be reading about the shooting death of the daughter? Who would be "responsible" for that one? Surely, by what I gather is the favourite logic around here, it would be the person who pulled the trigger.

Caveat to readers ... although if you're already here I suppose it's too late. If you aren't fond of serious consideration of important issues, please do just click on by. Don't feel under any obligation to "respond" to any of this.

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