Good guy with an AK47 ...

[Patooka]

I am not saying it is not similar in operation. But that more than 5% of the parts would probably be different.

Say that as much as you'd like. You're wrong.

 

[bilby]

What happens when a 7.62 FMJ round from an AK47 rifle traveling at 2,300 ft/sec penetrates the wall of your house and the wall of your neighbor and kills his 3-year old?

Possible, but unlikely. A round going through two walls may still have enough kinetic energy to be lethal - depending on the material of the siding and what it hits along the way (electric conduits/boxes, studs, etc.) but the chances of hitting such a small target wildly are rather small.

But let's say it happens. The homeowner might face some charges for being reckless, but in any case the robber - if he survives - should be facing felony murder charges.

Why?

What reason is there to elevate the charge of house breaking to murder, because of the actions of someone other than the defendant?

The whole 'felony murder' thing is nuts. Criminals are responsible for their crimes, but they surely aren't responsible for the recklessness of their victims.

You might as well charge someone with murder because they burgled the home of a person who ran down a pedestrian on his way home from work.

 

[laughing dog]

I wonder at what the minimum ratio of “bad guy with a gun” stories to “good guy with a gun” stories “ is to get the gun suckers to become apostates.

 

[Elixir]

I am not saying it is not similar in operation. But that more than 5% of the parts would probably be different.

Say that as much as you'd like. You're wrong.

Unpalatable facts don’t register with RW extremists . Besides, gun deaths are only a fraction of all deaths, so why bother? More people have died from mosquitoes!
Ignorance is bliss - why make Derec miserable?

 

[prideandfall]

1. Murdering someone for picking up a television is not self-defense.

Killing somebody in self defense is not murder.

Murdering someone for picking up a television is not self defense.

2. You pulled that completely out of your ass without any justification or evidence and as such it is so pathetically weak as an argument it shall be summarily dismissed entirely.

I did not and it is not. It is the reality. There are many cases of home invasions where occupants have been harmed (including rapes) or killed.
So no, shooting intruders is not about the TV. Although obviously these scumbags do not have the right to steal people's TVs either.

You did, and it isn't.
Most domicile break-in and robberies are done between the hours of 10am and 4pm as to avoid residents.
Further, most domicile break-in and robberies are done by persons known the owners.

Much like the lunatic rightwing fantasy of rape being a guy jumping out of the bushes, the lunatic rightwing fantasy of burglaries is completely divorced from reality - most people robbing houses want to get in, grab some valuables, get out.

Yes confrontations can and do happen, so of course there are instances where an occupant has a run-in with a robber, but relative to the total number of break-ins those are incredibly rare - which utterly demolishes your infantile lie that you pulled completely out of your ass.
You made the wildly inaccurate and spurious claim that:
"Home invaders often want to harm or even murder occupants, not just steal their stuff."

This is such a load of shit it's oozing out of your ears.
Though, I'd be willing to concede to "Home invaders are often willing to harm or murder occupants, if they try to prevent them stealing their stuff" - but only specifically because "home invasion" is legally defined as entering a domicile while armed with the intent to commit a crime.

However, I know you, and I know you are trying to conflate "home invasion" with "any time anyone enters someone home" to try to bolster the credibility of your Rambo masturbation fantasy, and I'm absolutely not tolerating any of that shit from you.

 

[prideandfall]

It cannot be defined as such in any meaningful moral or ethical way.

Why not? I mean if you could know for sure your TV is all they want, it could be argued that lethal force is not permissible (unless they pull out a weapon or otherwise attack you if you confront them).

And if someone broke in and pulled out a weapon, that would be another thing entirely.

But people are not omniscient. If a person or several people break into your home, you do not know the extent of their intentions.

Ah, but that argument works both ways - if you can't know the extent of their intent, assuming harmful intent is as random and unjustifiable as assuming benign intent.

And you are neither morally nor legally required to wait and find out if they just want your TV or if they want to bind you, rape your wife and kill you both. Which is a scenario that has sadly happened repeatedly in home invasion cases.

Two things:

1. Yes, it has happened - and instances where they just wanted some shit to sell to a pawn shop has happened vastly more frequently.

2. Your presentation on this issue relies on the assumption of intent to harm, which is proven statistically to be a vast tiny minority of cases.

Which leads to 3, but 3 is... rather a philosophical meandering derail. I realized that after I typed it up.
I'm self-interested enough to leave the text since I took the time type it all out, but I recognize that it's kind of losing the point of the topic so I'm putting it in "hide" tags and don't expect any kind of response to it.

Show

3. Your central premise is based on an unfounded assumption: that I (or anyone) should inherently care about the life of the homeowner, but not care about the life of the invader.

The core of your argument that it is right and proper for a home owner to murder another person for the sin of being inside their house is predicated on the notion that the home owner might, maybe, potentially, on the off chance, be in some physical danger.
This necessarily suggests that anyone give a single fuck about the life of the home owner, and necessarily care more about their life than the life of the invader.

I personally don't really care about either life, in either case they're just a sack of meat.
If it's a dead home owner just trying to defend his property or a dead robber just trying to fuel his drug habit, one thing you can be sure of is that as a species we're gonna make a whole lot more of both of them to replace those ones, so it makes absolutely no real difference which one lives and which one dies.
But that's me, and I don't give a shit about humans.

Your argument relies on a central concept that one *does* care about humans, and that their lives have some kind of inherent value.
Drilling down further, your argument assumes a moral framework wherein owning property makes you intrinsically more valuable, and thus one who has less property or is attempting to acquire property in a way that is outside the rigged system that you benefit from makes one a non-entity that can be summarily killed.

Point being, the only path to you being able to make an argument about pre-emptive murder on the off chance of danger being 'moral' is to lay out a groundwork where the lives of certain people are more valuable than the lives of other people.
Maybe you have such a groundwork, but you haven't adequately explained it sufficient to be able to say "oh well it's moral to murder someone for picking up your TV because statistically speaking there's a vanishing small probability of this being one of the exceedingly rare instances of a home invasion that results in harm to the occupant."

 

[Loren Pechtel]

3. vastly reform home insurance (or, ideally, just nationalize it) so that high value personal items are replaceable and you don't feel the need to *murder another human being* over your television.

1. Self-defense is not murder.
2. Home invaders often want to harm or even murder occupants, not just steal their stuff. You can't take that chance.

I disagree with the "often want to harm" part--but all too many encounters between burglars and occupants end up with hurt occupants even though that wasn't the objective of entering the house. The best outcome is no encounter between the occupants and the burglar, but that's not always how it plays out. You go hunt the burglar, you're a bad guy. You shoot when the burglar is coming towards you, it's his unlucky day.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Repeat offenders are a big problem. If we effectively remove guns from those not allowed to have them, a lot of gun crime would be eliminated. That was the aim behind stop, question and frisk, which Bill de Blowjob ended because it disarmed too many of his voters.

You can't remove them from the bad guys in a society with a reasonable level of freedom. Stop & frisk is horrendously unconstitutional.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In my experience, home invaders want the minimum possible interaction with the occupants, and see physical violence as an absolute last resort - a disastrous outcome to be avoided if possible.

People who want minimum possible interaction with occupants try to burgle a place when it is unoccupied. A dwelling being occupied is what distinguishes a burglary from a home invasion.

Exactly. Which is why the US has a hot burglary rate (burglary of an occupied property) 1/3 that of places where the populace isn't armed.

The possible presence of guns means most burglars try to avoid encounters. Where guns aren't likely burglars that are reasonably tough don't care about occupants, if there's an encounter the occupant often gets thrown to the ground or the like--and sometimes seriously hurt in the process. Some years back there was a burglar in our neighborhood--clearly a local as every house that was hit had nobody living there that looked capable of putting up much of a fight and none of them were houses I would think there was much likelyhood of guns. They were afraid of the occupants, not the police--and there were zero encounters with said occupants.

I do not think a homeowner should have to take a chance that the home invader is just an idiot who can't tell when a house is empty vs. somebody who wants to harm the homeowner's family.

That's where I stand, also. Avoid them if possible, but if that's unavoidable too bad. Stay in the most defensible position you have available--but note that that might mean you have to move so as to be able to defend everyone that's in the house.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A dwelling being occupied is what distinguishes a burglary from a home invasion.

Nope, burglary is of an occupied, or likely to bd occupied, dwelling. When it's likely to be unoccupied, it's housebreaking.

"Home invasion" is tabloid media propaganda, instigated because "burglary" didn't sound scary enough.

There apparently are differences between countries.

Burglary--entry for the purpose of stealing.
Hot burglary--entry of an occupied building for the purpose of stealing.
Home invasion--entry by means of force, not stealth.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

My issue has always been about how "good guys" are solely being defined by their lack of a criminal record. I can't think of any bad guy who didn't start with a clean criminal record. Gun reform (since clearly, we can't get rid of them) should only be about good guys (law-abiding citizens selling guns) not arming bad guys (those with no criminal record obviously buying one for a criminal act). How we can do so is something I'm not sure of but we don't seem o be having that talk.

If your record is clean at 21 it's very unlikely you'll go bad later.

Domestic violence aside of course

And white collar crime...

I was talking about crimes of violence. White collar is different matter but not really relevant--we are talking about situations where force might be used.

I haven't seen stats specifically about DV without a prior history.

 

[Derec]

Say that as much as you'd like. You're wrong.

I said probably. You are categorical that it is <5%. Do you have any evidence that matches the certainty you display here?

In any case, whether it is 3%, 6% or 9% does not matter. What matters is that civilian AR15s and AK47s are semi-auto weapons, similar to other non-assaulty semi-auto rifles and they should not be banned just because they resemble military weapons.

 

[Patooka]

What matters is that civilian AR15s and AK47s are semi-auto weapons, similar to other non-assaulty semi-auto rifles and they should not be banned just because they resemble military weapons.

They should most definitely be banned because they look like military rifles. The people who buy such a rifle are irresponsible cunts who just want to look tough on instagram.

Every. Single, One. They forfeited their right to own a firearm because they view it as a status symbol rather than what it is.

 

[Derec]

Why?
What reason is there to elevate the charge of house breaking to murder, because of the actions of someone other than the defendant?

The reason for these felony murder statutes is that a crime such as home invasion carries a risk of death that the perps are aware of. They thus commit the crime knowing that somebody dying is a possible outcome.

The whole 'felony murder' thing is nuts. Criminals are responsible for their crimes, but they surely aren't responsible for the recklessness of their victims.

If they did not decide to invade somebody's home, there would be no self defense, and thus no possibility of any rounds going wild and endangering anybody else.

You might as well charge someone with murder because they burgled the home of a person who ran down a pedestrian on his way home from work.

Sometimes prosecutors and courts take the felony murder stuff too far. I do not think holding participants in a robbery accountable for deaths that result from the robbery is too far.
Btw, what do you think of the case of Lakeith Smith? He and some friends burgled some houses. Nobody was home - points for that - but they weren't too stealthy and police caught up with them. So one of these geniuses decides to start blasting and police shot him dead. The rest of the crew faced felony murder charges. All but one accepted plea deals, but Smith chose to take his chance at a trial.
Fact check: Lakeith Smith was sentenced to 65 years in prison for murder, burglary and theft after his friend was killed by police officer during break-in

He chose poorly.

 

[Derec]

Unpalatable facts don’t register with RW extremists.

What "unpalatable facts"? It was a sidebar about a technical detail about what percentage of parts are different between two rifles. Not really germane to any of the themes of this thread.

Besides, gun deaths are only a fraction of all deaths, so why bother? More people have died from mosquitoes!

Sigh. I am in favor of reasonable gun laws. Banning certain guns based on what they look like even though many more gun crimes are committed using handguns is not reasonable. And yet Dems spend so much time and political capital on this quixotic issue.

Ignorance is bliss - why make Derec Elixir miserable?

FIFY.

 

[bilby]

Btw, what do you think of the case of Lakeith Smith?

Neither of us has enough information to say anything useful about any specific cases, unless we were present in court for the duration of any trial.

My limited experience as a juror tells me that media reporting of trials rarely gives all the information necessary to understand a verdict, and the reporting of crime apart from direct court reporting is far, far worse.

Anything you think you know from media reports of crimes is almost certainly wrong, and reflects only your biases and those of the reporters (whose primary objective is sensationalism, because that's what pays their salaries).

 

[Derec]

Murdering someone for picking up a television is not self defense.

Who is talking about "picking up a television"? When some perps enter your home while you and your family are there, there is no time to ascertain what they are there for.

Most domicile break-in and robberies are done between the hours of 10am and 4pm as to avoid residents.

Very true. That is my point. If the perps just want your TV, they can do this. If they enter your house while you are home, are they just stupid or do they have a more nefarious purpose? Neither law nor morality requires you to take that chance.

Further, most domicile break-in and robberies are done by persons known the owners.

I am sure a lot of them are. Do you have any evidence on the "most"?
In any case, I do not see how that helps your case. If I know the perp, how does it make it more likely he just wants my TV and not to harm me or my family?

most people robbing houses want to get in, grab some valuables, get out.

So we should just ignore those who want to harm the occupants of the house, right?
And the victims should not offer any resistance either. Let the bad guys have everything they want. After all, "how he gonna get his money", right?

Yes confrontations can and do happen, so of course there are instances where an occupant has a run-in with a robber, but relative to the total number of break-ins those are incredibly rare - which utterly demolishes your infantile lie that you pulled completely out of your ass.

I did not pull anything out of my ass. The instances where there is a confrontation is the denominator here. We are not talking all burglaries, but specifically those where the victims are home. In those cases, the victims should not assume that the perps just want their TV and do not want to harm them physically.

You made the wildly inaccurate and spurious claim that:
"Home invaders often want to harm or even murder occupants, not just steal their stuff."

Home invaders are a subset of all burglars. Home invasion is specifically the case when somebody breaks into an occupied dwelling. As you said, most burglars just want to get in, grab valuables, and get out. And breaking into a house with people there is not conducive to that objective. So home invasion is not the same at all as a regular stealthy burglary.

This is such a load of shit it's oozing out of your ears.

My thoughts exactly! I think you are misunderstanding this whole discussion.

Though, I'd be willing to concede to "Home invaders are often willing to harm or murder occupants, if they try to prevent them stealing their stuff" - but only specifically because "home invasion" is legally defined as entering a domicile while armed with the intent to commit a crime.

I think now you are finally getting it. Home invasion is much more dangerous than a regular burglary.

However, I know you, and I know you are trying to conflate "home invasion" with "any time anyone enters someone home" to try to bolster the credibility of your Rambo masturbation fantasy, and I'm absolutely not tolerating any of that shit from you.

I guess you do not know me at all.

 

[Derec]

And if someone broke in and pulled out a weapon, that would be another thing entirely.

I do not think they need to pull out a weapon for self defense to be permissible. On the other hand, if they start fleeing when confronted, I do not think it should be permissible to shoot the perps.

Ah, but that argument works both ways - if you can't know the extent of their intent, assuming harmful intent is as random and unjustifiable as assuming benign intent.

The risk is not symmetrical though. If they have harmful intent and you do not react forcefully enough, you may end up dead.
If you are a robber, getting shot by your would-be victim is an occupational hazard. They should know that going in.
It does not only apply to home invaders, but also carjackers and muggers.

Two things:
1. Yes, it has happened - and instances where they just wanted some shit to sell to a pawn shop has happened vastly more frequently.

Do you have evidence that "instances [of home invasion] where they just wanted some shit to sell to a pawn shop" happen "vastly more frequently"?

2. Your presentation on this issue relies on the assumption of intent to harm, which is proven statistically to be a vast tiny minority of cases.

Of home invasion? I doubt that very much. Do you have any evidence for that claim?
In any case, why should the homeowner take that chance? Breaking into somebody's occupied home is a threat per se.

Which leads to 3, but 3 is... rather a philosophical meandering derail. I realized that after I typed it up.

You were not kidding. It was meandering.
But if you do not care about anybody, and say people are easily replaceable, why have laws or a society at all?

The core of your argument that it is right and proper for a home owner to murder another person for the sin of being inside their house is predicated on the notion that the home owner might, maybe, potentially, on the off chance, be in some physical danger.

Danger is given by the invasion itself.
Also, if a use of deadly force is "right and proper" then it is by definition not murder.

Drilling down further, your argument assumes a moral framework wherein owning property makes you intrinsically more valuable, and thus one who has less property or is attempting to acquire property in a way that is outside the rigged system that you benefit from makes one a non-entity that can be summarily killed.

Protection of private property is one of the core pillars of any civilization.
It seems to me you think a home invader has just as much right to be in that house as the owner and has as much right to his TV as the owner. You could not be more wrong.

The rest of the hidden text is similarly pseudo-intellectual, so I will not belabor the point responding to it all.

 

[Derec]

Stop & frisk is horrendously unconstitutional.

If you frisk everybody you stop then I would agree. But the S&F programs also have the intermediate step of questioning, to establish probable cause.

 

[Derec]

They should most definitely be banned because they look like military rifles.

Why should looks make a ban justifiable?

The people who buy such a rifle are irresponsible cunts who just want to look tough on instagram.

Not wanting people to look tough on Insta is not a sufficient reason to restrict a constitutional right.
Besides, plenty of cunts are trying to look tough on Insta with good old handguns.