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this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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I don't know what nation you're from but America is nothing at all like this. Gun owners aren't like this.
People who don't understand American gun culture expect it's like GTA- everybody's strapped, fender-benders at traffic lights turn into firefights, don't dare tell anyone anything negative because they'll shoot you if they don't like what you say. This isn't at all the case though. Not even close.
Gun owners who carry guns look at it like a seat belt or fire extinguisher-- you hope to god you never need it, but if ever you do, having it might save your life. There is no action movie attitude of 'who do I shoot today?'. Gun owners recognize how serious a responsibility it is, and petty arguments rarely involve weapons fire, even in situations where everyone involved is armed.
We have a big problem with gun violence- but the majority of it is caused by our bigger problem of poverty and hopelessness in many areas. People turn to drugs, that are supplied by violent gangs who are all armed with illegal guns. Those guys commit the lion's share of our gun homicide.
Problem is, fixing it is a slow and expensive generational process. You need better schools, mental health care, child care, reproductive care, and real jobs for people to aspire to (not just flipping burgers). This costs billions.
If you want to criticize us for something- criticize us for spending billions/trillions on military (we have more military force than the next 10 nations combined, including all our major enemies) when our budgets are fucked and we can't even seem to take care of our own citizens. THAT is worthy of your criticism (and mine).
I'm not aware of another developed nation where getting cancer means you've got a good chance of going bankrupt. THAT ISN'T NORMAL and we should be fixing that shit.
What you say in this comment seems inconsistent with what you said in the previous one, namely that if you try to break into someone's stuff (e.g. an unoccupied parked car in this case) you should expect to be shot at. Going straight to deadly force to protect one's property is the bit people (at least, many non-Americans) think is not normal.
Finally a somewhat intelligent comment that isn't just restating a talking point.
You're (understandably) conflating as one position what is actually two
I think in general it should be legal to use deadly force to defend major property. IE I don't think it should be legal to shoot someone for stealing a pack of gum, but I think in many cases it should be legal to shoot someone for stealing larger items that make up a person's livelihood. I take this position not because I think human life is worth less than tools or cars (I don't feel that way) but because if you take any other position, you have a situation where the lawful owner of said property is legally required to basically sit there and watch while a criminal steals their shit.
Police aren't always seconds away. In much of the USA, police are tens of minutes or hours away.
What should be legal is one half of the coin, the other half is what I as a gun owner want to actually do.
To make an extreme example- I'm a strong advocate of the 1st Amendment (free speech). I believe I should have the right to take off all my clothes, cover the bare minimum in duct tape and cardboard, and walk down public streets telling all passers-by that I am the reincarnation of Napoleon and they should join my new army and help take over the world.
But while I support the right to do that, while I'd strongly advocate for that right, I have no desire to do such a thing myself.
As a gun owner, I have no desire to kill anyone ever. The same is true of virtually all gun owners I know, both online and off. (The one notable exception is a slightly nutty friend of mine who ended up joining the military and volunteered to go fight in Iraq/Afghanistan). There is nothing in my car that's worth taking a life for- even if the perpetrator is a lowlife criminal.
But I also take that as my choice to make for myself. Millions of gun owners would make the same choice- go on any gun forum or subreddit that deals with such things and you'll find few if any people suggesting that just shooting a guy who's stealing your unoccupied car is a good plan.
Does that make sense?
Thanks for the reply. It makes sense, though I would jump off at a different point from you. I tend to feel that if it comes to life vs property, even the life of a robber who is making others miserable and afraid, life generally wins no matter what the property is. That is, I don't myself feel like it is ever worth taking a life to preserve property, and I hope that if I found myself in the situation of being robbed of something dear to me, I would be able to let the property go and the robber live, painful though it would be. But I also don't believe ethical questions can arrive at a final answer. There's too much nuance in every situation so I wouldn't propose this as "the right answer". It's just how I currently feel on the matter. Another aspect of this view is that while I wouldn't condemn in advance anyone who shoots in such a situation, I'd understand it better if they were afraid for themselves rather than just for their property.
Thankfully I'm not a legislator so I don't need to try to codify this into law, and I appreciate your position, which seems that be that although you probably wouldn't yourself shoot in this situation, you don't think others should be branded criminals for doing so. I don't want to pronounce on that matter, but just to observe that your position is probably more common in the USA than in, for example, many European countries, hence it seeming unusual to many of us non-Americans.
And that is my position exactly.
Go on various self-defense subreddits or online forums, like /r/CCW, and you'll find a very similar attitude. There will be a couple who'd say 'shoot the thief' but the overwhelming majority take the position of 'you shoot to stop the threat, in self defense, only when necessary' and many would even take the position that it's a 'bad shoot' to shoot someone just breaking into a car. Confront them maybe, shoot them if they move to attack, but don't just shoot the guy in the back as he's stealing your MacBook.
The other issue is- while I'm not a legislator, I am a citizen of a representative democracy. So in a sense, it is my job to write the law, or at least, to make educated choices in what laws and policies I advocate for and against.
To that end, anyone making any law must consider that there will be times it backfires, doesn't apply correctly, etc. And whenever that happens, I'd always rather err on the side of giving the citizen defending themself or their property more leeway than providing additional protections to a criminal who's engaged in clearly illegal acts against said citizen (which necessarily means punishments for the citizen defending against said criminal).
Right. Except everybody leaves their fire extinguishers at home. And their fire extinguishers don't cause other fires. And they're not widely used by stupid incompetent people to cause harm either.
Your argument doesn't make any sense to any other normal sane person outside of the United States.
Using deadly force to kill someone should be hard to access and only be used when your own life is in danger. Which can be anytime, anywhere by anybody in the US because of how accessible it is.
Ending a life shouldn't be something anybody can do.
Like any tool, a gun can be used for good or evil. The vast majority of gun uses in the USA are 'defensive gun uses', which are legal gun owners stopping or preventing a crime. There's minimum 10x more DGUs than firearm homicides, perhaps 100x or even more.
But ending a life IS something anybody can do, and you don't need a gun to do it.