h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What happens if it isn't actually someone who has broken in, but someone who actually lives in the house has gone downstairs to get a drink and dropped a glass or something?

Shooting your relative is actually a more frequent scenario than shooting a burglar.

CD:

"I also disagree with Hooloovoo's"

H, then V, then L.

" attitude to killing somebody just because they've broken into his(?) house. How does he(?) know that they have hostile intent."

How do I know they DON'T? And why is it my responsibility to find out? I haven't done anything wrong. The ONLY thing I know for certain about intruders in my house is that they have no regard for the law. I don't know how keen they are violence, I don't know if they're armed or not, I don't know how many of them there are, inside or out. The only thing I can say for certain is that they care less about the law than I do.

"Maybe where he lives house-breaking burglars regularly go armed with intent to kill any occupants who get in their way. Over here in the UK that seldom happens."

I live in the UK. I don't see what difference it makes. If even ONE person in this country ever broke into a house and killed the occupant, I am, I think, justified in assuming the worst if someone breaks into MY home.

"If I woke in the middle of the night and realised that somebody was in my house, my first reaction would be to phone the police - I have a phone next to my bed that would come in very useful."

As I said above - assuming it's working. And assuming you have a house large enough that you could conduct a conversation on the phone quietly enough for them not to hear you. And assuming that you live somewhere where the police are going to arrive in seconds - because you have NO way of knowing, when you pick that phone up, whether the next room those guys are coming into is yours. The telephone is something you should be thinking about using only when you're safe - and that's NOT when there are an unknown number of possibly armed, possibly drug-addled people in your house with unknown but DEFINITELY illegal intent.

"I personally wouldn't go down to tackle the intruder - largely because I don't keep anything handy that could be used as a weapon."

If you have a comb, or a toothbrush, or if you smoke, or use deodorant, have bleach in your bathroom, or a pen by your bed, you are more than adequately equipped. And if not, perhaps you should be.

"Aside from that, the UK legal system made its attitude to killing intruders perfectly clear a couple of years ago. A farmer shot two men who had broken into his house, killing one and wounding the other. He is now doing time for murder - *not* self defence. For once, I agree with our legal system."

Tony Martin shot a man in the back point blank with an illegally held shotgun. He was an known eccentric with publicised racist views about gypsies - which both his assailants were (although how he was supposed to have known that in a dark farmhouse is unexplained).

The UK legal system has NOT, so far as I know, made its opinion known on a case where a pillar of the community uses a legally held weapon against an intruder or other assailant. I do seem to remember an example from the eighties of an elderly gentleman who was attacked on the underground by a number of youths, one of whom had to have a kidney removed after the old gent skewered him through it with a sword he had had concealed in his walking stick. He was found guilty of something or other and fined fifty pence, I think.

Perhaps someone can supply a more recent and better referenced example?

Teasswill:

"There was another case recently of a man convicted of murder, who had also taken defence of his property to an extreme. He had acosted a burglar in his house, followed him outside & battered him to death. I think most people would consider that unreasonable force."

I completely agree. The key here is your personal safety. If you see, from the outside, someone break into your home or car, there is simply no sense getting involved. If you're in there, you have to disable them. If they've gone, your first priority should be to get out and get away in case they come back with more accomplices or firepower - which is why you should, if possible, prevent them getting out in the first place.

But following them into the street and beating them up is NOT looking after your own safety - it's getting revenge, which is not what I'm talking about at all.

" I would aim for disablement & hope they would run away"

If they're in a state where they can run, they're in a state where they can kill you - and if you've just tried to disable them, they're all the more likely to do so, wouldn't you say?

H.

I've now read, and in some cases re-read all the posts since I logged off this morning, and having done so, I have refined my original position, in the following way;

1. If, in the defence of self*, a person using reasonable force, kills another person, then that is justifiable
*self to include, imediate family &, pesonal space.

2. As for consideration of justice, I had not considered miscarriages, and so, perhaps execution of criminals would be erronious, uneless all possibility of dount had been removed.

3. And so to war, it is wrong. For one reason alone, it is wrong because the innocent get killed, and through no fault of their own, the military personell signed up sure, but the civilians did not.

I am not suggesting that this answers the question of the thread, but it is the way I feel comfortable with the issue raised.

"Now: if THAT guy was in my house in the middle of the night, it would be a phenomenally bad idea for me to let him know I'm there."

I'm sure it would be a much dumber idea to risk getting between him and the door. Attacking someone to prevent their leaving is an entirely different issue to defending oneself from attack.

In the scenario you describe, if one of the security guards had shouted at the guy before he left, I think it's pretty certain he would have run away rather than deciding to attack anyone.
Maybe the store owner was happy the thief had been apprehended, but that seems to be him being concerned over his property more than the welfare of other people. If the guy had been carrying a knife, people could have been seriously injured over what started out as a theft.

Unless you're sure you have overwhelming superiority of force, attacking and possibly cornering someone (or possibly multiple people) also likely to be hyped up on adrenaline is dangerous for *you*.
If you are confident you have overwhelming superiority, it isn't self-defence if you attack someone, unless they are actually in the act of directly threatening someone else's life.

The point you made about 'reasonable force' skewing the statistics towards dead householders mixes up two issues.
"Reasonable" applied to the detention of a burglar means you aren't allowed to shoot them or beat them to a pulp just to stop them escaping. In the case where someone decides to attack you, you are legally allowed to use force up to and including killing them to defend yourself.


"If even ONE person in this country ever broke into a house and killed the occupant, I am, I think, justified in assuming the worst if someone breaks into MY home."

That's hardly a reasonable assumption - given that it has happened more than once that people thrown out of a nightclub (and guilty of behaviour consituting assault) have gone away and come back later to seriously attack or kill the bouncers, it isn't reasonable for bouncers to execute everyone they throw out of a club in 'self defence'.

"As I said above - assuming it's working. And assuming you have a house large enough that you could conduct a conversation on the phone quietly enough for them not to hear you. And assuming that you live somewhere where the police are going to arrive in seconds - because you have NO way of knowing, when you pick that phone up, whether the next room those guys are coming into is yours. The telephone is something you should be thinking about using only when you're safe - and that's NOT when there are an unknown number of possibly armed, possibly drug-addled people in your house with unknown but DEFINITELY illegal intent."

All you have to do is scare someone away - they don't know whether you've called the police or not unless they've been hovering outside your bedroom door since the second they broke in. If you haven't seen each other's faces and they don't know how many you are, the chances of them stopping to seek out everyone in the house to kill to prevent them becoming witnesses to someone they never saw before the police arrive seem pretty minimal to me.

" perhaps execution of criminals would be erronious, uneless all possibility of dount had been removed."

Stefan Kisko was sent to prison and spent sixteen years there because he HAD been convicted "beyond reasonable doubt". If there'd BEEN doubt, he would not have gone to jail.

You can't ban capital punishment, but then allow it "if there's no doubt", because it only takes a little incompetence or corruption to get you to a situation where there is no doubt about an innocent man.

Sure, there are cases where there really is no doubt - but the point is you cannot legislate for those, because you never know when one of them is going to turn out like Timothy Evans, or Derek Bentley.

H.

My solution to the problem of capital punishment, which, I admit would require currently non-existant technology, would be to put those who would otherwise be executed in some sort of suspended animation. If it was shown they were innocent, they could be released. If they were guilty, suspened animation ofrever is the same as death.

My complaints about the death penalty stem from the difficulty of ensuring tha a crminal is really guilty.

"If you have a comb, or a toothbrush, or if you smoke, or use deodorant, have bleach in your bathroom, or a pen by your bed, you are more than adequately equipped. And if not, perhaps you should be."


Ooops - sorry HVL - I hadn't seen that bit, and was assuming your posts were serious.

*Has mental image of HVL attacking unknown number of homicidal burglars armed with a toothbrush and cigarette lighter.*

If you want a mental image, picture how much damage a toothbrush would do pushed forcefully into an eyesocket. Think how much easier that would be if the owner had taken the time to sharpen it.

If you want a mental image, bear in mind that since the hole in ozone layer got everyone in a flap, the propellant in your deodorant can is now either propane or butane or a mixture of both. Apply the flame of a cigarette lighter to that, and you have an instant flamethrower. Picture the effect of a four foot butane flame on the face of an unprotected human.

Still laughing?

H.

Well, deoderant and a cigarette lighter would be pretty damned effective - assuming the can didn't explode in your face. I guess what goes for deoderant probably goes for a lot of other aerosols as well, they're mostly oil based after all.

Doh, beaten to it. Anyway, fun thing to do when you're feeling a little fatalistic: cover your hand in plenty of deoderant, then set light to it. Make sure you have something handy to smother it after a few seconds. The layer of deoderant protects you if you do it right.

Be *really* careful, and make sure you have something to smother the flames with.

"I'm sure it would be a much dumber idea to risk getting between him and the door. Attacking someone to prevent their leaving is an entirely different issue to defending oneself from attack."

I'm not suggesting attacking someone to prevent them escaping. I'm suggestin not allowing them to fetch help, or another weapon.

"In the scenario you describe, if one of the security guards had shouted at the guy before he left, I think it's pretty certain he would have run away rather than deciding to attack anyone."

He was approached in broad daylight in an open carpark by two men in security uniforms who DID shout at him before they reached him. He did not attempt to escape until he was INSIDE the shop again. Like I said - he was not exactly dealing off a full deck at the time.

"Maybe the store owner was happy the thief had been apprehended, but that seems to be him being concerned over his property more than the welfare of other people. If the guy had been carrying a knife, people could have been seriously injured over what started out as a theft."

He WAS carrying a knife, in addition to the screwdriver he'd stolen (yeah - a *screwdriver*.). The fact that he didn't use it was, I assume, down to his not being all there.

Are you suggesting that people should not attempt, under any circumstances, to arrest people who steal from them, in case they're carrying weapons? Where does that end? It was the security guards JOB to stop the guy. What else are they there for? It wasn't my job, which was why I got the hell out of the way as soon as I could.

"Unless you're sure you have overwhelming superiority of force, attacking and possibly cornering someone (or possibly multiple people)"

I hope to Bod I never get burgled by one of THOSE...

"also likely to be hyped up on adrenaline is dangerous for *you*.
If you are confident you have overwhelming superiority, it isn't self-defence if you attack someone, unless they are actually in the act of directly threatening someone else's life."

As far as I'm concerned they threatened my life when they broke in and they do so every second until they leave.

"The point you made about 'reasonable force' skewing the statistics towards dead householders mixes up two issues.
"Reasonable" applied to the detention of a burglar means you aren't allowed to shoot them or beat them to a pulp just to stop them escaping. In the case where someone decides to attack you, you are legally allowed to use force up to and including killing them to defend yourself."

But the point is that the onus is apparently on YOU, the victim, to make that judgement, in the heat of the moment, as to what constitutes "reasonable" force. You are further expected to suffer this restriction at a time when your opponent is not similarly disabled.

Who would win in boxing match if one of the contestants had one hand tied behind their back? That's what we're talking about here.

"it isn't reasonable for bouncers to execute everyone they throw out of a club in 'self defence'."

No. But it *IS* reasonable, and legal, for the bouncers to detain those people and hand them over to the police. Which is what they *should* do if an offence has been committed. And if this legal and proper procedure was followed, the scenario you describe could not happen.

"All you have to do is scare someone away - they don't know whether you've called the police or not unless they've been hovering outside your bedroom door since the second they broke in."

And as I've said already, there's no guarantee that they'll care one way or the other.

"If you haven't seen each other's faces and they don't know how many you are, the chances of them stopping to seek out everyone in the house to kill to prevent them becoming witnesses to someone they never saw before the police arrive seem pretty minimal to me."

If you're prepared to bet your life and the life of your family on the goodwill and scareability of criminals you've never met, good luck to you. I'm not.

H.

Interesting thread....

In response to The Cat in the Hat above....

"3. And so to war, it is wrong. For one reason alone, it is wrong because the innocent get killed, and through no fault of their own, the military personell signed up sure, but the civilians did not."

I agree that killing the innocent is always a wrong-making feature of an action (to use a phrase from the philosopher WD Ross), but sometimes this can be outweighed by other considerations - such as saving more innocent lives. I would justify the second world war on these grounds.

Similarly, if killing (or letting die) an innocent person with a deadly contagious disease would save many hundreds of people, it's not clear to me that killing that perso would be the wrong thing to do.

Now, this seems to lead to some nasty consequences where "the end justifies the means". This need not always be the case if we adopt a particularlist approach. It seems to me that sometimes, at least, really important ends might justify taking lives and sometimes even taking innocent lives.

Otto

Otto, good point, but in response I have to say that the "Surgical Removal" of Hitler would have saved more lives than his regime took, both civilian, and military.
This seems to me the way to deal with hostile governments.

It is a difficult question and, without making things any easier, I think we have to make a distinction between court decisions where the cold facts of the case should be examined and individual actions in the heat of a moment.

Court decisions:
I don't think any individual person should be sentenced to death no matter what he/she has done.
So, assuming some vile succession of acts, imprisonment until death seems the only answer. Ian Brady (a multiple child killer in the UK) was sentenced to prison for life in the sixties and, decades later, tried by commit suicide by starving himself. He was forced fed and when he took the matter before the courts they decided he had no “right” to commit suicide and had to “serve his term”. He is presumably still being fed by a nasal drip. Suicide would have been cost-effective for the community as a whole, but here the focus was on punishment and prison was in effect perceived as worse than death. Should suicide be an option for people sentenced to life in prison? My answer would be yes with safeguards to stop undue “encouragement”. But presumably Brady’s desire to die was also linked to the terrible treatment he received from other prisoners. Is “letting other prisoners deal with him” in fact a form of torture? Surely death is better than ongoing “torture” when your only release can be death? How much should be – or even can be – done or spent to protect someone like Brady? Can you be against the death penalty but in favour of some thing often involving a form of torture? Would I risk getting hurt (even very very slightly) to stop someone like Brady getting bashed about a bit ? The questions are getting harder to answer for me.

But what about people who aren’t as bad as Brady but who have shown themselves to be repeatedly violent? Prison for life? Attempts to reform with a view to release?
Imprisonment is also a difficult question. Can you sentence someone to imprisonment until death for several acts of grievous bodily harm if they haven’t taken anyone’s life? Should you wait until they DO kill someone?

Heat of the moment:
Split-second decisions in life-threatening situations are easier to handle. If you see someone about to kill a child (or indeed anybody else), anything you can do to stop such an act is acceptable. This is a clear cut case in my opinion.
Decisions in “not immediately obviously life-threatening” situations have been much debated in this conversation. You can never REALLY know a person’s intent. I think that in real situations, a person “under attack” is driven more by things like fear and outrage and probably doesn’t have time for thinking the thing though or trying to get advice. People who have been repeated victims of even “minor” aggression will sometimes “turn” and use so-called undue force in the event of recurrence. If you are truly frightened/outraged (whether or not you have real reason to be so), you will act according to the extent of your fear/outrage and probably your perception of available options: instinct takes over from rational choice and I think the instinct for survival is strong. Here, the question is not whether it is right or wrong to kill, but whether killing was reasonably acceptable/understandable under the circumstances.

See Stephen Fry's excellent science fiction novel "Making History" for a chillingly plausible description of why the surgical removal of Hitler wouldn't have made a whit of difference and could have made things worse...

H.

Any chance of a quick super-summarized summary of Stephen Fry's "Making History" ?

For once I agree with you! That was a terrific book.

A lot of this conversation has brought in 'rights' or 'responsibility' frankly I do not see an over-whelming majority of people who have respect for the rights of others. They seem to have even less regard for their own responsibilities.

There is a firmly based belief currently that you have the 'right' to take anything you are capable of taking. Be that the property of a pensioner, sex from a woman you find attractive, or the lives of your children because the courts have granted custody of them to your partner. At no point in this taking of ones 'rights' do the attendant responsibilities seem to raise their head.

Kids have the 'right' to clown around in school, dis-respect the teachers and humiliate other children because they work at their lessons. These same kids then have the 'right' to be supported by people who have striven to achieve betterment, when their lack of formal qualifications and resentment of hard work means they are unable to find gainful employment. They then have the 'right' to spend their dole money on alcohol or drugs, and destroy the ammenities that contributing members of society wish to use.

So, when one of these people, fully aware of their 'rights,' turns up in your home at 3:00 AM and decides that because they can't find enough things of value in the house they have the 'right' to hold a cigarette to the face of your baby, so you'll give them your pin number, cast your mind back to this thread and ask yourself "When is it OK to kill people ?"

As none of us want to be put in that position, and none of us want to dirty our consiences by allowing capital punishment, then maybe we should be considering how we are going to make our society one where people respect each other and their possesions, and thus avoid this dichotomy.

I'm afraid I would kill someone who broke into my house, rather than risk them harming my wife, my daughters, or my babies. I would doubtless be heart-broken when they turned out to be a 15 year old kid, with no criminal record, who'd been bullied into it by his peers.

But I'd still kill the next one too. Sorry, but I'm only who I am.

My thought (not having read the entire backlog, so I don't know if I'm repeating anyone) is that the answer to this question is "never". It's never "ok". It may sometimes, by some people, in some jurisdictions, be judged necessary, pragmatic, useful, or even fun (for some people), but I don't think it's ever "ok". If it ever becomes simply "ok" to kill people in any society, then the people in that society are in trouble. The fact that the question is being asked and discussed in this society (H2G2) proves both that the society is healthy and that it is not considered "ok" to kill people here.

My thought (not having read the entire backlog, so I don't know if I'm repeating anyone) is that the answer to this question is "never". It's never "ok". It may sometimes, by some people, in some jurisdictions, be judged necessary, pragmatic, useful, or even fun (for some people), but I don't think it's ever "ok". If it ever becomes simply "ok" to kill people in any society, then the people in that society are in trouble. The fact that the question is being asked and discussed in this society (H2G2) proves both that the society is healthy and that it is not considered "ok" to kill people here.