Oh come on , I’m sure there are folks that live out of town in the Netherlands , isn’t there ? :dubious:
I’m sure I read somewhere that The Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries, so probably not to the extent you are thinking. The place isn’t very big, is it?
I have no idea what the population of the Netherlands are or how much of it is rural living and how much is densely populated. And no idea about the size of the country either.My home state of Louisiana has the most liberal (if that is the right word) self-defense laws of all the states. It is also the most liberal in allowing defense of property. Generally speaking, killing an armed intruder in your home is a no-brainer. It is unlikely that the DA will not press charges at all and it is likely that you won’t even be arrested as long as the facts are clear to the police. What is a little different in Louisiana is that you can also kill intruders on your property who are not in your house yet.
See the case of Yoshihiro Hattori, a Japanese exchange student who was killed for approaching a home in Baton Rouge on Halloween and refused to stop because he didn’t understand the command. He was shot and killed. The homeowner was acquitted. Everyone saw the case as unfortunate but the literal circumstances allowed deadly force under the law. The man that owned the supermarket where I worked in high school walked into his house to find his wife sleeping with another man. The man wanted to argue instead of leaving right away. He was shot and killed and my boss was acquitted largely because the man was threatening him in his own home. Oddly, he and his wife stayed together.
The thing that really bothers me about western Europe is that open air crime seems to be freely permitted. I am sure that bands of pick-pockets operate somewhere in the U.S. but they aren’t common. If they were widely known in the U.S., they would be cracked down upon harshly and quickly. Gypsies are allowed to roam lawlessly and freely. I personally chased off a Gypsy from stealing someone’s luggage in Venice. It was obvious what this person was doing and the police shooed him off not 5 minutes before and he came back instantly. He made a run for luggage when a lady turned her back. I made a flat-out sprint for him and I wasn’t in a good mood. I won.
My SIL recently got her Masters degree in England. She was robbed twice will she was there. The property crime rates in England are out of control and it seems like no one is doing much to address them. My daughter’s best friend is English as are her parents. They say that they have no intention of going back because of property crime and safety issues. Occupied home invasions are especially alarming in England and they say that the three times it happened to them, the police didn’t seem to care much except to hand out forms.
I would certainly say that attitudes towards property crimes are much more lax in much of Western Europe than they are in the U.S. The only place I ever saw the same attitudes towards open air criminality in the U.S. was in New Orleans in the mid-1990’s and that isn’t something any area wants to be compared to.
Let me guess. American, perchance? 
Good guess , 
I am sitting at a computer and yes I could go find out this info about the Netherlands ,so why don't I? Because the OP is about 'Do Europeans have different attitudes than Americans about the sanctity of property?
I could be mistaken but I feel a bit of :rolleyes: when I read this post by
Švejk
“Wow. There’s not a single person in the Netherlands who could say the same.”
when they replied to one of my posts.
:eek:
THREE TIMES?
This is just unacceptable to me. I’m not saying guns are the answer, but, IMHO a home invasion robbery is very much akin to kidnapping. Being held against your will. We take a very dim view of that in the USA.
Sanctuary of the home and all that.
Perhaps there are more home owners instead of renters in the United States than Europe. Here, working on your house is almost a national pass time. I may certainly be wrong, but everyone I know have a lot of blood a sweat equity in their homes. It makes it more than just ‘stuff’.
Without knowing where in England she was living (we have crime hotspots, too!), the fact that most Europeans live in dense urban environments has possibly something to do with it. Certainly, Louisiana style gun laws are not the solution, which seem to be a license to kill with impunity.
One thing I don’t think you are taking into consideration is how likely the intruder is to have a gun. I believe it is much more likely here in the US, and therefore a homeowner is much more likely to be facing an armed intruder than, say, he would be in England. I am prepared to be corrected on this, but that is what I have gathered. In Tennessee, I’m pretty sure there is no duty to retreat. People here can and do keep loaded firearms in easily accessible locations. Armed homeowners sometimes hold intruders at gunpoint for the police and they sometimes shoot intruders. A homeowner who shoots an intruder is not likely to be charged here.
Even fully trained soldiers and police officers cannot always hit a person at all under the adrenaline rush of sudden combat, let alone a homeowner woken from a sound sleep by a crashing noise in the house. This is one reason shotguns are frequently recommended for home defense as they is less need to be able to aim precisely with a shotgun. Shaking hands don’t lend themselves to accuracy in shooting.
Let me just add (so we don’t run rampart with the European crime spree), that I’ve never ever met anyone who’s had a break-in happen to them. And this includes me living in Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Germany.
Pick-pocketing. Sure, that happens. But never a burglary or a hold-up or anything like it.
And the only people I know of owning a gun, are some of the Icelanders who hunt.
If you mean break-ins while people were at home, it has never happened to me, nor to anyone I know. I do know a few people who have been victims of burglary while they were not at home. Personally, I have had bicycles stolen from public places, two cars broken into, and one attempted break-in at my home. That is over the course of fifteen years living in densely populated urban areas.
That is my understanding of the law in the state of Arkansas, although I don’t know what constitutes the threat.
We have done the crime statistics comparisons between the Britain and the U.S. a bunch of times. A thorough analysis gets tiresome but the differences are always clear. Britain always leads the U.S. by a wide margin in most crime except for rape and murder. The U.S. has some clear reasons why the murder rate is higher.
Cecil did one article on it that is relevant:
That article focuses on violent crime, and seems to have been written by someone largely ignorant of British culture. The references to “soccer hooliganism” and the “lousy economy” suggest that Cecil last visited Britain in about 1982.
Oh please. Cecil goes to Britain all the time. The last time we went, he got so trashed that he started a fight by screaming out inane facts at a football match. He took out 6 hooligans before he got pummeled and a few of us Dopers had to step in and save the day. Cecil is a fun guy but he has a bad temper and can’t hold his liquor for shit.
Speaking as a Limey maybe killing an intruder who is not threatening you might be a little bit OTT but I wish that we were allowed to beat the living shit out anyone burgling our property but it seems that the Human Rights of lowlife scum are more important in the U.K. then those of the law abiding,after all we know that the L.A. will behave themselves so it doesn’t matter if we dump on them but treat delinquents with kid gloves otherwise they might cause trouble.
Looking up some handy-dandy facts;
The Netherlands is 16 million people in 16,000 square miles, or more than 3 times the population of my state (Minnesota) crammed into 1/5th of the space. Minnesota would have a population of 80 million at the same density. So it’s not hard to figure that there aren’t any isolated pockets where anyone is more than 10 miles from the cops.
Perhaps not, especially among a population with no experience using guns. But I’d bet that after a year or two of rather high casualties among burglars, the burglary rate would drop to near zero.
Again, I think your basic burglar is too stupid to figure the odds. The possible overhead is pretty darn high considering the income to begin with.
If the stereotype of stealing to support a drug habit is more than a stereotype, the motivation is pretty high, too.
Wait a minute, I can understand not being able to shoot them, but you are not allowed to physically confront them either? Taking it to a burglar with a cricket bat in your bedroom is not an option? What? You’re joking or I’m misunderstanding.
This shit is from the movies only…there’s no such thing as shooting someone “where you want,” even the police don’t do it. You shoot to stop the target, period. Trying to hesitate and aim for his leg or arm or something is a very bad idea. I only know this because I know cops.