So you’d rather wait until he’s actually in the process of threatening your family? And it’s the threat of violence, not actual violence, that is the first step. For fuck’s sake, don’t make me go back and quote every goddamn post (because there are a LOT of them) where someone has said that they would demand that the invader surrender, and if they didn’t comply or didn’t immediately flee, that’s when the option to use force comes into play.
Again, people like you seem to think that gun owners are just waiting by their doors with shotguns like whatsisname in Kill Bill 2, and if they had the chance to get away with it they would go on a Doom-style killing spree.
If having a condescending attitude toward anyone whose heart doesn’t bleed as much as yours constitutes douchebaggery, then so be it. We’re talking about specific circumstances where someone is threatened in their own home.
If you’re in my house, I don’t care why, and you do deserve everything you get.
However, if you can prove, to my satisfaction, that you’re not a threat, in a timely manner, I will likely dispense of giving you what you deserve in lieu of a… means which involves less paperwork and cleaning.
Actually, the goal is to stop someone who might potentially harm you or your family, as they’ve already shown a predisposition to break into occupied houses.
How do I know they’ve shown this predisposition? Because they’ve broken into my house, they’ve intruded when they could’ve found somewhere else, that was unoccupied.
No, you just like building big strawmen for people to hang their hat on.
What we are saying - or I am anyway - is that you seem far too reliant on a gun for a solution, when even the pretense of better security is a far more effective method.
Lets agree to disagree on the ‘deserve everything you get’ aspect of your argument.
As to how you would achieve your ‘goal’…again I say violence as a profilactive measure is never good and may exacerbate the situation. Surely a more worthwhile goal would be to ensure your family’s safety and lessen their distress by avoiding a confrontation where possible. That is the situation not a single ‘gun totin’ contributer to this thread has admitted would be preferable and is possibly what is making it difficult to convince us ‘bleeding hearts’ that several on here aren’t just eager to take a pop at someone.
Several people, including myself, have said that effective security is preferable but sometimes not an option (for myself, being a renter, for example)
The question isn’t “how to best avoid home invasion scenarios,” the question is, “what do you do when a home invasion actually occurs,” which you have repeatedly and systematically avoided.
For you to accuse someone of constructing a straw man is so laughably unbelievable that I nearly spit out my coffee.
And that’s only in the first few posts, the sentiment is repeated a few times throughout the thread, which it’s now obvious that you didn’t read (at least, in its entirety).
Again, I say violence as a preventative measure can and does work, in certain situations. Especially situations where they layout of the house calls for the confrontation of the felon in your home.
My apologies; I’m frustrated with some of the other posters in this thread. Would you care to address my non-insulting reply? And in the process, would you kindly not infer that I, unlike yourself, have no respect for human life? Because that’s how I took it, and though you didn’t “Call me names” I took that as a blatant insult myself.
“if I have the luxury of deciding how to incapacitate the intruder, I’ll always opt for nonlethal, but I’m not going to assume that he’s not going to threaten my life.”
What more do I have to say to convince you that I’m not out to kill anyone? I don’t even own a gun. If I ever did for the purposes of home defense, I would keep it loaded with nonlethal ammo, which I also said several times in this thread. My point in that post was that if a shark was attacking me, I would defend myself by any means necessary, and if the shark ended up dead, sorry, I was defending myself. I do respect human life, including my own. In fact, I do far, far more for the sake of my own human life than I do for anyone else’s, and I’m pretty sure you do far more for the sake of your own life than anyone else’s. I don’t bathe, feed, clothe or wipe the ass of everyone I come in contact with. I do it for myself, and I might do it for a few people if the need arose, but I’m not afraid to admit that I’m not going to be a martyr for the sake of someone who broke into my house.
You repeatedly make claims which are contrary to reality, so either you haven’t read this thread, or you’ve read what you believe is this thread, but it isn’t.
Either way, you haven’t actually read this thread.
Because he’s entered into my room. Yes.
Now you’re saying that I should sit there, in my room, while he ransacks my room, too?
Stealing the valuables from my living and dining rooms wasn’t enough for him? He must come into my occupied house, and go into an occupied room?
At what point is it clear enough that he intends more than thievery, that he intends harm to me or my family? Must he have a weapon? “Oh no, he might just have it for self defense! The poor criminal has a right to defend himself, you know!”
Must he be aiming his weapon? “No, he’s just aiming his weapon to prevent you from aiming yours at him, the poor criminal has a right to self defense, you know!”
What must he do, before I can take steps to protect myself and my family?
And what I mean by “I’m not going to take a humanitarian view” is simply that I’m not going to assign the best possible motives to the intruder, I’m not going to assume that he’s going to become a model citizen if only he gets the right kind of attention, I’m not going to worry about his mommy and daddy or any of those things, because he’s currently threatening me by the very act of being in my home. I’m not saying I wouldn’t feel bad for mommy and daddy later. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be tragic if someone lost their life and all they wanted was a TiVo. And as I and others have said, they don’t have to lose their life over the TiVo if they either comply with a demand to surrender or they flee immediately. Only an idiot or a psychopath would challenge a homeowner with a gun pointed at them, right? The humanitarian view would be that maybe it’s just an idiot and therefore I should have pity on him. On the other hand, if he’s a psychopath, then my hesitancy to fire on him in this hypothetical situation could result in someone who has NO regard for human life killing/abducting/raping/torturing/who knows what to my family. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he’s just an idiot. I’m just saying, if forced to decide between the life of someone who is an X factor and has already shown disregard for the law or the safety of others, or the safety of my family, and the only option left to me is to use a gun, yes, I am going to use a gun. If I have magical glowing nets that fall down from the ceiling, I’ll use them instead. If I have a Star Trek phaser set on stun, I’ll use that instead. The scenario we’re talking about doesn’t have Star Trek phasers, though, it has a gun. And in my case, at least, it would be a gun loaded with less than lethal ammo, which might still be lethal anyway. I wouldn’t hesitate to fire in the right circumstances just because it might end up being lethal, though.
Please explain to me again why this is relevant, and why you keep bringing it up. I believe I already directly addressed you on this point in this post; if you would kindly present your rebuttal, I would appreciate it.
To put it more concisely: nobody is saying that it is desirable to skimp on home security to increase one’s chances of having to shoot an intruder. You have created that impression entirely out of your own imagination.
You know what? Nobody here wants to be in the position of having to choose between lives, or of judging the worth of one life lower than another. Nobody wants that.
But sometimes other people, through greed and malice and selfishness, place their own lives in the scales and set them opposed to our own, or the lives of those we hold dear. In such a circumstance we are forced to make judgment, and it does not rob us of our humanity to judge the life of the assailant of less worth than the life of the innocent!
To suggest anything else is, in fact, indulging in naive bleeding-heart false sentimentality of the highest order.
Typically those who argue that the car is as important are also arguing that the loss of the car would destroy their life - as the loss of my car would were my parents not inclined to bail out their kids in short or long periods of financial catastrophe. (May they live forever!)
Nobody is arguing the Tivo is more important.
People are arguing that the moment you find some invader in your house, all that the tivo has to do with it is that that means that the invader doesn’t have a gun in their hand -yet. At this point, of course, the only intelligent thing to do is to try and take control of the situation in the best way you can. One reasonably effective way of doing this is menacing the criminal with a gun in that slice of time before he drops the tivo and yanks out his pistol. It would of course be moronic (if not suicidal) to wait and see if he actually is armed before menacing him yourself.
Anybody arguing that he could be some poor sad innocent mama’s boy who is only trying to fence enough to pay for medical care is shoveling bullshit. The scenario is simple. You are faced with an invader. It is moronic to assume he’s not armed. It is suicidal to assume that he means no harm and will not do harm in a moment of stress, adrenalin, or fear. Sure, he might be a mama’s boy - and he might freeze, slowly raise his empty hands, and stand perfectly still as you wait for the police to arrive. To assume that the mama’s boy is going to get shot is to assume that he’s not going to act like a mama’s boy. At which point, your argument of hypothetcials has just contradicted itself.