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 Vaktathi wrote:
I can buy a taser here without so much as an ID, and I've never heard of one being used in a robbery here.

They also cost as much as an actual decent quality handgun and are much more awkward to use.

Definitely true. Their really only redeeming quality is that they are "non-lethal" for people who want that as an option. Their downsides are pretty severe, difficult to use, can be foiled by thick clothing, and the ranged versions often have only a single use.

So really, there is no reason to restrict people's use of non-lethals. If someone occasionally gets hurt by improper use, thats acceptable vs being able to have at least some option to defend yourself.

IIRC, its actually easier to get a gun in Canada than it is to get pepper spray or a taser. And its pretty difficult to get a gun there.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
I can buy a taser here without so much as an ID, and I've never heard of one being used in a robbery here.

They also cost as much as an actual decent quality handgun and are much more awkward to use.

Definitely true. Their really only redeeming quality is that they are "non-lethal" for people who want that as an option. Their downsides are pretty severe, difficult to use, can be foiled by thick clothing, and the ranged versions often have only a single use.

So really, there is no reason to restrict people's use of non-lethals. If someone occasionally gets hurt by improper use, thats acceptable vs being able to have at least some option to defend yourself.

IIRC, its actually easier to get a gun in Canada than it is to get pepper spray or a taser. And its pretty difficult to get a gun there.

It's not difficult to get a gun in Canada.

Unless you mean it's more difficult to get a gun than get a loaf of bread then yes, by that metric, it is difficult to get a gun in Canada.

Needing to get a license qualifies as difficult from our perspective.

Yay! We're both right! Hi five, cousin!

Sure, *removes shock gauntlets first

Update to the story:

http://newsok.com/no-charges-against-oklahoma-man-who-killed-3-intruders/article/5544038

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — An Oklahoma prosecutor says no charges will be filed against a 23-year-old man who fatally shot three intruders in his home, but that the woman who drove them there is being charged with first-degree murder.

Wagoner County Assistant District Attorney Jack Thorp said Monday that Zach Peters "acted justifiably" March 27 when he shot Maxwell Cook, Jacob Redfern and Jakob Woodruff at his home just outside the Tulsa suburb of Broken Arrow.

Thorp also said 21-year-old Elizabeth Rodriquez was charged with three counts of first-degree murder. Rodriquez has said she drove the three men to Peters' home to burglarize it, but doesn't feel responsible in their deaths.

State law allows murder charges against a person who takes part in a crime in which another person is killed.

So, how exactly would this be any different in any state without a stand your ground law? Sorry if this has already been answered.

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
So, how exactly would this be any different in any state without a stand your ground law? Sorry if this has already been answered.

Well, I'm going to copy and paste something I posted here a while back:

In the US, you can use deadly force if you reasonably believe yourself or someone else are in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury. All of these concepts vary by state, some being looser and some being tighter, but this is the most common phrasing.

Then, there are 3 different scenarios governing use of force across the US.

Duty to retreat: In some states, you are required to attempt to escape. If a home invader breaks into your house, you must attempt to flee your home, and can only use deadly force if you cannot escape. If a guy breaks in and chases you with a knife, in your house, and you shoot him without trying to escape the house, you can be prosecuted.

Castle doctrine: In other states, you have a duty to retreat, but it doesn't apply to your home - you do not have to attempt to flee your home before employing deadly force, again using the same reasonable/imminent criteria. Castle doctrine states commonly extend to your vehicle as well when you're in it. If a guy breaks into your house you have a strong defense against prosecution, if you're being carjacked you can defend yourself, if you see someone stealing your car and you shoot them - you're gonna go to jail. Make sense?

Stand your ground: In SYG states, you do not have a duty to retreat from any place you legally have the right to be. It's not a license to kill, you can't go into your neighbors house and decide to shoot him because "you felt scared". It simply means that if you reasonably believe yourself or someone else are in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury, you don't have to attempt to flee. To be honest I think this is the most reasonable version of a self-defense law.

So to answer your question:

In a SYG state, he has a SYG defense.

In a castle doctrine state, he can claim a castle doctrine defense.

In a state that has a duty to retreat, he would need to show that he attempted to flee his house, and only shot when he absolutely could not escape. He could potentially be charged if prosecutors believe he could have escaped. To lean into opinion for a sec, I suspect prosecutorial discretion is going to lean pretty heavily towards failing to charge someone who shot armed home invaders, unless they had have some pretty extreme evidence they had other options than deadly force.

In any of the 3, it's still possible to be charged if self defense or imminent threat no longer applies: for example, if you shoot 2 people in your house, and a third runs away and you shoot them in the back as they flee, you will likely be charged; if you execute someone who is already down and no longer a imminent threat, etc etc.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The thing is, if there is a possibility of everybody being armed. Even with non-lethals, it makes criminals second guess weather they want to rob someone.

Has that ever been proven to be an effective deterrent? I mean, the most dangerous place I lived as far as muggings and break ins occurred not in weaponless Australia but in a town where I lived in the US where every 2nd person I spoke to either had a gun or was planning on buying one (ya know, because the area was so dangerous that they needed one).

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
The thing is, if there is a possibility of everybody being armed. Even with non-lethals, it makes criminals second guess weather they want to rob someone.

Has that ever been proven to be an effective deterrent? I mean, the most dangerous place I lived as far as muggings and break ins occurred not in weaponless Australia but in a town where I lived in the US where every 2nd person I spoke to either had a gun or was planning on buying one (ya know, because the area was so dangerous that they needed one).

Ultimately, public access to weapons and crime are actually completely independent variables. Crime is almost completely linked to economic factors, and not weapon access. In the US, gun ownership has been going up while crime of all kinds has been plummeting. Some of the areas with the highest gun ownership are areas with the lowest violent crime, and some of the highest crime areas are places where gun control is strict as it is in Europe.

But given that there are a lot of cases of criminals being stopped by armed members of the public, its impossible to argue that its not a good idea. Police are unreliable, and they certainly don't prevent crimes from occurring. Police just respond after the fact. As the saying goes, "When seconds count the police are minutes away!"

The US has what seems like "a lot of crime" due not to access to weapons, but rather because of economic factors. The US is as big as all of Europe combined, and is not really a single economy like an individual European nation, but is instead a group of different economic areas joined together. So you'll have affluent areas with a strong economy and little unemployment, like the more prosperous areas in Europe. And you'll also have more economically depressed areas, like some of the dumps in Europe which have very very high crime.

People like to compare the US to a country like Denmark or Sweden which have lower crime rates, but its really a dishonest comparison. You'd really have to compare the US to Europe all together, including places like the Balkans, Greece, etc... to really have a proper comparison. At which point you'd see they're actually very similar in terms of actual crime. Its like comparing crime in Chicago or D.C. to crime in an affluent suburb of Santa Barbara.

 Grey Templar wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
The thing is, if there is a possibility of everybody being armed. Even with non-lethals, it makes criminals second guess weather they want to rob someone.

Has that ever been proven to be an effective deterrent? I mean, the most dangerous place I lived as far as muggings and break ins occurred not in weaponless Australia but in a town where I lived in the US where every 2nd person I spoke to either had a gun or was planning on buying one (ya know, because the area was so dangerous that they needed one).

Ultimately, public access to weapons and crime are actually completely independent variables. Crime is almost completely linked to economic factors, and not weapon access. In the US, gun ownership has been going up while crime of all kinds has been plummeting. Some of the areas with the highest gun ownership are areas with the lowest violent crime, and some of the highest crime areas are places where gun control is strict as it is in Europe.

Crime is not. Armed crime (especially gun crime) is.

High gun ownership happens in areas with sparsely populated, equal income areas (rural, middle-class suburbs, etc.). You can see that trend in Europe, too, and it's got nothing to do with guns and a lot to do wth the socioeconomic makeup of that particular area.

 Grey Templar wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
The thing is, if there is a possibility of everybody being armed. Even with non-lethals, it makes criminals second guess weather they want to rob someone.

Has that ever been proven to be an effective deterrent? I mean, the most dangerous place I lived as far as muggings and break ins occurred not in weaponless Australia but in a town where I lived in the US where every 2nd person I spoke to either had a gun or was planning on buying one (ya know, because the area was so dangerous that they needed one).

Ultimately, public access to weapons and crime are actually completely independent variables. Crime is almost completely linked to economic factors, and not weapon access. In the US, gun ownership has been going up while crime of all kinds has been plummeting. Some of the areas with the highest gun ownership are areas with the lowest violent crime, and some of the highest crime areas are places where gun control is strict as it is in Europe.

But given that there are a lot of cases of criminals being stopped by armed members of the public, its impossible to argue that its not a good idea. Police are unreliable, and they certainly don't prevent crimes from occurring. Police just respond after the fact. As the saying goes, "When seconds count the police are minutes away!"

The US has what seems like "a lot of crime" due not to access to weapons, but rather because of economic factors. The US is as big as all of Europe combined, and is not really a single economy like an individual European nation, but is instead a group of different economic areas joined together. So you'll have affluent areas with a strong economy and little unemployment, like the more prosperous areas in Europe. And you'll also have more economically depressed areas, like some of the dumps in Europe which have very very high crime.

People like to compare the US to a country like Denmark or Sweden which have lower crime rates, but its really a dishonest comparison. You'd really have to compare the US to Europe all together, including places like the Balkans, Greece, etc... to really have a proper comparison. At which point you'd see they're actually very similar in terms of actual crime. Its like comparing crime in Chicago or D.C. to crime in an affluent suburb of Santa Barbara.

So the answer to my question is then, no, it hasn't been proven to be an effective deterrent?

I know socio economic factors are the main drivers in crime, which is why I asked whether actually been proven that members of the community owning weapons actually improves things, because you made the comment that it'd make criminals think twice.... in my very anecdotal experience it doesn't seem to make criminals think twice, or maybe it just makes them more careful

Some of the areas with the highest gun ownership are areas with the lowest violent crime, and some of the highest crime areas are places where gun control is strict as it is in Europe.

The problem with having "areas" of strict gun control is it doesn't work if everywhere surrounding that area doesn't have strict gun control

The thing about gun control in other countries is that it makes it very hard to get a gun. People argue that the criminals will still have guns because they're not going to follow the laws anyway, but if it's hard to get the guns then you tend to have less criminals with guns. Gun control attempts in the US seem to be largely ineffectual because it's still not all that hard to get a gun.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Ultimately, public access to weapons and crime are actually completely independent variables. Crime is almost completely linked to economic factors, and not weapon access. In the US, gun ownership has been going up while crime of all kinds has been plummeting.

Just to pick you up on a couple of details that make a big difference. Public access to weapons and property crime are independent, there is a relationship between public access to gun and manslaughter/homicide. And also, while the total number of guns in the US is increasing, the number of households with guns in them has been on a 40 year decline, from about half of households to just over a third now - if a burglar picks a random house there is less chance of the owner being armed than 40 years ago.

But given that there are a lot of cases of criminals being stopped by armed members of the public, its impossible to argue that its not a good idea.

This is a completely ridiculous assertion. It ignores any notion of costs, or relative probabilities. I mean, we could require every single citizen to walk around with a safety helmet on, and there will be cases of serious and even deadly accidents being stopped by the helmets, but it doesn't make it impossible to argue the helmets are not a good idea.

Police are unreliable, and they certainly don't prevent crimes from occurring.

This might just be loose phrasing in your part, but as written it's kind of crazy. Of course police have a massive preventative effect on crime, between active policing, intervention, and threat of capture and punishment crime is much lower than it would be if there was no crime. Perhaps you meant 'police don't prevent all crime' or something like that?

The US has what seems like "a lot of crime" due not to access to weapons, but rather because of economic factors. The US is as big as all of Europe combined, and is not really a single economy like an individual European nation, but is instead a group of different economic areas joined together. So you'll have affluent areas with a strong economy and little unemployment, like the more prosperous areas in Europe. And you'll also have more economically depressed areas, like some of the dumps in Europe which have very very high crime.

simonr1978 wrote:


We are allowed to use lethal force in the UK but it has to be reasonable and proportionate. It was explained to me by an RAF lawyer back in the 90s (he was doing a presentation to my 6th form) that as a rough guide you would probably be fine to use up to and including the armament of your attacker in a one on one,

Wait, wait... So if he has a knife, I have to limit myself to a knife? Hell no! I want to stop him before he gets in range to use that knife he has, and using "up to and including the armament of your attacker" is not going to do that.

 Frazzled wrote:
He did warn them. They still came. If only someone had gotten to them in time to teach them properly, to value themselves more than stuff.

But valuing stuff more than other people is cool.

Three fools went looking for trouble, and got it. You break into people's houses, there will be consequences.

Were I live, burglars often target the elderly (who won't have guns), and it's not enough for them to rob them blind. They have to tie them up and beat them to a pulp too. They helped my cousins friends grandmother to an early grave. So burglars...nah, feth them.

Sorry, they're just a trigger of mine.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
He did warn them. They still came. If only someone had gotten to them in time to teach them properly, to value themselves more than stuff.

But valuing stuff more than other people is cool.

I am positive that is not what he meant. Property was secondary to the imminemt threat of bodily harm.

 don_mondo wrote:
Wait, wait... So if he has a knife, I have to limit myself to a knife? Hell no! I want to stop him before he gets in range to use that knife he has, and using "up to and including the armament of your attacker" is not going to do that.

No, that's not what it means. People often assume that and I don't know why. What it actually means is that you are only justified in the use of deadly force when the attacker is threatening deadly force. So yeah, if they had a knife that'd be a deadly weapon and you could use deadly force in response.

The issue with that sort of law is it still puts excessive burden on the victim to analyze the threat the attacker is posing. If its dark you won't necessarily be able to tell if your attacker is armed or not. If a guy wearing a sweatshirt is coming at you in almost total darkness for all you know he could have anything. A knife, bare fists, or even a gun. And even an unarmed assailant can still pose deadly harm. Fists and knees and feet can kill.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The issue with that sort of law is it still puts excessive burden on the victim to analyze the threat the attacker is posing.

If it's dark and you can't tell for sure, but the burglar makes a threatening move sure, you can shoot.

One extreme case that happened a couple years ago, two people broke into an older couple home. Started to beat the old lady demanding money, husband said he was going to bring it but instead he brought an illegal handgun. Shot one burglar in the head and the other fled.

The man only had the gun confiscated and a fine for posession of illegal firearm.

The hard thing is making a law that can apply broadly but is still specific enough to not be open to abuse.

The defender has to have some burden on them to judge the situation, but there also needs to be enough wiggle room to not people away for naturally wanting to defend themselves.

The reason Tony Martin got put away in the UK is because he shot the intruders in the back while they were trying to escape through a window. You could argue the intruders were planning on returning, but the jury found him guilty of murder so obviously felt it was unreasonable force (even though they had the option of returning a manslaughter verdict instead if they thought he wasn't trying to kill them).

 Frazzled wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
I think I'd like it more if it were adequate force for whatever threat. Like if they have a gun shoot them, but if its bats and such you should at least warn them before shooting them; if they're running at you then it's obvious the warning won't work. But like the issue with all that then is it becomes hard to prove if it was justified or not.

I can only speak from the perspective of British law, but when we've had cases like this over here, the judges have reasonably concluded that homeowners being invaded at 3am, are shocked, frightened, and have not the time to do a risk assessment!

What are they going to defend themselves with in brittan though? A kitchen knife?

Unless I'm very much mistaken, shotguns are legal is Britain.

Anything they want as long as they know someone with a pig farm.


"You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, "as greedy as a pig.""
-Brick Top

Just to confirm this. I was born and raised in the south and some unsavory things where done my distant family. My grandfather told me a story of helping his father dispose of a horse/cattle thief by pig. This was turn of the century early 1900's

 sebster wrote:

 don_mondo wrote:
Wait, wait... So if he has a knife, I have to limit myself to a knife? Hell no! I want to stop him before he gets in range to use that knife he has, and using "up to and including the armament of your attacker" is not going to do that.

No, that's not what it means. People often assume that and I don't know why. What it actually means is that you are only justified in the use of deadly force when the attacker is threatening deadly force. So yeah, if they had a knife that'd be a deadly weapon and you could use deadly force in response.

Cause that's what the post said "as a rough guide you would probably be fine to use up to and including the armament of your attacker in a one on one". Up to and including the armament of your attacker, I read that as same or lesser weapon that what he has.

 don_mondo wrote:

 sebster wrote:

 don_mondo wrote:
Wait, wait... So if he has a knife, I have to limit myself to a knife? Hell no! I want to stop him before he gets in range to use that knife he has, and using "up to and including the armament of your attacker" is not going to do that.

No, that's not what it means. People often assume that and I don't know why. What it actually means is that you are only justified in the use of deadly force when the attacker is threatening deadly force. So yeah, if they had a knife that'd be a deadly weapon and you could use deadly force in response.

Cause that's what the post said "as a rough guide you would probably be fine to use up to and including the armament of your attacker in a one on one". Up to and including the armament of your attacker, I read that as same or lesser weapon that what he has.

You read that the way its written because that what it said. That may not be what he meant, but I had the same take away.

Correction to the OP- I do not think this is 'Stand Your Ground'.

SYG law removes a 'duty to retreat' from any place where you have a right to be- walking down the street, at the market, waiting in line at the ATM, so on and so forth.

The Castle Doctrine allows you to defend your home and its extensions with the amount of force necessary to neutralize the threat, up to and including lethal force.

Duty to Retreat laws are stupid. Very, very stupid- and people who support them should be ridiculed.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Correction to the OP- I do not think this is 'Stand Your Ground'.

SYG law removes a 'duty to retreat' from any place where you have a right to be- walking down the street, at the market, waiting in line at the ATM, so on and so forth.

The Castle Doctrine allows you to defend your home and its extensions with the amount of force necessary to neutralize the threat, up to and including lethal force.

Duty to Retreat laws are stupid. Very, very stupid- and people who support them should be ridiculed.

that was mentioned on the first page, but the principle is very similar.