Reasonable use of force.

[flanker]

So what do you guys consider to be reasonable use of force to protect your loved ones and/or property?

 

Personally, if somebody steps over my threshold uninvited, they are fair game: I have no idea whether they are armed or not, and so to protect my family I would use all the force available to me and if that means maiming or even death, then so be it.

 

A bit extreme? possibly, but who can honestly say they would not do the same to protect their kids (those that have kids).

[bernardo]

jim: I am surprised that you say that the joke did not have a punchline.  The punchline was "Then he might learn to be reasonable and open-minded" - i.e. in stark contradiction to the rest of it i.e. a twist at the end.

[Philtaz]

Bit late joining this one(81 answers already!) but to answer the question: What do you consider to be reasonable force?  I'd have to say deadly is reasonable because bitter experience, as shown recently in the media shows that deadly force is the only way to guarantee you will come out alive if a burglar enters your property.

[Drewhound]

First off Donkey you might want to consider whether the satisfaction of doing that is worth leaving your family alone while you're in prison for a few years, would your family thank you for it?  

 

Oneeyedvic, a few years back a man living near Bristol did just that. He put a bomb in his wife's car, crippling her, then tried to plant some evidence on a neighbour he hated. When that didn't work he invited the man over to his house, shot him dead and then  tried to make it look like he shot him in self defence. They got him on forensic evidence

 

As for Tony Martin, he shot two men running away, since when could that be called self defence? If he had any brains at all, and that I seriously doubt, he'd have shot them on the way up the stairs and quite possibly got away with it

 

The law is never going to get it right every time but as it is I think it's fine

[Philtaz]

Strange how people know Fred Barras was running away from Tony Martin just because he was shot in the back. Suppose he was moving out of line of sight whilst contemplating finding a weapon, knife, chair or anything else with which to go back and attack Tony Martin? Try and imagine the abject fear and terror of a man who had been burgled frequently in the past only to find two intruders once again on his property. How many more times would he be put through the scenario of 'is this going to be the last one'?  'Are they going to finnish me off this time'?

You can't say "the law seems just fine as it is", unless you deem Fearon(the other burglar/local drug dealer) attempting to sue Tony Martin as 'fine'.

Barras was well on the way to becoming a career criminal.  Tony Martin ensured that Barras would not put another person or family through the psychological trauma he had suffered.

Some people just don't understand a simple concept:

 

If you enter my property with the express purpose of stealing my possessions, terrorising my family or putting their lives in danger then you take your own life in your  hands if I catch you.

[el duerino]

and you face the consequences as determined by law. its a simple concept . . . trespass does not mean carte blanche. it is still a person, n'est pas?

 

Fearon 'attempted' to sue - correct. Is he not allowed to try now? As is normal teh media made an enormous hooha and completely ignored the fact that his attempt was laughable. You;d think it was the dark ages in some of these replies.

 

by the way, there is no need to think about subjectivity - it is what you automatically assume. e.g. you shout at the burglars you have called the police from upstairs. they then come upstairs. in that situation deadly force would be reasonable imo. if however they stay downstairs and then leg it, it may cost you a few possessions and a bit of machismo but you are far better off staying out of harms way.

[Donkey]

Drewhound, i would rather spend a few years in prison than, take a chance and get stabbed and die... A man got killed last week when someone broke in his house , im sure his family would have rather he had smashed the bloke with a bat and gone to prison than do nothing and get stabbed and die

[Oneeyedvic]

Surely by using our primeministers own phrases - is the world better off without Barras - the answer is obviously yes. Therefore surely Tony Martin is as right as Tony Blair for killing this person and his justification.

[flanker]

Clearly we fall into two distinct camps (there is a third, very small sub-division - bernardo farting about with colours) - those that agree we are allowed to protect our families by any means, and those that don't - it has been a very interesting debate thus far: I feel those that don't are, quite frankly, bananas, and even possibly deluding themselves, but in a debate such as this every opinion is valid and welcomed, which is why it is a shame that people such as fat boy have to resort to insults when they don't agree with a perfectly valid opinion (calling cruthinboy cretinboy - am surprised thewillow hasn't joined in with the insults - he/she likes to insult people when he/she doesn't agree with their opinion).

 

I also agree with mike1222 - if you are convincing enough, you'll get away with it ("in the dim light I was convinced he was approaching me/my family with a knife, so I swung my baseball bat as hard as I possibly could against his head.........").

 

I also agree that Tony Martin did us a favour - Fred Barras was a nasty little scumbag who was well on his way to a life of crime - Martin has saved us hundreds of thousands of pounds in prison costs, as rest assured Barras would have been in and out of prison for the rest of his life (scuzzy little pondlife like him do not add anything to society other than misery, so I will not shed a tear that he was removed from the gene pool).

[cruthinboy]

Oneyedvic: "Whilst I agree, that criminals should pretty much forfeit all their rights if they do break in, I refer you to my first example. Cruitinboy invites bernardo round for a drink. Next thing you know, bernado is dead and cruitinin boy is saying bernardo broke in and cruitinboy stabbed him in self defense!"

Would have been more apposite if the roles of the main players had been reversed: it was, after all, bernardo who threatened me  .... as a joke ... the get-out clause for weasels throughout the ages!

[flanker]

Yes but cruthinboy, I think it is unofficial site policy that you cannot disagree with His Royal Bernadoness (joke).

[Wraith]

Flanker I agree that you are entitled to defend you family, but only with reasonable force. Frankly, the thought of someone breaking into my house and threatening my children scares the hell out of me. If it was the choice of pushing an intruder down the stairs or getting stabbed then down they'd go.

 

The thought of killing someone, even to defend myself or my family, also scares me. I for one don't want to find out what it's like to take a life, but if someone is standing over my daughter with a knife and the opportunity arises then I may well crack them across the back of the head with a hammer. The sheer thought of having to resort to violence is abhorrent. It seems a shame that my children a growing up in a society where violence is acceptable in certain circumstances and that worries me.

[flanker]

Wraith - wholeheartedly agree - I despise violence, and would go out of my way to avoid it: but if somebody was threatening my family, I would not hesitate in attacking them, and if that means they die, then so be it - this is not machismo as somebody previously posted, it is simply a desire to protect myself/my family. 

[georgit79]

lol flanker about the small third sub-division...I just spit my tea all over the keyboard..

[el duerino]

of course its not machismo defending your family. I am saying that you should make a judgement call in each situation, rather than simply applying a blanket slaughter/maim policy on intruders. Its a very difficult situation to be placed in and I have no doubt I would err on the side of more force than less, but I will not set out to kill someone because they are in my house.

[enigma]

I imagine that it is one of those situations where you don't know how you would react until you were faced with it. With all the best will in the world and saying that you deplore violence of any extreme nature , who's to say how you would respond if you awoke in the middle of the night to find an intruder in your kids' bedroom for example. The closest I have ever come to being faced with uninvited visitors to my property is when I was 18 and had my first little flat. I had already removed a lot of my property such as stereo , tv etc due to a burst pipe which flooded my flat and had been storing them at my parents' house. I returned to my flat late one night when I was going to a party and needed some mixer for my drink and as I neared my front door , something made me stop and I asked my hubby (Boyfriend at the time) to open the door because I suddenly felt scared. He had to force it open because my coffee table had been wedged against the door to jam it closed and I heard lots of crashing and banging about inside. I ran into the flat to be with my hubby and he told me that whoever had been inside had legged it out of my kitchen window. My flat was completely trashed. They had urinated against my walls and on my carpet , had eaten a takeaway from my plates and smeared a lot of it into my carpet and up my walls , had broken my pictures and slashed the inside of it with a stanley knife which they forgot to lift in their haste to get away. So they were armed. The police reckoned by the fingerprints that they were about 15. Why should their age be relevant as previously posted ? As far as I am concerned , anyone who enters your property uninvited is obviously up to no good and therfore forfeits their right to protection from the police. It sticks in my throat that there is a fine line now between victims and the perpetrators of crime where the latter can usually walk away relatively unscathed but the victim is left reeling and traumatised.

[enigma]

I'm not saying that I would brutally slay someone for entering my property. What I am saying is that this act of self defence is usually not pre-meditated , involving the victim having to think on their feet to protect their loved ones. What about the recent case in Scotland where a sex beast entered a couple's home , abducted their little tot who is two , led her to a nearby lane and began to sexually assault her before he was spotted by a group out looking for the child ? It was reported that he was armed with a knife but he claimed that he did not intend to harm the child (???) What would you do in that situation if you had walked into your child's bedroom to find him abducting her ? I know that I would protect my kids by whatever means possible. This beast had just been released from prison after serving about 18 months for a sexual attack on a frail old pensioner.(I believe she was about 81) He was free to attack again and is now serving about six years. Is that justice ? He should never be free imo as he is obviously still a danger to the public. When will we stop protecting the interests of criminals and learn that some people just can not be rehabilitated as they have no desire to do so ?

[Frankie Babe]

Seems to me that most people here are confusing protection with punishment.

[el duerino]

when do we decide they cannot be rehabilitated?

[flanker]

Excellent posts enigma - hadn't heard about the case in Scotland, but as the father of a one year old daughter, hearing that sort of thing sends a shiver down my spine.

 

And to answer your question, if I were in such a situation, killing the person is perfectly reasonable.

 

I see we're getting toward the one hundreth (is that a word?) post.