> Texas law allows you to use deadly force to protect property if you would be justified in using force, and you reasonably believe it is immediately necessary to prevent the imminent commission of specific enumerated property crimes. These are arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, theft during the nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime.
> Sec. 9.42. DEADLY FORCE TO PROTECT PROPERTY. A person is justified in using deadly force against another to protect land or tangible, movable property:
> (1) if he would be justified in using force against the other under Section 9.41; and
> (2) when and to the degree he reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary:
> (A) to prevent the other's imminent commission of arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, theft during the nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime; or (B) to prevent the other who is fleeing immediately after committing burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, or theft during the nighttime from escaping with the property; and
> (3) he reasonably believes that:
> (A) the land or property cannot be protected or recovered by any other means; or (B) the use of force other than deadly force to protect or recover the land or property would expose the actor or another to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury.
I can’t see a catalytic converter theft on a car parked on the street as burglary. Parked in a (private) garage? Yes, burglary. Parked on the street? No.
So, daytime theft of a converter from a car parked outside wouldn’t qualify I don’t think.
If you sleep in the car it will qualify no matter where you're parked. This also appears to be true of an RV or any vehicle that clearly accommodates sleeping.
For reference:
"Burglary" under the Texas penal code is defined by entering a habitation or any portion of a building that is not open to the public, either with the intent to commit a crime, or when followed by the actual commission of, or the attempt to commit, a crime.
"Robbery" is theft in which the thief causes an injury to someone else. (Or intentionally threatens to do so.)
"Theft" is what it sounds like.
Most notably burglary need not include any element of theft. I feel like it's a mistake for the legal code to distinguish between what are fully interchangeable terms in the language the code is supposedly written in.
On topic for this particular comment, "habitation" is specifically defined to include vehicles "adapted for the overnight accommodation of persons".
>I feel like it's a mistake for the legal code to distinguish between what are fully interchangeable terms in the language the code is supposedly written in.
They're not at all fully interchangeable, just many Americans have a poor grasp of the English language.
English is not some objective, natural thing which exists outside of its usage by people. English is only how it's used by people.
I would wager that for the majority English speakers, the words "theft", "robbery", and (to a lesser degree) "burglary" or more or less fully interchangeable.
They may not be interchangeable in law, but the usage of English in law is famously not always in line with common usage, which is why we have "legalese" which many completely fluent and native English speakers may have trouble understanding without specialized legal training.
I have a friend who came out of his house to shoot and kill a guy who was inside his car attempting to steal it. Friend was literally a local celebrity for months.
> I feel like it's a mistake for the legal code to distinguish between what are fully interchangeable terms in the language the code is supposedly written in.
I’ve thought about this too. They often vary from state to state as well. But the alternative would be to create new legal terms, which would be more confusing, or use just use numbers, which would be hard for laypeople to discuss.
> But the alternative would be to create new legal terms, which would be more confusing, or use just use numbers, which would be hard for laypeople to discuss.
Well, compare homicide, which in popular culture is divided into "murder in the first degree", "murder in the second degree", and "murder in the third degree" alternately known as "manslaughter".
It's not clear to me whether you consider those "new legal terms" or "just using numbers", since in my eyes they are terms invented for the purpose of the law, distinguished from each other by numbers.
But they appear to be superior to the division between "burglary", "robbery", and "theft" either way. They have no preexisting meaning (unlike "burglary" and "robbery", which are used in spite of existing contradictory meaning) and they cause no difficulties in discussing the crimes, which we can be certain of because these terms already exist and people discuss them all the time.
In the Texas penal code, homicide is actually divided into "murder", "capital murder", "manslaughter", and "criminally negligent homicide".
These are clearly "new terms" rather than "numbers". They seem pretty straightforward: "murder" is defined in harmony with its natural English-language meaning. "Capital murder" is a variety of murder that allows for capital punishment. "Manslaughter" is homicide caused recklessly rather than intentionally, and is in harmony with the popular understanding of the word "manslaughter". And "criminally negligent homicide" is homicide caused negligently rather than intentionally, and that's also in harmony with the normal construction of noun phrases in English.
If we were instead to give those four categories names that nobody without special training was even capable of distinguishing from one another -- as Texas has already done for "burglary", "robbery", and "theft" -- what would improve? I submit that that would make some things worse while making nothing better.
Compare also the popular-culture division between "assault" and "assault with a deadly weapon". What would giving those two crimes synonymous names accomplish?
First degree, etc. murder isn’t just a pop culture distinction. It’s in the law in various states, notably New York, from where it’s found its way into TV cop shows.
No, the driveway wouldn't count. Texas doesn't define burglary by property boundaries; you have to enter a "building" or a "habitation", and a habitation must be a "structure" or a "vehicle".
Are you sure that doesn't qualify on the basis that it is the curtilage of your home? Often this counts as "in your dwelling" because it's in your private space that immediately accompanies the dwelling.
Yes, I think so. I doubt a court would interpret that as being reasonable use of force though. In English common-law it's not just the wording of the laws that matter, one must also look at how the courts have interpreted and applied them.
The alternative would be completely incoherent. If it's OK to prevent theft, the appropriation of property, it must also be OK to prevent criminal mischief, which is the destruction of property.
Note that the harm to the victim is identical in both cases, except that in the case of theft, recovery may be possible.
That’s not a useful definition in a democracy. Who gets to define what’s justified if not the duly elected legislature? I bet if you put the current Texas law on the ballot today you’d get the same answer.
In this case Texas defines "criminal mischief" in three clauses, and separately defines circumstances under which it constitutes a felony. Felony mischief is largely but not exclusively defined by the amount of pecuniary loss.
The first two clauses are destroying property and damaging property in a way that causes pecuniary loss to anyone.
The third clause is making marks on property. This seems like it would always be included under "damaging property in a way that causes pecuniary loss", so I would guess it's there to make it completely explicit that graffiti counts as criminal mischief.
The quoted section of the penal code does not appear to apply any restrictions to the specific variety of criminal mischief that justifies deadly force (other than that it occurs at night).
For something like graffiti where the general sentiment is that deadly force shouldn't be considered justified, I could see an argument that the use of deadly force violates §9.42(3)(A), which requires the person using deadly force to reasonably believe that the land or property in question "cannot be protected or recovered by any other means". If we view both verbs as applying to criminal mischief, you could make the argument that when you catch someone spraying graffiti on a wall on your property, your property can be recovered, though not protected, by e.g. repainting the wall.
The counterargument might be that "recovered" is in there as the appropriate verb for cases of theft, and "protected" is in there for cases of mischief.
I don't think restricting §9.42 to felony mischief would be an improvement to the law; it's difficult to know whether criminal mischief is or isn't a felony until you've tried to recover from it and learned how much that will cost. If you catch someone keying your car, for example, that probably is a felony, but as far as social impact I would rate it similarly to graffiti.
Deadly force can be lawful in Germany as well, reading Texas law I wonder which nuances of the laws make the biggest difference (assuming there's one).
Could also be that the difference comes from owning land works differently in Germany (because it's much more densely populated) and of course owning anything except small guns is completely forbidden.
people freqently conflate Stand Your Ground vs Duty to Retreat... with the entire rest of the debate.
I'm trying to keep this neutral, so I'm using a rather cut and dry example: Somebody kicks in your door with a pump action and starts shooting- There are _some_ jurisdictions that require you to try and flee. You kill them and they werent bodily blocking your car in? Murder charge. investigation finds a sabatoged engine? Doesn't matter.
Stand Your Ground assumes reasonableness and codifies leaveing the fight or flee decision up to the individual.
Your example isn't quite as cut-and-dry because in a lot of cases that's going to involve the Castle Doctrine as well, and "starts shooting" means there is an actual danger merely than a perceived potential danger.
Counter-example: You're walking on the streets, at night, in the "bad part" of town. Someone walks towards you with their hands in their pockets, and their head covered with a hoodie. They say "Hey, what are you doing here?". You perceive this to be a threatening situation and fear for your life. Are you supposed to: a) pull out your gun and shoot them, or b) run away?
Some proponents of Stand Your Ground would say that option A is perfectly fine, some proponents of Duty To Retreat would say that you must attempt option B first, and fall back to option A only as a last resort.
It seems I may have misremembered my example and inadvertantly made duty to retreat appear worse than it is. However- it was meant to highlight the positons both sides and it holds correct enough for thst still.
> Somebody kicks in your door with a pump action and starts shooting- There are _some_ jurisdictions that require you to try and flee. You kill them and they werent bodily blocking your car in? Murder charge.
Which jurisdictions? Is this in the US? I’ve lived in a bunch of European countries and in none would you be charged with murder in that situation.
If someone comes through your home door guns akimbo in the US, blasting back is fine
US Supreme court has often leaned heavily on right to protect self in one's own home in ruling against local and state laws that might ban ridiculous things.
Germany has had some weird court decisions in that regard, in general the law does say flee and not shoot back if this is an option. But mostly courts are reasonable and do not punish the victim. Only if the victim decides to use violence after the threat is over
But there was even a case, where a hells angel shot a police officer in his home who were doing a raid - and got free (because they did not identify themself as police).
The law says your are allowed to stand your ground. You don't have to flee.
> But there was even a case,
I don't know the details of the case, but if somebody thought some criminals are raiding his house with guns and it's reasonable the he thought that, then he's fully within his rights to defend himself and, depending on the necessities, by shooting at them.
> Allerdings gilt besonders hier der Grundsatz, dass das Unrecht dem Recht nicht zu weichen braucht. Man darf sich zur Wehr setzten und muss nicht flüchten.
Translation:
> However, the principle that wrongdoing need not give way to what is right applies here in particular. One is allowed to defend oneself and is not required to flee.
I believe that's pretty common and a sane approach.
Examples? Maybe it’s true but I’d be surprised. Like I said from experience of living under a number of jurisdictions, none will charge a person with murder in those circumstances. Everywhere I’ve lived, if your life is directly threatened like that, you are absolutely allowed to defend yourself with violence commensurate with the threat.
They may have been confusing or deliberately conflating things with the fact that in most western jurisdictions, you are not allowed to kill, for example, a fleeing trespasser or burglar. This is viewed as an entirely different situation from one where you are being threatened directly with immediate physical violence.
"Anthony Edward Martin was an English farmer who shot two burglars in his home [...] was convicted of murder, which was later reduced to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility"
Only when threatened and self-defense has to be proportionate. If someone attacks you with a knife you would not be allowed to defend yourself with a firearm if you had one.
This is very different from the law in Texas, where, from what I understand, if you catch someone in the night stealing you could just kill them even if they never threatend you.
> Only when threatened and self-defense has to be proportionate. If someone attacks you with a knife you would not be allowed to defend yourself with a firearm if you had one.
Being attacked with a knife means your life is being threatened and using a firearm would be legal even in Germany. The response has to be proportionate to the threat on life or limb not the size of the weapon.
[−]austin-cheney · 2026-08-30 Sun 11:07 UTC ·
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Search for Texas castle doctrine. The intention is to provide extreme deterrence against home invasion crimes. The liability for shooting a person, for any reason, in Texas outside the home is much greater.
About Germany, §32 StGB doesn't require proportionality, the test is "Erforderlichkeit" or "necessity". So if you only have a gun and get attacked by a knife, you don't have to "make things even".
Of course, if someone is simply stealing a Catalytic Converter you can't really shoot them, as it's a bit much... you can point a gun at them, and possibly even shoot the air, that's easier to argue as self-defence. If they threaten you back, the situation changes.
The problem is having a gun in the outside, in Germany, good luck with that... of course, if it's someone stealing something inside your house, it becomes a home invasion, which is a completely different thing than someone stealing your property on the street.
It's way more nuanced than Texas, which has a bit more clear cut law.
> in Texas, where, from what I understand, if you catch someone in the night stealing you could just kill them even if they never threatend you.
It's worth pointing out that night is doing some of the work in this statement. Texas is unusual, as far as I know, that darkness makes a big difference in how self-defense and danger are viewed. It kinda makes sense, because in the dark, the would-be victim is less able to fully and accurately assess the situation. So Texans need to be aware that their actions may be interpreted more harshly in the dark.
First off- Texas has an explicit law making copper and catalytic converter theft a "Jail felony"- but if you break any other laws on the way, it's upgraded to a class 3 felony. See: https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/?tab=1&code=PE&chapter=PE... And. if you really want to play cops and robbers, a personally witnessed jail felony seems to be enough for a citzen's arrest.
Second: "(B) the use of force other than deadly force to protect or recover the land or property would expose the actor or another to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury." - YOU HAVE TO BE AFRAID FOR YOUR LIFE Texas gives citizens enourmous latitude in these matters, but it's not carte blanche for murder.
The Uvalde police department exhibited both cowardice and incompetence, but can we stop pretending they are representative of cops everywhere?
Just a year later during the mall shooting in Allen Texas, cops took down the white supremacist, neo-nazi perpetrator in under 5 minutes, probably saving at least a co couple dozen lives (he’d already killed 9). You can watch the bodycam footage from that event if there’s any doubt
My comment may sound cliché, but I genuinely believe this, no material possession is worth more than a human life. A catalytic converter can be replaced, a life cannot.
Nobody is forcing people to risk their lives to infringe on other people's rights. Whenever I see a news article about a criminal killed in the act, I never think "I wish they were alive.", I think "I wish they never went down that path in the first place that lead to that scenario."
Those people are still in control of their actions, with the exception of those with untreated mental illnesses who are even more likely to be a danger to you and others if apprehended.
> A catalytic converter can be replaced, a life cannot.
So don't go around stealing catalytic converters. Same deal with states with "stand your ground laws". It's astonishingly easy to not get shot: don't invade someone's home.
And on the "replacing" part- on whose dime? What if someone's only means of transportation is affected, and they lose wages or outright lose their job? Are you going to pay for it? Of course not.
No, a better reason to not allow shooting of common thieves is that you don't want ordinary people shooting randomly at each other. The government / police should be able to handle this, but they either don't care or are incompetent.
Which leaves the ordinary upstanding citizen stuck between a rock and a hard place. The Man extracts taxes from their earnings, and thieves who ruin lives get a slap on the wrist because "lives are oh precious".
I was referring to homes. This situation likely could've been avoided by not engaging in recklessly stupid behavior like road rage and escalating the situation (with one's family present, to boot).
Also, a news article of some random altercation doesn't change anything about what I said: It's simply impossible to be shot (or clubbed, or beaten up, or whatever) by someone in their home for invading, if you never invade people's homes in the first place. So don't do that. And don't steal catalytic converters either.
> It's astonishingly easy to not get shot: don't invade someone's home.
The clear, plain-English implication of what you're suggesting is: your risk of getting shot (in the US) is, to a large extent, directly correlated to your invasion of other people's homes.
Except that there's no evidence to support this. According to FBI data from 2015-2019, the ratio of criminal gun homicides to justifiable homicides (as in self-defense) was 34:1.
Over 10,000 innocent people are killed by guns every year in the US, including more than 1,000 young people. This excludes suicides, which itself is a number that you'd probably be wise to pay attention to.
Is the context of this discussion unclear to you? Do I need to place conversational guard clauses for you? Or are you just interested in nitpicking? Do I really need to clarify that there are other ways of dying or getting harmed, including other ways of being shot, that have nothing to do with this? Do I have to preface every comment with an obvious disclaimer?
Obvious disclaimer: It is completely obvious that freak incidents occur, that there are other ways to die, that there is no way to guarantee the future or that harm will never come to someone, and that there are exceptions to just about every statement.
But one CAN choose to avoid deliberately putting themselves in situations where harm can befall them, such as comitting crimes like breaking into someone's home, or stealing someone's property. It should be completely obvious that one stands better chances in general by not doing things that make other people obscenely angry.
> Over 10,000 innocent people are killed by guns every year in the US, including more than 1,000 young people. This excludes suicides, which itself is a number that you'd probably be wise to pay attention to.
Out of a population of 349,000,000 people. Sad, but most people can live their lives and be completely unaffected. Stop being sensationalist.
> Obvious disclaimer: It is completely obvious that freak incidents occur...
Are you really now characterizing incidents of gun violence and suicide as "freak incidents"? They just happen, like a random bolt of lightning in a clear sky that strikes a person out taking a walk?
> Out of a population of 349,000,000 people. Sad, but most people can live their lives and be completely unaffected. Stop being sensationalist.
The figure I cited was for gunshot deaths of innocent people. Every year, over 100,000 people are shot in the US. More Americans die every year due to guns than they do because of auto accidents.
You can dismiss this as miniscule compared to the size of the population, and refuse to compare the numbers in the US to other developed nations, which shows how absurdly more risky the US is versus the rest of the "civilized world".
But what you can't do is pretend that gun violence doesn't have an impact on people that isn't measured in deaths and gunshot victims. Because there is plenty of evidence that the threat of gun violence has a major impact on the lives of Americans. For example, more than a third of Americans have avoided going to certain public places or events out of fear. See: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40205802/
Other statistics, with citations, that I'm sure you'd dismiss:
> Are you really now characterizing incidents of gun violence and suicide as "freak incidents"?
Yup, as they basically are. Bolts of lighting would fall under "random acts of god/nature". Talking about whether or not guns should legally be ownable by citizens is an entirely different discussion.
> Every year, over 100,000 people are shot in the US. More Americans die every year due to guns than they do because of auto accidents.
Again, over 349,000,000 people. You do the math. Tons of car accidents, yet the world moves on and literally every adult I know, who doesn't live in Chicago/NYC/[rare place that's walkable + can afford it], drives. Find someone or something to blame for the geography of the country. Are we debating infrastructure now for a country the size of the US?
In any case, it does seem that you are capable of understanding what I meant by the original statement. It seems like all you want is to quibble over slight semantics in phrasing, and lecture someone who actually has lived in the US about how dangerous it really is. Have a day.
> Yup, as they basically are. Bolts of lighting would fall under "random acts of god/nature".
And a person using a gun to kill someone else is a "random act of god/nature" how exactly?
For someone who seems very confident of his knowledge of statistics, here's one for you: ~20-30 people die from lightning strikes in the US every year. Based on the averages, 4-6x that number died due to a gun yesterday alone.
I'm an American. Born and raised in one of the largest cities. I know at least half a dozen people who have been robbed at gunpoint, dated a woman who had been terrorized by a gun-nut ex, and one of my closest friends lost his father to suicide.
With all due respect, there's nothing more callous than believing that something doesn't impact vast numbers of people (proven by empirical evidence) simply because you apparently haven't experienced it yourself.
It's good to be able to stand your ground if that becomes necessary, I think. When I took concealed carry classes, they taught me to aim towards the center of mass to maximize my chances of a hit that would disable the attacker and to keep shooting until they stop being a threat.
But I also think that it is often more-useful and much, much safer to know how to de-escalate when that's possible. When I took martial arts classes, they taught me that the first step towards winning a fight was to avoid fighting to begin with, and always calm things down one notch at a time. If, and only if, that becomes impossible, then: Kick the snot out of them until they stop being a threat.
And running away can be useful: An attacker's ability to do harm decreases with distance. When I took army basic training, we trained a lot on running. They taught me that being able to run reasonably-quickly for reasonably-long distances was a skill that most people lack. Just keep running and the attacker will probably get tired and give up long before you do, which generally resolves the threat. If the threat persists after running away, then: Use the element of surprise and just turn around and stab them until they stop being a threat.
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This is not an exhaustive list of methods and it is possible for any of them to go wrong. It's also possible to do nothing at all as a response and still have a very bad time of things.
It's a complex world. We've got billions of other people with different backgrounds, different problems, and different ideas of how they're going to get a little further ahead today than they were yesterday.
If we all had all of the answers, then we wouldn't have the kinds of desperation that leads to these problems to begin with.
But we don't all have all of the answers.
[−]BoingBoomTschak · 2026-08-30 Sun 08:36 UTC ·
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Come on, these maniacs would have used knives or clubs in any case. Or you one of these "the blade itself" guys?
Or basic simple profit for sociopaths. Organized criminal rings have turned catalytic converter theft into a multi-million to billion dollar+ industry. Its basically steal from the POOR middle-class and make the sociopaths even more rich.
Nobody desperate will dare steal from the gangs since its not just death, but PAIN before death.
Laziness mostly. It takes at least a decade of sustained exhausting mental and physical work to become a doctor, becoming a thief is mostly opportunity.
People often do get defined in terms of their profession or things they habitually do.
[−]HarlequinHair · 2026-08-30 Sun 08:35 UTC ·
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I agree with the general concept, but it's not practical to use.
What about a bad medic?
Or a thief that helps homeless people in their free time?
If it was easy, we would have simpler laws and better justice systems...
[−]crossroadsguy · 2026-08-30 Sun 14:41 UTC ·
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Now let's talk about a doctor-thief, or a thief-doctor - your preference. Let's not get into the reasons/circumstances, because I'm pretty sure those won't be on the cards when a gun is drawn, or two.
[−]hackable_sand · 2026-08-30 Sun 15:11 UTC ·
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Yeah. There were times in my life I would have put my life on the line (and that of the thief) to defend my vehicle and the tools within it. Those fed myself and my family. I would have had no reasonable means to replace my tools, and barely reasonable means to replace the damage a catalytic converter theft would have caused me.
Today it's trivially easy for me to say "property can be replaced, a life cannot" since I am exceedingly privileged. I would not put my life, or anyone else's on the line to defend anything but my and my family's personal safety. But I remember what it was like to not be so ridiculously privileged. So I get it.
Only someone who has never lived a hard day in their life can spew such stuff at other folks. It's entirely circumstantial.
The laws should reflect the prior case, not the privileged one. At least if you want to disincentivize criminal behavior.
Or you could have a society with a welfare safety net or even viable forms of transportation other than a private car. It appears that places where that happen also tend to have much lower crime rates as an added benefit.
This is a very normal commercial insurance problem. Sure, you can supplement it by buying a gun and staying up all night defending your truck, but the family ain’t gonna be happy if you bought the gun in lieu of insurance, especially if you lose that gunfight.
I would like to agree, but that's not how insurance works, at least in the U.S.
You get your catalytic converter stolen, and you will pay for it three times. The first is you paid for the original one. Then you paid for insurance to cover its theft, and likely your payments over the years have already paid for the catalytic converter a second time. And then after it's stolen, your insurance rates will raise such that you are paying for a 3rd (maybe fourth) converter, just on a monthly plan now.
Now, of course, shooting the thief is only cheaper if you don't invest much in your weapons and training, and don't face any legal scrutiny afterwards and need to hire a lawyer.
[−]crossroadsguy · 2026-08-30 Sun 14:38 UTC ·
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> I would have had no reasonable means to replace my tools, and barely reasonable means to replace the damage a catalytic converter theft would have caused me.
But if you had died in the interaction, and let's say the thief at that point even left the goods and decided to leave, that would have totally been a win outcome, because the property with which you provided your livelihood was saved… wait…
> Only someone who has never lived a hard day
Yeah right…
I never understood why people forget this:
- Life is more valuable esp. if "you + property" combo is the livelihood. Okay, let's make this simpler. Probability of tools replacement ≠ 0; definitely >0. Possibility of you being replaced after death =0. Yup, it's not >0 yet, folks.
- When you are going for a life-losing/taking-possibility escalation level, maybe don't forget it's a two-way street..
[−]hackable_sand · 2026-08-30 Sun 15:13 UTC ·
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No, I believe a combination of the police, state governments, and federal government should be able to handle a) street-level policing and b) shutting down the illicit trade of catalytic converters, without using invasive measures like flock cameras. But that would require the police being competent to any degree, instead of using overtime to steal even more of our tax dollars.
The stolen goods have to be sold and bought somewhere. If they can't accomplish this with the vast resources available to them, (amongst other longstanding issues), then we should probably rethink the taxation process, the election process, or both.
Okay: It's astonishingly easy to not get shot from committing crimes specifically home burglary or stealing expensive things from people. Other things may still befall you, because life is random like that, but if you don't do those specific things, I guarantee you won't get harmed as a result of doing those specific things. I make no other guarantees.
Doesn't quite roll off the tongue, does it?
> If anything, it's astonishingly easy to get shot in the US of A.
No, not really. It's easier than other countries, but I'm afraid you've bought into media sensationalism. The country has a population of 349,000,000 people. There will be crazy incidents. And they won't happen to the vast majority of people, at least, people who aren't tempting fate by doing stupid things like home burglary. But the ones that do happen, can get televised around the world.
The way the news talks about life in the US is completely out of touch. I myself have pulled into random driveways perhaps dozens of times. It's not uncommon when navigating suburbia. The way the news discusses it, I should be dead probably a dozen times over.
The problem is they never discuss all the other times people do that and nothing happens, which is nearly all of the time.
> The country has a population of 349,000,000 people. There will be crazy incidents.
By that logic, any country with a similar (or larger) population should have similar (or larger) gun deaths per capita as the USA, right?
Take India - population 4.3x but 15x fewer gun deaths per capita. Or Japan - 0.35x the population and 1500x fewer gdpc.
(Admittedly Brazil scuppers my counter-argument slightly - population is 0.6x but gdpc are 1.3x. Poverty and availability of guns seems to be the key rather than "random chance".)
Brazil has entire areas within the largest cities dominated by para-statal organizations that often are in shooting wars within themselves, with the government, or just decide to go on a terrorism spree against the civilian population.
[−]crossroadsguy · 2026-08-30 Sun 14:24 UTC ·
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> don't invade someone's home
And what constitutes "invading" someone's home? You know what, don't answer that.
This sounds great in theory, and I used to agree, but:
a. There's no guarantee against escalation, a property crime turns into a violent crime very easily.
b. Property crime can have a deep psychological impact on the victim - something the perpetrator demonstrably gives zero fucks about.
c. The police and justice system in 2026 don't care about prosecuting property crime. Having no recourse at all if you're being robbed (a common situation when defending your own property is effectively illegal because of the risk to the perpetrator) is grossly unfair.
It's not just $2k lost here. There's a lot to be said about the immeasurable value of a high-trust society.
As another commenter said: It's incredibly easy to not get shot; don't burglarize someone's home the same way you wouldn't jump in front of a moving train.
Holding the threat of death over people isn't the way to a "high-trust society." Maybe you think it's the way to something similar, but you have to give up the word "trust" because it doesn't apply here. If the only reason I think a man isn't going to rob me is because I will shoot him if he does, I don't trust that man.
A society which only has low crime because everyone is able to use lethal force to defend themselves and their property isn't one I would call higher "trust" than one that maintains the same crime levels without that threat.
[−]s1artibartfast · 2026-08-30 Sun 05:22 UTC ·
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I think that is the wrong way to think about it.
The end state is you can trust others because nobody even wants to or considers it.
Punishing violators is being proposed as how to build the norm that no one wants to steal.
Correct, the "No object is worth someone's life" is easy to say. However if you want a high trust society, it needs property rights. That only comes through enforcement of some sort.
[−]s1artibartfast · 2026-08-30 Sun 05:17 UTC ·
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Interesting dichotomy. I think a lot of people would have no problem.
I think I would consider myself in that group.
I think some lives are worth negative, and everyone is better off with them dead.
I was once beaten senseless by a group of 3 young men when I decided to take an early-morning walk to get some smokes from the store down the way, in a sleepy small city in Ohio.
There was nothing that I was doing that was wrong in any way. I was quietly minding my own business when they came up from behind me with other ideas and one of them hit me in the side of my face, from behind, with an intensity that I'd never really experienced before in all of my years.
I lost hours of my memory and years of my mental health. I gained years of occasional intense neck pain that consistently put my mind in very dark places, and thousands of dollars of medical bills.
They gained two unopened packs of Camels and the pocket knife that I apparently failed to effectively utilize. I still had my wallet and my phone.
The police did nothing of any productive impact. A report was taken, and it was taken poorly. When 3 guys were arrested a couple of weeks later for robbing someone with a baseball bat and I recognized their pictures, they didn't care. I walked the local law-enforcement ladder all the way up to the city prosecutor, and also through parallels in the sheriff's department.
Nothing was productively done on my behalf.
It made me feel so angry and powerless. A follow-up that I requested came along with the cop that took the first report, and resulted in such profound and obtuse stonewalling that I became tremendously and irreverently furious. I left the room, while demanding from the other side of a wall that he get the fuck out of my apartment.
This all conspired to make it clear that it was my cross to bear. Nobody of any influence was going to help me along the way.
(I'd probably have a very different story to tell if I'd shot the attackers all dead, but I don't have that story. I was not equipped to do that so there is no direct comparison here for me to make. It is definitely my hope that I never have any opportunities to make such a comparison.)
In your other comment you state that you've taken 3 different types of combat training (concealed carry, martial arts, army basic). I am curious if you did all this training after the incident with the 3 young men or before?
I got involved in martial arts for a few years after I was attacked for no particular reason by people who were much older than me when I was a little kid, twice in short succession, and my parents felt that this was a good way to help with that kind of situation. I don't know if that was the best response that they could make but I don't disagree with it.
Army training happened later, in a just-post-9/11 world where I was feeling strongly patriotic and also looking for a meaningful job. It had its ups and downs.
Concealed carry classes happened much later, after the incident with the 3 young men, wherein: Either the previous training didn't help, or I was doomed anyway, or both.
I remember everything up to the first hit very clearly. I'd seen these folks way over there doing whatever they were doing, but I didn't suspect any trouble in that little town. I just kept walking. Soon, I heard a set of footsteps right behind me -- at least one of them closed the gap quickly. Before I could formulate a plan (including "run"), I got hit hard and it gets murky. I do remember standing and facing all three of them under a street light and saying "What in the fuck do you think you're doing?" as a means of negotiation; this clearly did not work.
After that, I remember a blur of fast-walking back to my apartment. They were gone, like they'd never been there, but I was scared because I was sure that they were watching me go home anyway. I went around the back side of the building, deviating from my normal route home, watching my back as well as I could in that state.
I got home and I was satisfied that nobody had followed me as I re-locked my front door, and for a period of time (I don't know how long), I didn't think anything else happened. I forgot that I needed cigarettes. I eventually looked in the mirror and saw that it looked like I'd been hit by a car, and later noticed dirt all over my clothes. I called my ex-wife for advice, and then called the police who showed up and took a report (badly) and promised to do ~nothing else, and then called my boss for a ride to the hospital.
None of any of the training I've ever had really covered dealing with a surprise attack from three motherfuckers at once. It wasn't exactly ideal.
I still can't walk around in public with headphones on. I wasn't wearing them that night, but it was something that I occasionally enjoyed and that concept is subsequently dead to me.
"None of any of the training I've ever had really covered dealing with a surprise attack from three motherfuckers at once. It wasn't exactly ideal."
Not much will, I practiced Krav Maga for years and we train for 3:1 , but a surprise attack that knocks you unconsciouses is hard to plan against. But it does teach you to be ultra-aware of your environment, who's around you, what attack surfaces are risky, objects you can use to defend yourself.
You may know this already, so maybe it would help someone else.
As a smoker, your financial impact on the healthcare system and insurance prices and whatnot is far greater than the financial impact of the hypothetical loss of a catalytic converter that other commenters are using to justify the homocide of the imagined thieves.
Thus, according to those larpers, your beating may have been justified. That’s without even getting into the violence you’ve visited upon others via secondhand smoke.
It's almost never $2k and then they go to live a normal life.
You don't shoot them there they steal yet again and maybe harm someone in the process.
I was a victim a theft a few times and violent assault 2 times. Although I managed to escape both times and could afford to replace my property I wish someone else shot them or I had a chance to do it - as a favor to future victims.
[−]crossroadsguy · 2026-08-30 Sun 14:49 UTC ·
link
This thread is the living, breathing American dream.
Your daily reminder that many people don't see lethal self defense as an unfortunate last resort. They active want to be put in a situation where it is justified so they get to enjoy killing another human, as seen on TV.
this is so untrue, gullible and naive. so if I steal your home, your car, your food, your water, and everything material, and you end up starving and dead or stranded on the side of a ride in a desert where no ones coming to help you - are you are saying that is ok since that stuff can be replaced?
You absolutely can cause death to a human and take a human life through material theft.
Ah, but that’s not the choice. The choice is whether there exist probability p, life L, and material possession m such that the possession is worth more than p times L.
The conclusion that there is no such triad seems clearly absurd since we allow people to build things for us the construction of which offers them a non-zero chance of death.
It is reasonable to say that a precise frontier is not describable because of Sorites but to say no triad exists implies that you only participate in an economy consisting exclusively of zero risk behaviour[0] That seems improbable.
Once we’ve dealt with that, perhaps we may be able to conclude that catalytic converters exist on one side of the frontier or on the other side or perhaps we might say that they lie along the Sorites boundary.
0: we are not unreasonable. We might even choose to consider imperfect information about the risk, the risk being at a Pareto optimum, the risk being at optimum against counterfactual, etc.
A great example of this triad is driving a car: many people choose to do so every day and a small but not insignificant fraction of them will die because of it.
It's easy to say that. Not so easy to take responsibility for those views and compensate the victim which is often forced to work several months to cover the damage, may lose their job or their life is otherwise negatively affected.
"Let's not harm the thief but force the victim to cover the damages" is what it comes down to and imo it's a very immoral stance.
Civil forfeiture, sure but the property taxes are presumably to offset the lack of income tax, neither of which is thievery outside of a Zerohedge comment section.
They frequently already are. Even here in Canada[1] where any kind of "carry" is generally not allowed. Shockingly, thieves often don't care about gun laws though.
Your link refers to a single robbery which explicitly requires that you threaten another individual. "Thieves" encompasses far, far more than robbery, crimes where you needn't threaten someone else and carrying an illegal firearm becomes a liability.
Burglars in particular tend to target empty houses precisely to avoid confrontation. To bring a weapon only make sense if there is a chance of getting shot at.
Isn't "crime, done with the involvement of a firearm" also often more harshly punished than the plain crime itself? If a burglar is targeting empty houses, this would give them a strong incentive to not bring a firearm, just in case they get caught.
I think that world largely exists. There are some counties in Texas where crime is essentially negligible.
I live a few minutes away from one of the facilities where capital punishment is administered. The local community is extremely pleasant. I don't bother locking my doors at home or at the grocery store. The only place any real crime occurs is within a few hundred yards of the interstate. Target and Home Depot get robbed occasionally, but that's about it around here. I don't think it's physically possible to steal from my local Home Depot without ending up in the flock database. The geometry and overlapping coverage they have is pretty crazy now. You can tell they waged a full scale war against an army of meth addicts and won decisively. Every time I go into that store looking for a Milwaukee product, I find it in stock and unmolested.
At no point do I worry about a western style shootout with a bandit. The most prolific criminal around here has 4 legs and only really cares for the contents of particular trash cans and gardens.
Texas has among the highest crime rates in the country, 17th for violent crime, even worse for property crime. Given the wealth of Texas, having such high crime rates is even more embarrassing (crime and poverty go hand in hand, but Texas doesn't have that excuse). In short, you're talking out of your ass.
That's also true. But one of the arguments of the "law and order" types is always that more police, and more aggressive police with more power to imprison people, reduces crime.
A wealthy state like Texas has a lot of cops and a lot of prisons. And, those cops are given incredible leeway in how they do their job.
Texas is a case study in whether "law and order" Republican policies work, and the evidence indicates it doesn't. We're just killing people in capital punishment cases for the joy of killing, not because it reduces crime. We're spending half our cities funds on militarized police because we want our private prisons full, not because it keeps people safer.
Most extremely Republican states with lax gun laws and capital punishment are poor states, with less money for cops (though they still imprison people at a high rate, they often fund it with slave labor).
There are ways for states to spend money that reduces crime, but Texas chooses to spend it on violence, instead.
sadly private prisons means there's money to be made on imprisoning innocent people. Making a business out of everything creates perverse incentives. Also AFAIK unsure about US, but for example in Brazil there's a shadow work force with tax break incentives from the government for prisoners to be able to earn to pay for their needs, and its more akin to modern slavery than any kind of "Correctional" theories might imply.
Similarly cops many times get incentivized to fill in quotas, and end up making up stuff to get paid more.
Also all the companies around making money around these problems, have 0 incentives to make the problems go away, quite the contrary are incentivized to make these problems visible and acute enough that their services remain warranted to be required.
Lobbying being legal, means Capital owns Democracy. Big money can buy out and make careers of any politican morally-lacking enough to sell their constituents wellbeing to some shameless Corp that will set him up for life and give him the money needed to get the votes, etc etc
Try researching rural vs urban, most of this crime happens in urban areas, Houston, Dallas etc. Texas rural rates of crime are significantly less than Texas urban and the US overall.
There are people with guns both in the rural areas and the urban areas, and capital punishment is not restricted to cases in rural areas (in fact, it's much more likely to be sought against black or brown defendents for crimes in urban areas).
If guns and capital punishment reduces crime, it doesn't matter whether the crime happens in rural or urban areas. If it works, Texas, the whole damned state, should have remarkably low crime, but that's not the case at all.
You're having a different conversation than the one I'm having.
links to https://www.uslawshield.com/defend-property-texas/
> Texas law allows you to use deadly force to protect property if you would be justified in using force, and you reasonably believe it is immediately necessary to prevent the imminent commission of specific enumerated property crimes. These are arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, theft during the nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime.
I'd think that'd qualify.
https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/?tab=1&code=PE&chapter=PE...
> Sec. 9.42. DEADLY FORCE TO PROTECT PROPERTY. A person is justified in using deadly force against another to protect land or tangible, movable property:
> (1) if he would be justified in using force against the other under Section 9.41; and
> (2) when and to the degree he reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary:
> (A) to prevent the other's imminent commission of arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, theft during the nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime; or (B) to prevent the other who is fleeing immediately after committing burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, or theft during the nighttime from escaping with the property; and
> (3) he reasonably believes that:
> (A) the land or property cannot be protected or recovered by any other means; or (B) the use of force other than deadly force to protect or recover the land or property would expose the actor or another to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury.
So, daytime theft of a converter from a car parked outside wouldn’t qualify I don’t think.
For reference:
"Burglary" under the Texas penal code is defined by entering a habitation or any portion of a building that is not open to the public, either with the intent to commit a crime, or when followed by the actual commission of, or the attempt to commit, a crime.
"Robbery" is theft in which the thief causes an injury to someone else. (Or intentionally threatens to do so.)
"Theft" is what it sounds like.
Most notably burglary need not include any element of theft. I feel like it's a mistake for the legal code to distinguish between what are fully interchangeable terms in the language the code is supposedly written in.
On topic for this particular comment, "habitation" is specifically defined to include vehicles "adapted for the overnight accommodation of persons".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEdaQcq4w88
They're not at all fully interchangeable, just many Americans have a poor grasp of the English language.
If you'd like it packaged in something that looks authoritative, you might consider the following definitions from Merriam-Webster:
burgle: to commit robbery
rob: to take away as loot : steal
thieve: steal, rob
I would wager that for the majority English speakers, the words "theft", "robbery", and (to a lesser degree) "burglary" or more or less fully interchangeable.
They may not be interchangeable in law, but the usage of English in law is famously not always in line with common usage, which is why we have "legalese" which many completely fluent and native English speakers may have trouble understanding without specialized legal training.
(Did this happen in Texas?)
I’ve thought about this too. They often vary from state to state as well. But the alternative would be to create new legal terms, which would be more confusing, or use just use numbers, which would be hard for laypeople to discuss.
Well, compare homicide, which in popular culture is divided into "murder in the first degree", "murder in the second degree", and "murder in the third degree" alternately known as "manslaughter".
It's not clear to me whether you consider those "new legal terms" or "just using numbers", since in my eyes they are terms invented for the purpose of the law, distinguished from each other by numbers.
But they appear to be superior to the division between "burglary", "robbery", and "theft" either way. They have no preexisting meaning (unlike "burglary" and "robbery", which are used in spite of existing contradictory meaning) and they cause no difficulties in discussing the crimes, which we can be certain of because these terms already exist and people discuss them all the time.
In the Texas penal code, homicide is actually divided into "murder", "capital murder", "manslaughter", and "criminally negligent homicide".
These are clearly "new terms" rather than "numbers". They seem pretty straightforward: "murder" is defined in harmony with its natural English-language meaning. "Capital murder" is a variety of murder that allows for capital punishment. "Manslaughter" is homicide caused recklessly rather than intentionally, and is in harmony with the popular understanding of the word "manslaughter". And "criminally negligent homicide" is homicide caused negligently rather than intentionally, and that's also in harmony with the normal construction of noun phrases in English.
If we were instead to give those four categories names that nobody without special training was even capable of distinguishing from one another -- as Texas has already done for "burglary", "robbery", and "theft" -- what would improve? I submit that that would make some things worse while making nothing better.
Compare also the popular-culture division between "assault" and "assault with a deadly weapon". What would giving those two crimes synonymous names accomplish?
New York also has five degrees of arson: https://ypdcrime.com/penal.law/article150.php
Is this true in any context other than a potential fourth amendment violation by an agent of the state?
> theft during the nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime.
Seems like that qualifies
Note that the harm to the victim is identical in both cases, except that in the case of theft, recovery may be possible.
You expect pigs to defend you?
You can't have a functioning democracy if it's impossible to criticise the current setup. This is the whole idea behind newspeak [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
Unjust according to whom? Wouldn't it be better to just make our premises explicit?
Mischief is typically a serious crime; the legal and common uses of the word are different and confusing.
But I don't think Texas is restricting this to the more serious felony mischief here.
The first two clauses are destroying property and damaging property in a way that causes pecuniary loss to anyone.
The third clause is making marks on property. This seems like it would always be included under "damaging property in a way that causes pecuniary loss", so I would guess it's there to make it completely explicit that graffiti counts as criminal mischief.
The quoted section of the penal code does not appear to apply any restrictions to the specific variety of criminal mischief that justifies deadly force (other than that it occurs at night).
For something like graffiti where the general sentiment is that deadly force shouldn't be considered justified, I could see an argument that the use of deadly force violates §9.42(3)(A), which requires the person using deadly force to reasonably believe that the land or property in question "cannot be protected or recovered by any other means". If we view both verbs as applying to criminal mischief, you could make the argument that when you catch someone spraying graffiti on a wall on your property, your property can be recovered, though not protected, by e.g. repainting the wall.
The counterargument might be that "recovered" is in there as the appropriate verb for cases of theft, and "protected" is in there for cases of mischief.
I don't think restricting §9.42 to felony mischief would be an improvement to the law; it's difficult to know whether criminal mischief is or isn't a felony until you've tried to recover from it and learned how much that will cost. If you catch someone keying your car, for example, that probably is a felony, but as far as social impact I would rate it similarly to graffiti.
Could also be that the difference comes from owning land works differently in Germany (because it's much more densely populated) and of course owning anything except small guns is completely forbidden.
I'm trying to keep this neutral, so I'm using a rather cut and dry example: Somebody kicks in your door with a pump action and starts shooting- There are _some_ jurisdictions that require you to try and flee. You kill them and they werent bodily blocking your car in? Murder charge. investigation finds a sabatoged engine? Doesn't matter.
Stand Your Ground assumes reasonableness and codifies leaveing the fight or flee decision up to the individual.
Ultimately- you're going to have PTSD either way.
Counter-example: You're walking on the streets, at night, in the "bad part" of town. Someone walks towards you with their hands in their pockets, and their head covered with a hoodie. They say "Hey, what are you doing here?". You perceive this to be a threatening situation and fear for your life. Are you supposed to: a) pull out your gun and shoot them, or b) run away?
Some proponents of Stand Your Ground would say that option A is perfectly fine, some proponents of Duty To Retreat would say that you must attempt option B first, and fall back to option A only as a last resort.
Which jurisdictions? Is this in the US? I’ve lived in a bunch of European countries and in none would you be charged with murder in that situation.
If someone comes through your home door guns akimbo in the US, blasting back is fine
US Supreme court has often leaned heavily on right to protect self in one's own home in ruling against local and state laws that might ban ridiculous things.
Unless that someone is a cop, of course.
https://www.hrr-strafrecht.de/3/15/3-199-15.php
But there was even a case, where a hells angel shot a police officer in his home who were doing a raid - and got free (because they did not identify themself as police).
https://www.lto.de/recht/hintergruende/h/bgh-spricht-hells-a...
> But there was even a case,
I don't know the details of the case, but if somebody thought some criminals are raiding his house with guns and it's reasonable the he thought that, then he's fully within his rights to defend himself and, depending on the necessities, by shooting at them.
Still terrible what happened, of course.
No it does not in germany (and I think most other states of the world).
If fleeing is a safe option - this is what you have to do instead of shooting. Reality just seldom is so clear.
> Allerdings gilt besonders hier der Grundsatz, dass das Unrecht dem Recht nicht zu weichen braucht. Man darf sich zur Wehr setzten und muss nicht flüchten.
Translation: > However, the principle that wrongdoing need not give way to what is right applies here in particular. One is allowed to defend oneself and is not required to flee.
I believe that's pretty common and a sane approach.
Local news say otherwise
They make money reporting what people want to read and that's not necessary what's true.
They may have been confusing or deliberately conflating things with the fact that in most western jurisdictions, you are not allowed to kill, for example, a fleeing trespasser or burglar. This is viewed as an entirely different situation from one where you are being threatened directly with immediate physical violence.
Presumably not the UK?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Martin_(farmer)
"Anthony Edward Martin was an English farmer who shot two burglars in his home [...] was convicted of murder, which was later reduced to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility"
This is very different from the law in Texas, where, from what I understand, if you catch someone in the night stealing you could just kill them even if they never threatend you.
Being attacked with a knife means your life is being threatened and using a firearm would be legal even in Germany. The response has to be proportionate to the threat on life or limb not the size of the weapon.
Of course, if someone is simply stealing a Catalytic Converter you can't really shoot them, as it's a bit much... you can point a gun at them, and possibly even shoot the air, that's easier to argue as self-defence. If they threaten you back, the situation changes.
The problem is having a gun in the outside, in Germany, good luck with that... of course, if it's someone stealing something inside your house, it becomes a home invasion, which is a completely different thing than someone stealing your property on the street.
It's way more nuanced than Texas, which has a bit more clear cut law.
It's worth pointing out that night is doing some of the work in this statement. Texas is unusual, as far as I know, that darkness makes a big difference in how self-defense and danger are viewed. It kinda makes sense, because in the dark, the would-be victim is less able to fully and accurately assess the situation. So Texans need to be aware that their actions may be interpreted more harshly in the dark.
Second: "(B) the use of force other than deadly force to protect or recover the land or property would expose the actor or another to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury." - YOU HAVE TO BE AFRAID FOR YOUR LIFE Texas gives citizens enourmous latitude in these matters, but it's not carte blanche for murder.
That reasonably covers pretty much all cases, especially in a state where lots of people have guns.
Just a year later during the mall shooting in Allen Texas, cops took down the white supremacist, neo-nazi perpetrator in under 5 minutes, probably saving at least a co couple dozen lives (he’d already killed 9). You can watch the bodycam footage from that event if there’s any doubt
https://youtu.be/LWvKT5fHa0U
"Here's another outlier anecdote!"
Fire away, I guess.
The thief valued the gain of the crime more than the risk of the crime.
Not true.
Except poverty, ignorance, hunger, addiction, untreated mental illness...
So don't go around stealing catalytic converters. Same deal with states with "stand your ground laws". It's astonishingly easy to not get shot: don't invade someone's home.
And on the "replacing" part- on whose dime? What if someone's only means of transportation is affected, and they lose wages or outright lose their job? Are you going to pay for it? Of course not.
No, a better reason to not allow shooting of common thieves is that you don't want ordinary people shooting randomly at each other. The government / police should be able to handle this, but they either don't care or are incompetent.
Which leaves the ordinary upstanding citizen stuck between a rock and a hard place. The Man extracts taxes from their earnings, and thieves who ruin lives get a slap on the wrist because "lives are oh precious".
https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/florida-road-rage-incident-...
Also, a news article of some random altercation doesn't change anything about what I said: It's simply impossible to be shot (or clubbed, or beaten up, or whatever) by someone in their home for invading, if you never invade people's homes in the first place. So don't do that. And don't steal catalytic converters either.
> It's astonishingly easy to not get shot: don't invade someone's home.
The clear, plain-English implication of what you're suggesting is: your risk of getting shot (in the US) is, to a large extent, directly correlated to your invasion of other people's homes.
Except that there's no evidence to support this. According to FBI data from 2015-2019, the ratio of criminal gun homicides to justifiable homicides (as in self-defense) was 34:1.
Over 10,000 innocent people are killed by guns every year in the US, including more than 1,000 young people. This excludes suicides, which itself is a number that you'd probably be wise to pay attention to.
Obvious disclaimer: It is completely obvious that freak incidents occur, that there are other ways to die, that there is no way to guarantee the future or that harm will never come to someone, and that there are exceptions to just about every statement.
But one CAN choose to avoid deliberately putting themselves in situations where harm can befall them, such as comitting crimes like breaking into someone's home, or stealing someone's property. It should be completely obvious that one stands better chances in general by not doing things that make other people obscenely angry.
> Over 10,000 innocent people are killed by guns every year in the US, including more than 1,000 young people. This excludes suicides, which itself is a number that you'd probably be wise to pay attention to.
Out of a population of 349,000,000 people. Sad, but most people can live their lives and be completely unaffected. Stop being sensationalist.
Are you really now characterizing incidents of gun violence and suicide as "freak incidents"? They just happen, like a random bolt of lightning in a clear sky that strikes a person out taking a walk?
> Out of a population of 349,000,000 people. Sad, but most people can live their lives and be completely unaffected. Stop being sensationalist.
The figure I cited was for gunshot deaths of innocent people. Every year, over 100,000 people are shot in the US. More Americans die every year due to guns than they do because of auto accidents.
You can dismiss this as miniscule compared to the size of the population, and refuse to compare the numbers in the US to other developed nations, which shows how absurdly more risky the US is versus the rest of the "civilized world".
But what you can't do is pretend that gun violence doesn't have an impact on people that isn't measured in deaths and gunshot victims. Because there is plenty of evidence that the threat of gun violence has a major impact on the lives of Americans. For example, more than a third of Americans have avoided going to certain public places or events out of fear. See: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40205802/
Other statistics, with citations, that I'm sure you'd dismiss:
https://giffords.org/lawcenter/resources/gun-violence-statis...
Yup, as they basically are. Bolts of lighting would fall under "random acts of god/nature". Talking about whether or not guns should legally be ownable by citizens is an entirely different discussion.
> Every year, over 100,000 people are shot in the US. More Americans die every year due to guns than they do because of auto accidents.
Again, over 349,000,000 people. You do the math. Tons of car accidents, yet the world moves on and literally every adult I know, who doesn't live in Chicago/NYC/[rare place that's walkable + can afford it], drives. Find someone or something to blame for the geography of the country. Are we debating infrastructure now for a country the size of the US?
In any case, it does seem that you are capable of understanding what I meant by the original statement. It seems like all you want is to quibble over slight semantics in phrasing, and lecture someone who actually has lived in the US about how dangerous it really is. Have a day.
And a person using a gun to kill someone else is a "random act of god/nature" how exactly?
For someone who seems very confident of his knowledge of statistics, here's one for you: ~20-30 people die from lightning strikes in the US every year. Based on the averages, 4-6x that number died due to a gun yesterday alone.
I'm an American. Born and raised in one of the largest cities. I know at least half a dozen people who have been robbed at gunpoint, dated a woman who had been terrorized by a gun-nut ex, and one of my closest friends lost his father to suicide.
With all due respect, there's nothing more callous than believing that something doesn't impact vast numbers of people (proven by empirical evidence) simply because you apparently haven't experienced it yourself.
> Have a day.
You sure are pleasant.
But I also think that it is often more-useful and much, much safer to know how to de-escalate when that's possible. When I took martial arts classes, they taught me that the first step towards winning a fight was to avoid fighting to begin with, and always calm things down one notch at a time. If, and only if, that becomes impossible, then: Kick the snot out of them until they stop being a threat.
And running away can be useful: An attacker's ability to do harm decreases with distance. When I took army basic training, we trained a lot on running. They taught me that being able to run reasonably-quickly for reasonably-long distances was a skill that most people lack. Just keep running and the attacker will probably get tired and give up long before you do, which generally resolves the threat. If the threat persists after running away, then: Use the element of surprise and just turn around and stab them until they stop being a threat.
---
This is not an exhaustive list of methods and it is possible for any of them to go wrong. It's also possible to do nothing at all as a response and still have a very bad time of things.
It's a complex world. We've got billions of other people with different backgrounds, different problems, and different ideas of how they're going to get a little further ahead today than they were yesterday.
If we all had all of the answers, then we wouldn't have the kinds of desperation that leads to these problems to begin with.
But we don't all have all of the answers.
I might suppose that it's usually more the former than the latter, but there's degrees to each characteristic.
They perceive that they need things, and they don't necessarily care who they harm to get the things that satisfy this need.
(When we dress it up all nice and back it with corporate layers and an army of lawyers, sometimes we get CEOs.)
Nobody desperate will dare steal from the gangs since its not just death, but PAIN before death.
What about a bad medic? Or a thief that helps homeless people in their free time?
If it was easy, we would have simpler laws and better justice systems...
Today it's trivially easy for me to say "property can be replaced, a life cannot" since I am exceedingly privileged. I would not put my life, or anyone else's on the line to defend anything but my and my family's personal safety. But I remember what it was like to not be so ridiculously privileged. So I get it.
Only someone who has never lived a hard day in their life can spew such stuff at other folks. It's entirely circumstantial.
The laws should reflect the prior case, not the privileged one. At least if you want to disincentivize criminal behavior.
This is a very normal commercial insurance problem. Sure, you can supplement it by buying a gun and staying up all night defending your truck, but the family ain’t gonna be happy if you bought the gun in lieu of insurance, especially if you lose that gunfight.
You get your catalytic converter stolen, and you will pay for it three times. The first is you paid for the original one. Then you paid for insurance to cover its theft, and likely your payments over the years have already paid for the catalytic converter a second time. And then after it's stolen, your insurance rates will raise such that you are paying for a 3rd (maybe fourth) converter, just on a monthly plan now.
Now, of course, shooting the thief is only cheaper if you don't invest much in your weapons and training, and don't face any legal scrutiny afterwards and need to hire a lawyer.
But if you had died in the interaction, and let's say the thief at that point even left the goods and decided to leave, that would have totally been a win outcome, because the property with which you provided your livelihood was saved… wait…
> Only someone who has never lived a hard day
Yeah right…
I never understood why people forget this:
- Life is more valuable esp. if "you + property" combo is the livelihood. Okay, let's make this simpler. Probability of tools replacement ≠ 0; definitely >0. Possibility of you being replaced after death =0. Yup, it's not >0 yet, folks.
- When you are going for a life-losing/taking-possibility escalation level, maybe don't forget it's a two-way street..
There's a classic saying: "When seconds count, the police are minutes away."
...and going back to the original topic, even the Flock cameras aren't going to stop criminals, if that's what you're implying.
The stolen goods have to be sold and bought somewhere. If they can't accomplish this with the vast resources available to them, (amongst other longstanding issues), then we should probably rethink the taxation process, the election process, or both.
> It's astonishingly easy to not get shot: don't invade someone's home.
Is pat to the point of naiveté.
People get shot turning into the wrong driveway[1], or knocking on the wrong door[2]. If anything, it's astonishingly easy to get shot in the US of A.
But, you probably meant something like that when you said
> you don't want ordinary people shooting randomly at each other. The government / police should be able to handle this [but don't.
And I agree with that on both points.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kaylin_Gillis [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Ralph_Yarl
Doesn't quite roll off the tongue, does it?
> If anything, it's astonishingly easy to get shot in the US of A.
No, not really. It's easier than other countries, but I'm afraid you've bought into media sensationalism. The country has a population of 349,000,000 people. There will be crazy incidents. And they won't happen to the vast majority of people, at least, people who aren't tempting fate by doing stupid things like home burglary. But the ones that do happen, can get televised around the world.
The way the news talks about life in the US is completely out of touch. I myself have pulled into random driveways perhaps dozens of times. It's not uncommon when navigating suburbia. The way the news discusses it, I should be dead probably a dozen times over. The problem is they never discuss all the other times people do that and nothing happens, which is nearly all of the time.
By that logic, any country with a similar (or larger) population should have similar (or larger) gun deaths per capita as the USA, right?
Take India - population 4.3x but 15x fewer gun deaths per capita. Or Japan - 0.35x the population and 1500x fewer gdpc.
(Admittedly Brazil scuppers my counter-argument slightly - population is 0.6x but gdpc are 1.3x. Poverty and availability of guns seems to be the key rather than "random chance".)
And what constitutes "invading" someone's home? You know what, don't answer that.
a. There's no guarantee against escalation, a property crime turns into a violent crime very easily.
b. Property crime can have a deep psychological impact on the victim - something the perpetrator demonstrably gives zero fucks about.
c. The police and justice system in 2026 don't care about prosecuting property crime. Having no recourse at all if you're being robbed (a common situation when defending your own property is effectively illegal because of the risk to the perpetrator) is grossly unfair.
I could never sleep at night without thinking about what I have done.'
A life is worth a lot more than $2k for my sanity.
As another commenter said: It's incredibly easy to not get shot; don't burglarize someone's home the same way you wouldn't jump in front of a moving train.
A society which only has low crime because everyone is able to use lethal force to defend themselves and their property isn't one I would call higher "trust" than one that maintains the same crime levels without that threat.
The end state is you can trust others because nobody even wants to or considers it.
Punishing violators is being proposed as how to build the norm that no one wants to steal.
I think I would consider myself in that group.
I think some lives are worth negative, and everyone is better off with them dead.
There was nothing that I was doing that was wrong in any way. I was quietly minding my own business when they came up from behind me with other ideas and one of them hit me in the side of my face, from behind, with an intensity that I'd never really experienced before in all of my years.
I lost hours of my memory and years of my mental health. I gained years of occasional intense neck pain that consistently put my mind in very dark places, and thousands of dollars of medical bills.
They gained two unopened packs of Camels and the pocket knife that I apparently failed to effectively utilize. I still had my wallet and my phone.
The police did nothing of any productive impact. A report was taken, and it was taken poorly. When 3 guys were arrested a couple of weeks later for robbing someone with a baseball bat and I recognized their pictures, they didn't care. I walked the local law-enforcement ladder all the way up to the city prosecutor, and also through parallels in the sheriff's department.
Nothing was productively done on my behalf.
It made me feel so angry and powerless. A follow-up that I requested came along with the cop that took the first report, and resulted in such profound and obtuse stonewalling that I became tremendously and irreverently furious. I left the room, while demanding from the other side of a wall that he get the fuck out of my apartment.
This all conspired to make it clear that it was my cross to bear. Nobody of any influence was going to help me along the way.
(I'd probably have a very different story to tell if I'd shot the attackers all dead, but I don't have that story. I was not equipped to do that so there is no direct comparison here for me to make. It is definitely my hope that I never have any opportunities to make such a comparison.)
I got involved in martial arts for a few years after I was attacked for no particular reason by people who were much older than me when I was a little kid, twice in short succession, and my parents felt that this was a good way to help with that kind of situation. I don't know if that was the best response that they could make but I don't disagree with it.
Army training happened later, in a just-post-9/11 world where I was feeling strongly patriotic and also looking for a meaningful job. It had its ups and downs.
Concealed carry classes happened much later, after the incident with the 3 young men, wherein: Either the previous training didn't help, or I was doomed anyway, or both.
I remember everything up to the first hit very clearly. I'd seen these folks way over there doing whatever they were doing, but I didn't suspect any trouble in that little town. I just kept walking. Soon, I heard a set of footsteps right behind me -- at least one of them closed the gap quickly. Before I could formulate a plan (including "run"), I got hit hard and it gets murky. I do remember standing and facing all three of them under a street light and saying "What in the fuck do you think you're doing?" as a means of negotiation; this clearly did not work.
After that, I remember a blur of fast-walking back to my apartment. They were gone, like they'd never been there, but I was scared because I was sure that they were watching me go home anyway. I went around the back side of the building, deviating from my normal route home, watching my back as well as I could in that state.
I got home and I was satisfied that nobody had followed me as I re-locked my front door, and for a period of time (I don't know how long), I didn't think anything else happened. I forgot that I needed cigarettes. I eventually looked in the mirror and saw that it looked like I'd been hit by a car, and later noticed dirt all over my clothes. I called my ex-wife for advice, and then called the police who showed up and took a report (badly) and promised to do ~nothing else, and then called my boss for a ride to the hospital.
None of any of the training I've ever had really covered dealing with a surprise attack from three motherfuckers at once. It wasn't exactly ideal.
I still can't walk around in public with headphones on. I wasn't wearing them that night, but it was something that I occasionally enjoyed and that concept is subsequently dead to me.
"None of any of the training I've ever had really covered dealing with a surprise attack from three motherfuckers at once. It wasn't exactly ideal."
Not much will, I practiced Krav Maga for years and we train for 3:1 , but a surprise attack that knocks you unconsciouses is hard to plan against. But it does teach you to be ultra-aware of your environment, who's around you, what attack surfaces are risky, objects you can use to defend yourself.
You may know this already, so maybe it would help someone else.
Thus, according to those larpers, your beating may have been justified. That’s without even getting into the violence you’ve visited upon others via secondhand smoke.
A mugger may be stealing $50 in your wallet, but the crime is the threat to your life.
You absolutely can cause death to a human and take a human life through material theft.
The conclusion that there is no such triad seems clearly absurd since we allow people to build things for us the construction of which offers them a non-zero chance of death.
It is reasonable to say that a precise frontier is not describable because of Sorites but to say no triad exists implies that you only participate in an economy consisting exclusively of zero risk behaviour[0] That seems improbable.
Once we’ve dealt with that, perhaps we may be able to conclude that catalytic converters exist on one side of the frontier or on the other side or perhaps we might say that they lie along the Sorites boundary.
0: we are not unreasonable. We might even choose to consider imperfect information about the risk, the risk being at a Pareto optimum, the risk being at optimum against counterfactual, etc.
"Let's not harm the thief but force the victim to cover the damages" is what it comes down to and imo it's a very immoral stance.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-police-cash-r...
As the saying goes, only break one law at a time!
This has to be made up.
I live a few minutes away from one of the facilities where capital punishment is administered. The local community is extremely pleasant. I don't bother locking my doors at home or at the grocery store. The only place any real crime occurs is within a few hundred yards of the interstate. Target and Home Depot get robbed occasionally, but that's about it around here. I don't think it's physically possible to steal from my local Home Depot without ending up in the flock database. The geometry and overlapping coverage they have is pretty crazy now. You can tell they waged a full scale war against an army of meth addicts and won decisively. Every time I go into that store looking for a Milwaukee product, I find it in stock and unmolested.
At no point do I worry about a western style shootout with a bandit. The most prolific criminal around here has 4 legs and only really cares for the contents of particular trash cans and gardens.
For a few to be very wealthy, the many may remain impoverished.
A wealthy state like Texas has a lot of cops and a lot of prisons. And, those cops are given incredible leeway in how they do their job.
Texas is a case study in whether "law and order" Republican policies work, and the evidence indicates it doesn't. We're just killing people in capital punishment cases for the joy of killing, not because it reduces crime. We're spending half our cities funds on militarized police because we want our private prisons full, not because it keeps people safer.
Most extremely Republican states with lax gun laws and capital punishment are poor states, with less money for cops (though they still imprison people at a high rate, they often fund it with slave labor).
There are ways for states to spend money that reduces crime, but Texas chooses to spend it on violence, instead.
Similarly cops many times get incentivized to fill in quotas, and end up making up stuff to get paid more.
Also all the companies around making money around these problems, have 0 incentives to make the problems go away, quite the contrary are incentivized to make these problems visible and acute enough that their services remain warranted to be required.
Lobbying being legal, means Capital owns Democracy. Big money can buy out and make careers of any politican morally-lacking enough to sell their constituents wellbeing to some shameless Corp that will set him up for life and give him the money needed to get the votes, etc etc
If guns and capital punishment reduces crime, it doesn't matter whether the crime happens in rural or urban areas. If it works, Texas, the whole damned state, should have remarkably low crime, but that's not the case at all.
You're having a different conversation than the one I'm having.