Reply #36: yeah, it did [View All]

[iverglas]

It assumed that what we were all wanting to save was our lives, not our honour or our manhood or suchlike stuff.

As to the ones you list as "assumptions", I'd tend to think, for most of them, that if they weren't facts, the fact that they weren't facts might have been mentioned in the news report. Like if the householder was physically disabled. Not "emotionally" in a position to flee? And yet "emotionally" in a position to make a run for her bedroom -- in the direction of the approaching intruder -- and grab a firearm and be "emotionally" prepared to shoot him with it and not get harmed instead/in the process? Hmm.

As for having neighbours who will "offer her sanctuary" ... I really just can't get over these bogeyman fantasies you people have. Somebody breaks in the patio door of a dwelling, and from that we get to "big huge slavering serial rapist/killer chases little woman down residential street / through residential complex, drags her into parking garage, leaves her battered bleeding dead body there".

The odds that a burglar is not going to make a quick escape the way s/he came if the householder is out on the street / in the middle of the complex yelling blue murder ... well, they just seem slim, to me.

But to have a look at one particulary thing you curiously call an "assumption":

that the victim in this case didn't have some obligation to stand her ground

You may be aware that this is no assumption. This is a fact.

In what alternate universe would someone whose dwelling was being broken into have an OBLIGATION to "stand her ground"? An obligation TO WHOM? (The victim in this case did not have sleeping babies, so let's not get carried away.)

I am personally opposed to fleeing a threat.

Bully for you. Bully being the operative word. I am personally opposed to people causing injury or death to other people when there is no need for it. And I have the whole weight of human history and civilization on my side. And no deep-seated need to prove what a big, er, man I am by not "fleeing a threat" no matter how stupid it might be not to, or how immoral the alternative might be.

I might not choose to be "fleeing a threat" myself in some circumstances (although if the circumstance involved somebody breaking into my house at night, you can be pretty sure I would). But I would also not say that I wasn't stupid if something happened to me as a result of that decision. And if I harmed someone else in order to avoid a danger I could have avoided by removing myself from the vicinity of it, I'd expect to be prosecuted.

Your suggested course of action involves her neighbors, which could put their safety at risk.

It doesn't involve anyone who chooses not to be involved.

But I have to agree, if this were 1943 and I were living in Belgium and the people at the door were members of the SS and I were a young blonde courier for the underground engaged in returning downed Allied fliers to England (ever seen Secret Army? great series), well, yes, I might be putting my neighbours at risk.

Your manner of conversation can be highly disrespectful, by the way.

I do humbly beg your pardon. If I may, I would ever so humbly note that I find the employment of straw adversaries to stand in for myself, in speech addressed to me --

In THIS country
Your neighbors and the Police are not legally liable for your protection in our country.

-- to be, er, highly disrespectful.