Do you think this man should be arrested or given a medal for shooting two thieves at his neighbor's house?

Question

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071127/ap_on_re_us/burglary_shooting;_ylt=Ar7496ukcR4Rv8NrdbWvoBtvzwcF

two thugs broke into this guys neighbors home, and he grabbed his shogun and finished them off. I think the man is a hero. If more people would stand up against criminals, and more criminals knew they would die for attempting this, we would have less crime. But i know there are some whiny liberals here that will defend these life long criminals as victims instead of thugs. I think we should start rewarding those that catch criminals in the act and kill them. What about you?

Answer 1

You use deadly foce to protect your own life, or the lives of other people, not to protect property. This guy is liable to be prosecuted.You better know the law. before you start blazing away indiscriminately.

Answer 2

While it is true that we spend a lot of time, money, and effort to make sure everyone's rights are preserved every once in a while going outside the system seems like a good thing. I'm not so sure this fellow deserves a medal.
Think about what would happen if this type of behavior were common place. You could have people setting up others to go into an empty house only to have a "neighbor" come at them with both barrels firing. Not such a good idea.
Until we have a new and better idea, I think we'd better stick with the laws we have.

Answer 3

It depends. If the guy who had a shotgun has a permit and a license to carry a weapon then yes he is a hero and should be treated as such. But if his gun license only allowed him to carry his weapon for hunting, or for private home protection, then he should not have gone off his property to shoot the criminals. Gun laws are pretty clear as to when a person with a weapon is allowed to shoot or carry the weapon.

I have a lifetime gun permit to carry and conceal a weapon. So in my case I am able to carry my weapon anywhere where they allow guns. However, I still cannot enter a government building or a school with my weapon. It really depends on the laws of the state.

You also have to take into account good Samaritan laws as well. These laws protect citizens who are trying to provide community service, even though that act may be illegal.

It really just depends, but I think this guy definitely did the right thing. If only more neighbors were willing to do those kinds of things. I remember the day you could leave your door open with no worry whatsoever.

Answer 4

While I don't condone killing, people committing criminal acts might think twice about it if they knew that neighbors were vigilant and would not just let them go in and trash someone's home while they steal property.

But there is a fine line separating neighborhood vigilance from vigilantism. You don't want everyone and their brother out on neighborhood watch with loaded shotguns, looking for trouble or even inviting trouble.

For that reason, I think the man who shot those thieves will have to serve some prison time--but I would vote for voluntary manslaughter, if that's possible, not for capital murder.

And once he got out of prison--yes, I sure as heck would give him a medal.

Answer 5

I don't know what should happen! On one hand, I don't want to encourage vigilantism, on the other hand, if more people wasted some of these criminals, maybe they would think twice about starting a career as a thief or burglar.
Since it's Texas, he'll probably walk, especially if they were in his own yard when he wasted them, and I don't have a problem with that.

Answer 6

A story with many sides, as usual only a few will be brought to light. They were criminals, let's get that out of the way. By legal defintion, however so is he. If they were on his lawn, or in his house, he would have had the legal right to do that, but htey weren't so he technically didn't. Secondly he is a killer. Don't take that term with context, take it as it is. If you have killed someone, you are by defintion a killer. The quantity of victims, or frequency is irrelevant. A military sniper is a killer, context is determined by how we as a society judge the the cause and purpose of the killings killers commit.

Criminals do in fact rely on the cowardice of the societies they victimize to continue their work. Without that they have to fear retaliation as well as rejection. That would be an effective deterrent. But that in turn brings up the question of where to draw the thin line between pro-active preventatative action and using criminalistic activity to justify not falling victim to criminals yourself. This is, of course, a question for our flawed legal justice system to decide. We employ the police to handle our dirty work, but we are a society that essentially operates by mob rule. Case in point, a police departments effectiveness is dependent on the bureacracy of our "Justice System" wherein the presumption of innocence is our first priority until someone can prove them guilty. However, nine times out of ten that depends on how well one individual can argue their interpretation of a law that honestly has few concrete statutes and is always up in the air with more questions and complexes than answers and rulings to a group of twelve impartial strangers that are mandated by law to have nothing at all to do with the the purpoted offender, the defendant or the crime in question. No personal stakes makes justice a matter of which party has the best sales rep. Concrete evidence is rarely readily available.

But if an individual is widely disdained and presumed guilty not by a few cops gut instinct but by the vast majority of people, then the cops are pretty much given the green light to stop it by any means necessary. We are no longer willing to say it publicly because we like to pretend that we have become less barbaric over the years, but it's pretty much the same as putting up a 'Wanted: Dead or Alive' poster everywhere in America. These situations spawn the problem of vigilantes, which is essentially what your man here is. Remember to take this term without context, he did not abide by the legal system's 'solution' therefore he is definitively a vigilante.

In conclusion, though I hate to say it, this is an issue with no realistic concrete answer or universal resolution. No one person can come up with an answer that definitely correct nor can any amount of debate appease everyone. It's a matter of your personal views and stakes in the matter that determine how it is to be dealt with. I just wanted to shed some light on a few of the many sides of the story and the consequences (positive and negative) of maintaining such a view.

Answer 7

It's a crime because he went to his neighbors house-even though with good intentions.. but the road to hell is paved with them you know...
(getting off the subject...)
personally, we're better off with 2 less thieves and this guy should be rewarded for his actions of putting others lives before his. Best neighbor ever!

Answer 8

Well, i think that it would've been a little better if the neighbor had just crippled them instead of killing them off. On the other hand. It's ridiculous that criminals are protected against people defending their homes - or their neighbors' homes. That guy was right in that he shouldn't have been made to sit there and just watch while these thugs ran off with his neighbors' belongings. But i think adrenalin might've gotten the best of him. He didn't actually have to kill them.

Answer 9

I heard all about this story yesterday on the radio..I also heard when he called the cops and was telling the dispacher all that was goin on...The neighbor warned the dispacher nomorous times that he was gonna shot. The thives (that were black) were in the home for like 6-9 min. and the cops were taking FOREVER to get there. The neighbor kept saying.."Im gonna shoot them with my rifel..Ima shoot them". U could hear the guy loading his rifel and heading out side while the dispacher kept saying "Please dont do it...! stolen property isnt worth someones life!" And all of a sudden u here the neighbor say "hey" and shoots both the guys! the died!
I think that the neighbor went a lil over board...yet he warned the dispacher of what he was gonna do...many times...i mean if it was his own home, ya he had all the rite to protect himself but it was a neighbors home. I think he could have shot them in the legs or something..he didnt sound crazy...he was actully very calm when on the phone. I dont think what he did was rite but I also dont think it was murder! I think he will get jail time...and maybe probation...

Answer 10

I agree. people have a problem with this but what they don't take into consideration is how many innocent people are killed by these intruders ( just this morning that sports player died from wounds he got from an intruder) I heard on the radio this morning people arguing if a life is worth taking over material possessions. how come they only ask this when a homeowner kills an intruder and not when a criminal kills an innocent homeowner???? Gotta love the good ol USA.

Answer 11

Maybe buy him a beer but I wouldn't start giving out medals for people doing what they are supposed to do.

I do advocate hanging the body in public with a sign telling the crime.