politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Thanks for the reply. It makes sense, though I would jump off at a different point from you. I tend to feel that if it comes to life vs property, even the life of a robber who is making others miserable and afraid, life generally wins no matter what the property is. That is, I don't myself feel like it is ever worth taking a life to preserve property, and I hope that if I found myself in the situation of being robbed of something dear to me, I would be able to let the property go and the robber live, painful though it would be. But I also don't believe ethical questions can arrive at a final answer. There's too much nuance in every situation so I wouldn't propose this as "the right answer". It's just how I currently feel on the matter. Another aspect of this view is that while I wouldn't condemn in advance anyone who shoots in such a situation, I'd understand it better if they were afraid for themselves rather than just for their property.
Thankfully I'm not a legislator so I don't need to try to codify this into law, and I appreciate your position, which seems that be that although you probably wouldn't yourself shoot in this situation, you don't think others should be branded criminals for doing so. I don't want to pronounce on that matter, but just to observe that your position is probably more common in the USA than in, for example, many European countries, hence it seeming unusual to many of us non-Americans.
And that is my position exactly.
Go on various self-defense subreddits or online forums, like /r/CCW, and you'll find a very similar attitude. There will be a couple who'd say 'shoot the thief' but the overwhelming majority take the position of 'you shoot to stop the threat, in self defense, only when necessary' and many would even take the position that it's a 'bad shoot' to shoot someone just breaking into a car. Confront them maybe, shoot them if they move to attack, but don't just shoot the guy in the back as he's stealing your MacBook.
The other issue is- while I'm not a legislator, I am a citizen of a representative democracy. So in a sense, it is my job to write the law, or at least, to make educated choices in what laws and policies I advocate for and against.
To that end, anyone making any law must consider that there will be times it backfires, doesn't apply correctly, etc. And whenever that happens, I'd always rather err on the side of giving the citizen defending themself or their property more leeway than providing additional protections to a criminal who's engaged in clearly illegal acts against said citizen (which necessarily means punishments for the citizen defending against said criminal).