- Messages
- 7,381
- Reactions
- 19,888
You're making a logic based argument and it's not working to convince people who seem to be argueing without logic being the foundation of their arguement. I've seemingly encountered the same scenario. For some reason a lot of respondents are percieving that the issue is the theft - the theft has nothing to do with the guy pointing the gun at the house, the two are entirely seperate for the purposes of why the criminal should be shot. Remove the gun from this situation and it's simply a POS stealing a C-converter and you don't really have much legal recourse except to call the police. Him threatening deadly force to anyone in that home changes the dynamic entirely.The points of disagreement are:
1) Whether the criminal is pointing the gun at the house or the people in the house. I contend the criminal is ultimately pointing the gun at the people in the house. If he was sure there was nobody in the house, then he would not be pointing the gun at the house as there would be no threat to him coming from the house, therefore he is pointing the gun at the people he thinks are in the house.
2) Whether a person can assume the gun is real, and whether the criminal intends to use it in a lethal manner, and whether it is better to wait to find that out by waiting for the criminal to shoot first, thereby signaling his criminal and lethal intentions. I would assert that the simple act of pointing the gun at the house (and thereby the people in the house), the criminal is obviously signaling his/her intentions - i.e., he/she is up to no good and the safest assumption on the part of the people in the house is that he/she intends to shoot them if they show any inclination to stop their criminal activities. I assert that it is foolish to assume that a criminal will just stop at intimidation.