But life is a Hollywood movie, Jesse!

a man nearly lost his life to protect the till at a Burger King.

I took a gun safety class which was required to get a handgun permit in the state I was living in (whereas in the state I live in now, apparently I can just walk into a store and buy a gun. this weirds me out to no end). Anyway, during the class, one of the students explained that he was there because he needed a permit to carry a gun for his job with an armored car service. The instructor told him “The gun is to defend your own life. The money is insured.”

Yes, it’s possible that the robber might have started shooting defenseless people if it weren’t for the intervention of the gun-carrying civilian. But even those whose profession requires them to carry a gun know that it’s to defend themselves, not their employer’s property.

This would be pretty iffy in my state.  I have a conceal carry permit.  Actually I only use it to carry in my car when I travel the lonely roads.  However, I would be permitted to carry it on my person if I so chose.  You are, in my state, only allowed to use deadly force to save your life or the life of another.  This is stretched if you use it as a threat to stop a severe beating, rape in progress, etc.  If a person has broken into your home while you are there he/she is assumed to be murderous. 

However, in this case, the criminal had not discharged his weapon nor given clear indication he was about to.  In my state your are not allowed to use deadly force <u>to protect property</u> in any way shape or form.

Without taking a position one way or the other, it is rather clear that the armed bystander differs greatly from most trained police officers of late:
* he hit what he was aiming at;
* he shot the correct man, i.e. the one who was actually committing a crime;
* the man he shot was armed.

That makes him waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than the badged yahoos whose exploits have been detailed of late.

....Seeker, the fact that you have a very good point is extremely depressing.

Well, (1) firing off shots in a crowded restaurant is f—-king insane. Somehow he got the right guy—but he might have been just as likely to take out one of the cooks back in the back room. And (2) if a guy came into your restaurant, and held a gun up to his own head, saying give me the contents of your tills or I’ll shoot myself, wouldn’t you give him the money?

I study a martial art that involves weapons work. We were just this week reminded that the second, the very instant you go for a weapon in a confrontation you are intending on using lethal force. The second you face someone with a weapon (even just a stick), you are facing someone prepared to use lethal force*.

I think that lesson is gradually getting lost on some of the people who carry guns “for protection” (as opposed to those who genuinely hunt). “for protection” sounds like a great idea. But it’s a really really bad idea to carry around something like a baseball bat “for protection” because the instant you go for it you are declaring a lethal intent and all chances of compromise are gone. It’s wonderful that so many in our society aren’t faced with the realities of violence and death in their everyday life. But the fact that there is anyone out there willing to risk their lives and the lives of those around them to be heroes saving what $200-$400 in the Burger King till… they don’t really understand the implications of their actions.

And ya, this is coming from a martial arts practitioner, who has had it drilled into her skull that in any confrontation every move you make should be deliberate and intedned to end the confrontation as peacefully as possible, and if not peacefully, then swiftly so that you do no more damage than is needed and your opponent is deprived of the ability to damage anyone else in the vicinity.**

*I’m appalled that the shooter(s) were not able to get clean shots with their weapon of choice. If you’re going to carry around a gun to protect the community at large then you had damn well know exactly what to hit to disable or kill and have practiced enough that you’re doing more than pointing the barrel in the right-ish direction. If you have a gun, please please please take the time to learn how to use it to your peak proficiently. Just like any other physical skill it takes practice, and you aren’t safe with it without that practice.

**I’ve seen demonstrations from higher ranked black belts defending against a (prop) gun loaded with blanks. In almost all cases they were able to get the gun away from the attacker and end with the attacker on the ground or on their knees with the blackbelt in posession of the weapon. In only two cases did the attacker manage to discharge the gun, and in one of those the gun ‘fired’ into the air instead of at the victim.

Man, the only thing missing from that scenario was a piano player who stopped playing and dove behind his seat.

With all seriousness, however, it’s inevitable that some Dirty Harry wannabe is going to miss and hit some cherubic 6-year-old…and we’ll hear nothing but silence from the gun Right.

By the way, just as another aside somewhat related to this topic, my wife was talking to her parents yesterday (they’re rightie fundies) and given the fact that we’re mired in an economic slowdown to rival 1929, they are retired and teetering on the edge of ill health without health insurance, their income depends on rental property, one of my brothers-in-law just lost his job and has tenuous prospects to get a new one at best, their biggest worry was…

Obama’s gonna take their guns away.

That, my friends, is the honest truth.

And, of course, if Obama tries to take their guns away they’ll “go WOLVERINES” and start a partisan resistance movement.

In general, I agree with you based on the story, though there are some questions I’d prefer to have answered before I made any final judgment on the situation.  1) When they say “showed his gun” do they mean had it pointed at the cashier or just had it out and was waving it around?  2)Where was the gun oriented when the firefight broke out?  Did the robber aim his gun at the customer and then the customer pulled his own gun or what?
All that said, I think the concealed gun of the customer pumped him up to do some shit he would have realized was stupid had he not had the gun.  He should be happy that it was only he and the robber who were shot.  Though he’ll still probably get hit with a lawsuit from the robber’s family.

With all seriousness, however, it’s inevitable that some Dirty Harry wannabe is going to miss and hit some cherubic 6-year-old…and we’ll hear nothing but silence from the gun Right.

No, they’ll blame all deaths on the person who committed the initial crime and won’t put any thought into how much better the situation could have ended if Johnny Vigilante hadn’t pulled out his own gun.  So even worse than silence, they’d use it to justify their own beliefs about gun use.

“I decided a long time ago that if I had to choose between my physical safety and an attacker’s, their kneecaps are pretty much forfeit, but if it’s their life or my laptop they can take the fucking laptop, really.”

The concealed-carry class I just took had an instructor whose take on it was “There is pretty much nothing that one person can steal from you without a flatbed truck that will cost more to replace than the lawyer you’ll need if you shoot them.”

Actually, the part I find somewhat confusing is where he’s described as “arguing” with the robber.  Did he start mouthing off at him before he drew his weapon?  Or did he draw and then the two got into a “Drop your gun!”  “No, drop yours!”  shouting match?

If the latter, fine, and it means he tried to avoid using lethal force.  If the former…that is goddamn stupid.

However, if you’ve been trained one of the things that goes through your mind is, “is there anybody standing behind the bad guy?”  Most pistol bullets will penetrate all the way through a human torso.  Much of there force is spent but they often have enough to still be lethal. 

This is not clear, at least in my state and similar states.  The “defender” does not have presumption of innocence.  What made him think that his life or the life of another was in danger?  For some juries it might be enough that the man was armed.  However, some might say, “The robber had got his money and was backing out peacefully and the gun wasn’t pointed at anybody in particular.  Force NOT justified.”

It’s true there are not enough facts.  However, it states that the “defender” got in an argument with the robber.  Did he pick the fight?  Why didn’t he just follow him outside and confront him there?  Was the robber acting batshit crazy and uttering threats?  This is not, to my mind, open and shut.

Tyro, your anecdote is really telling.  They have these courses to get the handguns, and the professionals probably do pay attention to the lessons.  But random assholes with phallic issues that want to carry guns to make themselves feel like big men don’t pay a bit of attention.  Movies have more influence on them.

I would have to know more about this case to form a final opinion, but in general, I agree with seeker.

Sorry, I am a better shot than most police officers.  And no offense to them, anyone who carries should practice at least once a week or once every other week, most police officers do not do that because of budget constraints.

Now, if the robber wasn’t threatening anyone’s safety, and the concealed carrier started the altercation, or if there were people behind the robber who could have been shot, no, the concealed carrier shouldn’t have fired unless it was clear that the robber was going to fire.

But most of the time, with concealed carry, the altercation is ended when the carrier displays the gun, i.e., lifts the shirt to reveal the butt, or draws it, pointing it at the ground.  And many times, robberies and robbery homicides aren’t too far apart. 

Another thing is that stray bullets, even in police shootouts, rarely hit other people.

Self-defense is justifiable, defense of a third party is more tenuous, defense of somebody else’s money is nonsense.

That being said, we need to question the implicit assumption here that the robber was a trained professional who never would have shot, say the cashier or a fry cook, were it not for Joe Amateur getting involved.

“In terms of social cost, a law-abiding citizen’s life is not worth ten hours’ take of Tendercrisp sandwiches and shitty (but improved!) fries.”

...but what if the fries were really, really good?...

“And, of course, if Obama tries to take their guns away they’ll “go WOLVERINES” and start a partisan resistance movement.”

Fuckin’ A, Man!...

***

I have to add that the one and only time I have ever heard gunfire that was not from a movie/TV show or a firing range was a gas station guy and his robber shooting at each other while my wife and I were stopped at an intersection right in front of the whole thing. 

Neither man was hit (as far as I know), and the robber got away (whether with money or not, I don’t know), but what struck me (no pun intended) was that there were several dozen people who could quite easily been hit or killed who were completely innocent bystanders.

Really not a pleasant thought at all…

“That being said, we need to question the implicit assumption here that the robber was a trained professional who never would have shot, say the cashier or a fry cook, were it not for Joe Amateur getting involved.”

You generally can’t just assume much at all about these situations—it’s possible the robber was gearing up to commandeer a plane, fly it to Reno, and then shoot everyone just to watch them die—but generally speaking, the police don’t look as hard for the armed robber who stole $300 as they look for the armed robber who opened fire.  The odds are against random robber-dude firing at cooperative staff or bystanders.

Of course, that’s the other side of the equation when you escalate, though.  Not only do you have to worry about hitting the robber without missing and hitting the cashier or going through the robber and hitting the fry cook, but you’re now drawing fire that (probably) would not have been in the offing.  If the guy’s a good shot, that’s bad for you.  If he’s a bad shot and you’re surrounded by other patrons, that’s bad for everybody.

I feel that instances like these are contributing to an increasing sense of agoraphobia on my part.

If I’d been in that BK, I would have sued the shooter for endangering us all.

pm: once again you assume that the armed robber is a rational being who cooly weighs the odds of different outcomes. I’d gently like to suggest that someone who thinks pointing a gun at someone is a good way to earn a living is not exactly rational.

Squad Leader: Simon Phoenix! Lie down with your hands behind your back.

Simon Phoenix: What’s this? Six of you. Such nice, tidy uniforms. Oh I’m so scared!

[the Police Officers look at each other]

Simon Phoenix: What you guys don’t have sarcasm anymore?

[Police Officer talks to his automated assistant]

Squad Leader: Maniac has responded with a scornful remark.

automated assistant: Approach, and repeat ultimatum in an even firmer tone of voice. Add the words, “or else”.

...

So…he killed a guy committing an economic crime, aka committed a capital crime to prevent a minor felony economic crime and the gun nuts view this as a good thing?

Yes, Virginia, your life is officially worth less than the rights of property. God Bless America.

The wild west fantasies of these sickos has officially gone on way too long. The world isn’t your private action movie. Real people with hopes, dreams, wants, needs, loves die when this shit happens. A robber isn’t some nameless mook sent by the shadow government with no morals and no past. He probably had parents weeping at his funeral, family members at home hurting, and no one will ever ask why he felt pushed to rob a fast food restaurant at gun point. Is someone starving to death, a house foreclosing, or medical bills gone unpaid? Does anyone care?

There used to be a name for this vigilante shit, it was called lynch mob.

Ugh, I’m sorry to responsible gun owners and the like, but this shit is just plain wrong.

Sorry that should be clear that it was the “hero” is the one who committed a capital cold-blooded murder of a minor league felon committing an economic crime. I typed that quickly.

Are you assuming the customer who pulls out a gun has cooly weighed the odds of different outcomes

Nope. On the facts here he would seem to be a moronic would-be hero. But the idea that, absent Joe Amateur, the patrons need merely look up and think, “Oh, just another armed robbery, nothing to worry about,” seemed fatuous.

I couldn’t disagree more with the majority of posters here.  It is a violent crime to use a weapon to threaten someone with force, regardless of if the weapon is discharged.  It is not just an “economic crime”.  Don’t want to get shot?  Don’t threaten people with guns.  Pretty simple, IMHO.

Yeah, I have to agree with the many people above who already made this point.  Robbery should not be a capital crime.  I don’t support capital punishment in general, but I can understand people who do, for something like murder.  However, even supporters of the death penalty don’t think it should be used in the case of robbery.  The robber should be in jail, not a morgue.

but if it’s their life or my laptop they can take the fucking laptop, really.”

But what if you haven’t backed up your files o_O?!? (just kidding)

This really does seem like some guy acting out a fantasy. It’s a burger king, the guy was after cash and I can hope that someone in the back would’ve at least tried to call the cops or alert the manager (do restaurants have silent alarms or any thing like that?). Plus, it’s insured. Now the guy is going to have a massive hospital bill (how many gun nuts are gonna help with that?) and maybe permanent damage, depending on where he got shot. All, as Jesse pointed out, over a few hundred bucks that no one would really miss.

How much do you want to guess that when this guy gets out of the hospital they’ll try to make him the new Joe the Plumber? I call dibs on Fast Food Rambo.

“once again you assume that the armed robber is a rational being who cooly weighs the odds of different outcomes.”

No, I assume that, generally speaking, the armed robber has two brain cells to rub together and some slim idea of the desired situational outcome.  In general, you don’t armed-rob somebody because you walked into a liquor store, just so happened to have a gun on you, and decided that it would be a grand day to not only risk getting shot in the face by the clerk and but also wind up on live news waving “hi” to your mom while the police shoot at you because they don’t feel like running another block. 

The idea that the armed robber is irrational/liable to panicky/stupid is all the more reason not to go off-script, as it were, and become confrontational if it doesn’t seem necessary to save one’s life, because they’re going to be less able to come up with an optimal-outcome Plan B on the spot.

I’m really boggling at the attitude here.  The martial artist who talked about disarming the guy with the gun, etc.  Awkward saying it matters whether the gun is cocked.  It doesn’t matter.  Cops are taught shoot center mass, head, center mass.  They don’t mess around, and I see no reason a person with a concealed carry permit would either.  It’s Hollywood bullshit to think that people shoot to disarm, or wound, or whatever.  If a criminal robs someone at gunpoint, they are running the risk of getting shot and killed.  The issue shouldn’t be “how dare this vigilante shoot someone trying to rob a store of a few hundred dollars” it should be “man that robber was a dumbass for trying to rob a place and risk his own life for a few hundred dollars”.

” The issue shouldn’t be “how dare this vigilante shoot someone trying to rob a store of a few hundred dollars” it should be “man that robber was a dumbass for trying to rob a place and risk his own life for a few hundred dollars”.”

Wolverines!!!...

(I’m surprised that plunky hasn’t pulled out the old “an armed society is a polite society” trope yet…)

Meanwhile, many if not most of us are thinking “man, that vigilante was a dumbass for getting into a firefight in a crowded restaurant!”

Oh, and “man, that guy’s is a dumbass for acting like the robber deserved to die over a few hundred dollars”.

Note, I need to proofread a little better. Whups.

I wonder if plunky has ever shot a man just to watch him die…

My 70 year old grandfather stopped a 7-11 form getting robbed he hit the guy with his case of beer.
This is FL the anus of America where they all have guns and still think GWB is a great man… I hope they charge this douche for killing the robber.

I don’t necessarily think he “deserved” to die, StarStorm, and it wasn’t for the money.  He did run the risk of getting shot by endangering the public by waving a weapon around and acting as if he intended to use it.  You guys are blaming the vigilante, when you should be waving the person who started the violence by drawing a weapon and threatening people with it.

No, I’ve never shot someone, MikeEss.  I don’t own a gun.  And I think it would be a tragedy if a gun carrier escalated a situation and killed an innocent bystander.  That didn’t happen in this case.  An armed robber was shot and killed.  Oh well.  Don’t be an armed robber.

Robbery should not be a capital crime.

No, but in the case of armed robbery, I can understand why, under certain circumstances, deadly force to defend oneself might be acceptable.

kodiak’s words are well-taken: in any confrontation, the best thing to do is deescalate and resolve it as peacefully as possible. Was that possible in this case, where the robber had a gun? I don’t know…. maybe deadly force was the right move because someone’s life was in danger.

This sounds like something that the Watchmen movie should have dedicated a couple of scenes to.

Don’t want to get shot?  Don’t threaten people with guns.

Shit, the idiot in the hospital could stand to learn the same lesson. It is literally not going to kill you to let the guy walk with Burger King’s $40.

I agree w/Plunky. Everybody in the BK should have been armed & opened fire immediately on the robber. Much better to die in a gunfight than of old age. (/snark)

I think a lot of right-wingers are going to spend their time fulminating over the fact that there existed a very real possibility that SOMEONE would have gotten a few extra hundred dollars worth of ill-gotten gains and, quit possibly, “gotten away with it.” Their feelings of helplessness in this situation will lead many of them to feel like the best way to prevent someone from getting something he didn’t “deserve” would be to shoot him. And I totally sympathize with that. I’d like there to be a very real disincentive for people to commit crimes. I am a bit cautious about jogging at night through certain parts of my neighborhood. I’d like to feel that criminals might feel the same danger about having something bad befall them.

However, I’m probably willing to “let it slide” in exchange for there not being a gunfight when I’m at a fast food restaurant.

The liberals’ outrage is something along the lines of “an innocent person could have gotten killed!” while the conservatives’ outrage is “someone might have gotten money that they didn’t deserve through ill-gotten means!”

Everyone hates thieves. Do I hate them enough to risk the lives of other people to stop them? On an emotional level, sure. As a practical matter, probably better not to endanger others and instead arrest him after the fact.

I am also not sure robbery should carry the death penalty.

I wouldn’t call this a “penalty” (a penalty is something you do when the criminal has been captured and disarmed, and is no longer a threat), so much as a “job hazard”.  Armed robbery is a risky business, and this guy just ran out of luck.  Of the three parties involved, I have the least sympathy for him - with the Wyatt Earp wannabe in a very close second.  It’s the bystanders who happened to be occupying the BK at the same time as these two fools that I really feel sorry for. 

Having said that, I should also say that I saw Plunky’s opinion -

Don’t want to get shot?  Don’t threaten people with guns.  Pretty simple, IMHO.

- coming a mile away.  If we weren’t on an explicitly liberal blog, I’m sure we’d be seeing a lot more of it.  See, we all know that the pro-gun right (yes, we know that not everyone who is pro-gun is also on the Right) is happy about this because someone did something “heroic” with a gun, thus proving them right (if you don’t think about it too hard), but I think there’s another attraction to this story for them: someone got adequately punished.  No trial, no three meals a day and cable TV.  Shot down like a dog in the street, Old West style.  Remember, there’s a huge overlap between these people and those who say that if a woman didn’t want to bear, birth, and raise a child, then she should have kept her legs shut (and dammit, too many women are doing just that without their lives being totally ruined.  Can we bring back the stigma somehow?).  These are people who just loves them some punishment.  Be prepared for a lot of very disturbing, bloodthirsty glee, along with accusations of cowardice or softness.

I think there’s another attraction to this story for them: someone got adequately punished.  No trial, no three meals a day and cable TV.  Shot down like a dog in the street, Old West style.  Remember, there’s a huge overlap between these people and those who say that if a woman didn’t want to bear, birth, and raise a child, then she should have kept her legs shut (and dammit, too many women are doing just that without their lives being totally ruined.  Can we bring back the stigma somehow?).  These are people who just loves them some punishment.

Most everyone loves them some punishment, though—not just ‘these people’ . . . for instance, I think most readers here (including myself) would get a nice warm squishy feeling inside if we got to see Cheney led away in cuffs and thrown behind bars (or worse), over and above some sort of cold and rational “that’s good, now justice has been done” sentiment.

I like how the name calling has already started.  I’m not a conservative.  I’m not in the NRA.  I’m not right-leaning at all.  I’ve read this blog for over a year, I just don’t comment much.

And for me, this isn’t about punishment, it’s about protecting society.  You all are assuming the armed robber would have acted rationally and just taken the money and left.  From my perspective, there’s no reason to think that.  It is not rational to rob a Burger King for a few hundred dollars.  Who knows what this guy would have done?  “Burger Hero” (love this btw) got a positive outcome.  Before he acted there was an armed robber threatening violence if he didn’t get his way.  After he acted, there was not an armed robber threatening anything.  And the only other person hurt was Burger Hero.  Good job, Burger Hero, thanks for your sacrifice.

OT, but I just can’t help it: I think you’re running an ad for the ski resort where Natasha Richardson had her fatal accident.

To get back on topic, I remember when I was a kid and got my first (and only) BB gun, I ended up somehow getting signed up for some NRA newsletter. All I remember about the thing is that it was chockablock with one anecdote after another along these lines, although most of them were in private homes, not public places like restaurants.

I’m not venturing an opinion on the merits of this case (I don’t really have one), but my point is that the “pro-gun right” has been attaching itself to stories like this with grappling hooks for decades. These kinds of anecdotes are an imporant part, if not the principal pillar, of their argument.

The martial artist who talked about disarming the guy with the gun, etc.

well if that’s what you got out of my comment I’m sorry, that wasn’t exactly what I was going for. What I was intending as the coming away point was that every weapon is a lethal weapon. If you have a lethal weapon on you intentionally (he had a concealed carry permit and didn’t accidentally put his gun on instead of his pocketwatch I presume) then you have a responsibility to act in such a way that using it is the absolute last resort.

How many conversations have been had here about taser use and how irresponsible it is to use a weapon that is potentially deadly on people as a first resort? Same thing applies here. If the police didn’t get there in time then let’s work on solving that, but if they did, shooting the robber down would be the last thing on their “to-do” list.

The “it’s not worth the lawsuit” point above is well taken, a corollary of that is in a brawl the first hit is self-defence, after that it’s an attack… and you will be charged as equally guilty of attack if you keep whaling on someone you disabled. The point of martial arts training isn’t to “win”, it’s to get away cleanly and alive with the least damage done to yourself and the attacker (since you, of course, will never be the instigator). I don’t see why that point wouldn’t be equally true of other people who own weapons “for protection”.

You guys are blaming the vigilante, when you should be waving the person who started the violence by drawing a weapon and threatening people with it.

Blame is not a zero sum game.

Would we be hearing from you, plunky, if Mr Vigalante had managed to kill a bystander while exchanging fire?

Good job, Burger Hero, thanks for your sacrifice.

We should buy him a jacket with “Burger Hero” on the back of it. At the very least, Burger King should comp his meals for the next couple weeks.

Hey, here’s a thought. So, at least two guys bled all over the floor in this Burger King, and it doesn’t say every shot fired hit either the Burger Hero or his archenemy the Evil Armed Robber, so one might assume the bullets might’ve scuffed other surfaces. So, there’s new flooring put in and replacement whatever’s the stray bullests hit. And this was at 4 p.m., so not only is the drive-home rush shot to hell, but the entire evening’s business is probably shot. And then there’s the Burger King employees, who all hopefully got paid for the shift anyway, ‘cause that would suck if they didn’t. Think about that, none of y’all went to work today and saw a couple assholes shoot the friggin’ place up and have to clean the fryers, so no matter how bad your work day was, several someone else’s were worse.

Reckon how much was in the till? Grand, maybe, let’s be generous. So Burger Hero saved Burger King a thousand in day’s receipts and all they have to do is replace the floor, fill in bullet holes, and convince minimum wage slaves to not sue the living shit out of them. Way to go, Quick Draw.

Police have killed far more children than concealed carry holders.

In addition to the reasons you give, couldn’t that also be because police (as a group) get into gunfights much more often?

Bosworth_Focke:

Kind of like in Germany where as we know they never have school shootings like we do?

These situations are difficult for me.  I believe in self-defense.  I also believe that most of the time it’s better to just give the robber the money, because most of the time, that is all they want and no one gets hurt.

Unfortunately, it can be difficult to tell when your situation is one of the ones where the robber might shoot you anyway.  My wife worked for a Blockbuster store that got robbed one night, which had happened before.  Thankfully she wasn’t working that night.  The robber was the only one with a weapon, and everyone cooperated.  Nonetheless, he herded everyone into the back, brought the assistant manager up front, and then shot him.  He didn’t try to resist.

Maybe by playing the odds, more people live over time.  It’s pretty tough to tell that though to people who might get killed anyway.  I can’t blame someone for taking action even if the “safe” play is to do nothing.  Lives are in danger every time a crime is committed with a lethal weapon in play, even if the criminal has no intent to use that weapon going in.

most of the time, with concealed carry, the altercation is ended when the carrier displays the gun

Is that you, John Lott?

Of course, John Lott claimed to have proved that, but conveniently lost all the supporting evidence.

Moreover, this incident shows it’s nonsense.  The robber displayed his gun, and it didn’t prevent the customer from drawing his own gun, did it?

Akward:

I’m probably somewhat on your side but double action autos and revolvers don’t have to be visibly “cocked.”  You just pull the trigger.

I’m not in Burger Hero’s shoes so I won’t judge him.  I don’t think he deserves to be punished.  However, I think he used very bad judgement indeed.  These things come down to matters of judgement.  Was the bad guy acting calmly.  He’s not going to shoot the cashier to eliminate a witness; there are too many witnesses.  Is the bad guy acting nuts/wild.  That would have been the decider for me.  Otherwise, the odds of accidental damage to bystanders would have outweighed by urge to act (I hope).

You all are assuming the armed robber would have acted rationally and just taken the money and left.  From my perspective, there’s no reason to think that.  It is not rational to rob a Burger King for a few hundred dollars.  Who knows what this guy would have done?

Actually, we’re all assuming that a bunch of lead flying around a crowded restaurant (crowded with schoolchildren, mind you) is the second-to-worst possible outcome for the situation (the worst possible outcome, where all that random lead starts hitting innocent bystanders, was avoided by pure luck).  We’re also assuming that unless Burger Hero did know what the robber was going to do, and knew that he was going to start shooting, starting a gunfight with him was a dangerous combination of crazy, macho and stupid that risked people’s lives needlessly. 

“Burger Hero” (love this btw) got a positive outcome.  Before he acted there was an armed robber threatening violence if he didn’t get his way.  After he acted, there was not an armed robber threatening anything.

Funny.  If the police had been involved, a dead perp and a seriously wounded civilian would be considered signs the operation had gone bad. 

And the only other person hurt was Burger Hero.

For which he should thank his personal God.

A lot of this gets into your classic urban vs. rural viewpoint on gun control. I trust myself to own a gun and use it responsibly. On my homestead, I’d probably be pretty annoyed if the government was obsessed with telling me how I should own and keep my guns. By contrast, would I trust a building or a restaurant full of people with guns that I don’t even know to use them responsibly? Probably not. There are too many idiots out there.

Another thought. The story’s thin on detail, so we don’t know if Burger Hero had any training beyond what was required to get a CC permit in Florida. We don’t know if he was military or police or skilled with firearms or a gun nut or just some dude. The most charitable defense for his actions is he saved Burger King some cash register money, as the story doesn’t tell us if anyone was actually in any immediate danger. From what it looks like, the robber and the gunslinger started giving each other shit and the inevitable occurred. Hell, it was in the afternoon, so maybe Burger Hero just had a really, really shitty day. Who knows, work had’ve gone different that day, Burger Hero might’ve kept it in the holster and that would’ve been that.

Betcha he didn’t expect to kill a guy during his daily Whopper run when he got up this morning or that if he’d a hit Subway on the way home instead. Think about having the live with that for the rest of your life. Even soldiers and cops have a tough time dealing with it, and killing folks is sometimes part of the job. And this guy’s just a guy who wanted a burger.

I take issue with the idea that armed robbery is, inherently, an irrational act.  As someone pointed out above, this robber could have been just a thug or could have been stealing money to feed their child.  With this economy, armed robbery is going to become MORE common not less because finding legitimate work that pays a living wage is becoming more difficult (especially when some cities already have a 20+% unemployment rate).  Desperate people resort to criminal acts when they have no other viable options available.  That is profoundly rational in extreme circumstances.

It’s also beside the point, frankly.  One does not redress the “irrational” acts of others with more irrational behavior, like vigilante justice.

The point is, we have no idea whether the robber would have left quietly after getting the money or started shooting just because he felt like it.  We won’t know that because some jackass decided to pick a verbal fight with the robber (which would have been enough for the robber to feel threatened and thus more likely to use his gun) and then engage in a shoot-out with him. I find the phrase “showed his gun”—not waved his gun or pointed his gun—to be very telling.  Burger Hero was looking for an excuse to blow somebody away. He didn’t care about the bystanders; he didn’t care about BK’s money; all he cared about was stroking his own flaccid ego and proving he is a brave, macho man.

In order:

1) If you are currently aiming a gun at an innocent person, you “deserve” to die.  You have created a situation where people die, and you may reap its rewards.

2) If at some point in the past you aimed a gun at an innocent person, you no longer “deserve” to die.  You got lucky; the situation ended well for you, and now you should be tried for a lesser crime.

3) People don’t always get what they “deserve.” 

Starting a firefight in a BK over a few hundred dollars is insane.  Starting a firefight in a BK over a cashier’s life is not.  We don’t know the situation, so I decline to judge until I have all the facts.

Most everyone loves them some punishment, though—not just ‘these people’ . . . for instance, I think most readers here (including myself) would get a nice warm squishy feeling inside if we got to see Cheney led away in cuffs and thrown behind bars (or worse), over and above some sort of cold and rational “that’s good, now justice has been done” sentiment.

That’s true, but when I say “they likes them some punishment”, it’s like saying that someone with a drinking problem “likes his booze”.  I’m talking about people who seem to think that punishing someone is the solution to every problem - like wanting to bring back the stigma of unwed motherhood to bring down the number of single-parent families.  That’s the mindset that’s cheering about this.

I’m in general a second amendment guy who believes that gun’s shouldn’t be too regulated.  However, the guy who helped shoot up the burger king needs to watch that scene in Boogie Nights a couple of times to see what can happen in such a situation.  A gun is not a shield.  That is what I think most of the people who make a fetish out of protecting themselves with concealed carry and these types of stories miss.  A gun does not make you into a superhero. 

I’ve never understood the idea that people should carry around fire arms on a regular basis.  It is incredibly rare that you will be in a situation where a calm collected look it would suggest that pulling a gun would make the situation better.

A shot gun in the house makes sense if you hunt.  And can be useful in the rare home invasion scenario.  But the main point should be to hunt with it.  If you have a gun around your house for the sole purpose of shooting a human being with it then you will probably shoot a human being with it.

In general, liberals think it’s a good thing that we’re past the age where petty criminals are routinely killed and it’s nothing to the crowds but entertainment.  State executions and vigilante justice are poor, unjust ways to deal with individuals more motivated by desperation than malice.

Gun-happy conservatives, as always, yearn for the good old days of simple, bloody solutions.

Lots of tiny people with tiny genitals coming in this thread to defend idiotic, wild-west mentalities.

Put in the same situation, these people would be cowering for their lives.

Gerald, people get killed by stray gunfire, no matter what you and your tiny-cocked buddies tell yourselves.  You just don’t want to admit it because it might mean that - gasp! - life isn’t like some stupid action movie.

Then again, you’re just a troll anyway, so it’s not like your opinion means anything to anyone here.

And just to make clear: law enforcement officials are in a far better place to handle situations like this without endangering others, providing they do their job correctly.  Your average armed person, with no real training and prone to misread a situation, often becomes as much of a danger to the others as the criminal, if not more so.

Ironically, 2nd Amendment supporters who also happened to support the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan often made an analogous argument that Saddam/Islamic radicals couldn’t be trusted with nukes.

Which really negates their whole “people have a right to defend themselves” argument, if you think about it—it suggests that this rule is forfeit if you happen to belong to a country that is not the U.S. or Israel.

<blockquote>But considering that Florida alone has issued 10x as many concealed carry licenses than the total number of police officers in the US.<blockquote>

Do you always just make bullshit numbers up?

Number of law enforcement officers in the United States: 900,000

SOURCE: National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (March 2008)

Number of concealed-carry permits issued in the state of Florida since program inception: 1,400,000

SOURCE: Florida Dept. of Agriculture And Consumer Services Division of Licensing (February 2009)

If you’re gonna whing around your Tim McVeigh sympathizer talking points around here, it might help if your arguments are rooted in the realm of facts, not fantasy.  So which is it - has Florida issued 9 Million CCW permits, or are there really only 140,000 LEOs in the country?

Or do just have no fucking clue what you’re talking about?

Blue Fielder:

While I don’t disagree that Burger Hero should have restrained himself….

If the bad guy had started shooting people and Burger Hero droped him just as he was turing to shoot you, would you care about the dick size of your defender or whether she had a dick at all?

It’s possible to support the second amendment and still think that this vigilante guy was wrong.  I don’t think anyone here is suggesting that all guns should be banned.  But this guy was not a hero and in the end he killed a guy over money, not to save a life.

Most stray gunfire comes from cops and gang bangers. Not concealed carry holders.

If you’re going to call someone a troll, try not to be one yourself.

Right.

And Florida has issued 10 times as many CCW permits as there are police officers in the United States.

Oh, except wait, I just thoroughly proved that you just made that shit up out of thin air.

Right and left in this debate are talking about two different visions.  On the left, ideally, some minimal level of armed robbery occurs and is made manageable by limiting access to weapons and improving the police response.  On the right, ideally, armed robbery is eventually eradicated because the marginal benefit is grossly outweighed by the risk of death (you see, everyone walking around doing their daily business should be armed to the fucking teeth).  I think it’s indisputable that both ideals accept some cost in innocent life, but the left’s vision is more plausible and far more stable.

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

I’m glad to see we’re all for killing them if they’re bad guys waving guns. How then should the “burger hero” be executed for not only committing the felony part of the crime he witnessed, but taking it that further step to premeditated murder (you aim for center mass after all)?

Should we put one bullet in the back of his head, swing him from the poplar tree, hook him up with the juice and watch him dance, maybe burn him at the stake, old school?

Life is more precious than money. Even some criminal, even some “violent thug”, some brown-skinned brown person with dark skin who’s probably brown and poor.

I especially am sickened to watch the glee while I know there are men happily stealing countries and blackmailing the government for more money. They live in fancy houses and will never see a day in jail, committing crimes so large, its effects will trickle down in the starvation and homelessness for at least a decade, driving men like that poor robber to desperation. These men walk, this cold-blooded murderer is lauded as a hero, but at least some low-level baddie got stomped. Yay Batman, another economic crime averted, Gotham can sleep soundly tonight.

Ugh, I’m not really against guns, but the penis substitute obsession of the gun nuts and libertarians is sickening. A person’s life is the end-game. A life of violence, a life “wasted”, it doesn’t matter. A person’s life is the one thing that can’t come back, that should cause the greatest pause, because even if you believe in an afterlife or reincarnation, you only get one go around in this life on this Earth.

So excuse me if I value it more than whether or not Burger King lost a grand maybe in something every late-night cashier has suffered through at least once. Innocent, not-innocent, that person will never dream and the ones who love him will never see his smile again. Perhaps he was evil incarnate. Perhaps he had a dying mother and an impending foreclosure. He didn’t deserve to die and he certainly didn’t deserve to have his guilt used as an excuse to act out a violent desire to commit a premeditated murder you could get away with.

That hero has proven a sociopathy this day and no matter how evil the robber, the “hero” has already proven themselves worse and far more willing to kill for nothing.

But hey, at least it gives the gun nuts a chubby, eh. Better than viagra, eh lads? Yeehaw!

Wow, first, can we lay off the insults?  Blue Fielder, I am looking at you.

Second, no, I am not John Lott, my handle is Ismone, I am a liberal, I’ve been commenting on this blog since Amanda joined it, I have taken a concealed carry class, and I have spoken to people who carry concealed.  Only one person in my class (the instructor) who had used his gun shot anybody.  The others displayed.  If you point, you can get hit with Assault with a Deadly Weapon, which is why people usually don’t point unless they’re going to shoot.  Yes, I know that is anecdata.  Usually the reason that is true, though, is because the other person has no gun (instead they have a knife, bat, or something else) so they back off.  Yes, in situations with two people carrying, displaying usually doesn’t work unless the other person is super risk averse.

Again, I would need to know more in order to determine whether the concealed carrier in this case shot in self-defense, or defense of a third party, whether he provoked some kind of confrontation that probably wouldn’t happened, or whether he shot in defense of property (which is completely illegal and should be.)  In short, what Punditus Maximus said.

Like I said, and like in the Blockbuster example someone gave upthread, the line between robbery and robbery-homicide is often very fine.

And still…

At the end of the day you’re more likely to be shot by some donut swilling sociopath with a badge or some failure of life who has decided robbing people is better than working for a living.

And still…

At the end of the day, Gerald is more likely to be renting a Ryder truck in Junction City, KS and purchasing tons of ammonium nitrate with sociopathic intentions against the federal government than the average bear.

Fort Sumter?  Civil War?  Are you fucking serious?  I mean seriously, dude, I read your blog… and you’re a first-rate Ruby Ridge, Timothy McVeigh worshipping whackjob.

I really don’t like the bad faith arguments flying around here.

What is all this crap thrown at people supporting the second amendment about “the war in Iraq” and “the conservative vision that people who commit robberies should be shot”?  Who has taken those positions on this thread?  The closest to that has been the “getting shot is an occupational hazard of being an armed robber” argument, which only a precious few of us have made. 

I have the right to self-defense.  So, incidentally, do the Iraqis whose homeland has been invaded in an unlawful war.  I don’t think robbers should be shot, unless it is in defense OF ANOTHER HUMAN BEING.  I think it is just fine for cops or civilians to use guns for that purpose.  Anyone who kills a person, with a gun or anything else, who does not pose an imminent threat to another person’s life is a CRIMINAL.

The existence of criminals shouldn’t prevent responsible people from defending themselves by whatever means necessary.  Guess what?  I’m never going to be some martial arts expert, but I am a damn good shot.  If I decide that I am in a situation where lawfully carrying a gun would keep me and mine safer, I want to have that opportunity.

southpaw-

Well more importantly, the left also recognizes that if petty crime is “prevented” by murder then what you have is legalized murder and people believing that murder is a perfect way to get what you want. Thus leading to more assaults, killings, and more and more absurd defenses such as trans and gay panic, murder of abused wives who try to leave and murder of any non-white person found in the wrong neighborhood after a crime was committed.

The Wild West towns were often ruled by petty tyrants and things like institutionalized rape and forced prostitution as well as constant murders and gun fights for things like “stealing cattle” or trespassing or being a Native American ended many a young life. More guns on the streets and quicker triggers means that more and more violent crimes become common law and gets institutionalized into all behavior. Lynch mobs, rape mobs, etc…

Liberals like the idea that if someone were to kill you or rape you there arguably exists a rule of law you could appeal to that if perfected and honored would provide a semblance of justice and that there would also be more societal structures in place to limit the root causes of what happened to them, thus preventing them from occurring.

Given that places like Denmark are among the safest countries in the world, I’d say they’re on to something.

Conservatives like the Wild West fantasy on the other hand, because they assume they’d either be Wyatt Earp or the Land Baron themselves. They don’t expect they’d be the guy gunned down for “looking faggy” or winged when a gun fight broke out in the bar over a handful of cards and an insult.

When life is seen as cheap and less valuable than things like “honor” or some weird vigilante sense of justice, life become cheap and thus heavily spent without thought or temperance to the detriment of all.

Ismone-

It’s because the original post was about how a random person at the joint saw an economic crime in progress, entered into it, raised the stakes by producing a weapon of their one thus endangering the held-up workers and proceeded to brutally murder the robber.

In that context, the thought experiments of the “yay, guns” side take on a more sickly hue.

Absent that context, it’s a different conversation. You want to talk about the right of Iraqis to defend their homeland from invaders or American rights to defend from invading armies absent this context, we’ve got a good debate going.

With the context though, it’s poor form and carries a far different context in that a man murdered another man entirely because he knew that the crime the other man committed would allow the “hero” to get away with cold-bloodily ending another man’s life.

That’s strange fruit on the poplar tree.

Gerald-

You have absolutely no understanding of poverty, do you?

A few hundred bucks sometimes is a difference between life and death. And in a context where there is active and repeated theft of the poor’s futures by rich fuckers who will never see a day in jail, it is cute to call the poor dumb for imitating their “betters” just to make their lives a little less bleak and their futures a little less a slow starvation.

If you want to stop armed robbery, you stop poverty. No poverty and armed robbery becomes a quaint fiction, a man-bites-dog oddity only undertaken by the mentally ill. See the Nordic countries for evidence.

And I’m suddenly reminded of the Dead Kennedy’s “Kill the Poor”.

Rock on Batmen, save Gotham from the economic criminals, make the world safe for AIG and Blackwater.

Cerberus,

The reason I’ve become irked is that several of us think there might be more to the story, and that if there were, the shooter might be justified.  And we get tarred with all kinds of batshit beliefs.

But thank you for being respectful and taking the time to make your point—I agree that if the robber wasn’t about to cause some imminent harm to a person, the shooting was unjustified, and the shooter should be prosecuted.  But I don’t see why that should affect my right to self-defense, whether I was capable of becoming some karate bad-ass (I’m not) or whether I get a concealed carry license.

Most stray gunfire comes from cops and gang bangers. Not concealed carry holders.

Most stray gunfire comes from people who shoot guns.  Just because you have a concealed carry permit doesn’t mean that you carry a gun or even own one, let alone shoot it at people.  And it still doesn’t make it a good idea to go shooting at people in public because they are robbing a fast food joint. 

Of course, we really don’t have enough details to determine whether the shooting was truly justified.  I’m sure all that will come out in the courtroom.

“It’s because the original post was about how a random person at the joint saw an economic crime in progress, entered into it, raised the stakes by producing a weapon of their one thus endangering the held-up workers and proceeded to brutally murder the robber. “

No. Just no.  As many of us have said by this point, me using a gun to rob you is not an “economic crime”.  It is a violent crime.  The robber is the one who created the dangerous situation.

As I mentioned in my first response (and as someone else pointed out), there isn’t enough information to make an objective evaluation of what happened one way or the other.  People are starting to bring their baggage from whatever side they happen to believe in, and that’s obscuring the fact that we don’t know enough based on that one article

Once again, if the customer started arguing with the guy before drawing his weapon, he was stupidly escalating the situation.  If he drew and then started arguing to get the other guy to back down before the shooting started, that would be different.  Similarly, was the robber waving the run around pointed at the ceiling, did he have it stuck in his waistband and was showing it, or was he pointing it at someone?  How crowded was the restaurant?  Where were the two men standing?  What was the behaviour and mood of the robber before the confrontation?

There’s insufficient information to make a judgment on whether not it was a good shoot (to appropriate the police terminology).  It’s entirely possible that what the customer did was the right thing, the wrong thing, or a questionable decision that could go either way.

What it isn’t, given the currently available information, is something that either the NRA and company or antigun people should be saying dick-all about until more of the story is told.

I trust myself to own a gun and use it responsibly.

I trust myself to own a gun and use it responsibly.  I also trust myself to be a wit, a raconteur, wily on the gaming table, hard-nosed in the boardroom, spectacular in the bedroom, kind to children and animals, and generally a hero.

Other people’s opinions may differ. 

I don’t trust you to own a gun and use it responsibly. And you most certainly shouldn’t trust me to own a gun and use it responsibly.

So, you know, limit the guns to where we can’t hurt others by indulging our fantasies - not in public spaces.  And certainly not in crowded restaurants.

How do you know that an armed robber isn’t acting rationally according to their own circumstances?

Go ahead. Make the case for threatening to take the life of another human being in order to get the cash in his drawer. Consider the capital investment and resourcefulness needed to get a gun and ammunition. Explain why armed robbery is preferable to non-violent and non-criminal alternatives.

There’s insufficient information to make a judgment

That’s never stopped us before!

If we could get criminals to value of their own lives enough to where they won’t turn to crime, perhaps they won’t end so prematurely. And if you don’t value your life enough to not become a criminal, at least value your life enough to knock over something bigger than a Burger King. Rob a bank or an armored car. I’d hope that even the most desperate of criminals think their life is worth more than a few hundred dollars.

So, “if you value your life, rob a bank?”

Seriously? I’m pretty sure that the guy decided to rob a Burger King because he *did* value his life (no matter how shitty it might have been) and was trying a last-resort improvement to said life. My guess is the robber valued his own life more than Burger Hero valued the robber’s life…

Obviously that’s a lot of speculation, but more importantly the comment above illustrates how much this sort of thing is like an action movie for gun-nuts. “So this guy’s like, poor, right? Or evil, whatever, doesn’t matter. And he’s all ‘aw, crap I need cash’ so he goes to rob this Burger Ki—no WAIT he should rob a BANK, k? And then he has like this hot girlfriend who’s all like “omg, a bank that is so cool they have so much money in them!” or something whatever. So it’s like a *heist* now and then he goes but the bank is full of like, guys from Texas, k? and they all have guns but this evil guy totally doesn’t know it, and then he’s all waving the gun and yelling ‘I got nothing to lose!’ and then he gets his ASS kicked by like, this one guy who…”

Piator advances a good argument for disarming the police. Imagine the sort of person who seeks out a job where he can have a gun strapped to his hip all day long. He must go all day fantasizing about whipping it out and blowng some taxpayer away.

Further, I hope piator doesn’t own a car, because I don’t trust him to own a car and use it responsibly. And although I believe he should trust me to own a car and use it responsibly, I wouldn’t expect him to.

So, you know, limit the cars to where we can’t hurt others by indulging our fantasies - not in public spaces.  And certainly not in crowded parking lots.

For me, the difference is: did the robber display the gun, or point the gun. If he levelled the gun at the cashier, then that indicates an imminent threat to kill, and the civilian shooter is, to me, quite justified in shooting him. If he just showed the gun, it’s more of a grey area.

I’m a little disturbed at people on this thread who are seemingly justifying armed robbery as an appropriate response to poverty.

Further, I hope piator doesn’t own a car, because I don’t trust him to own a car and use it responsibly. And although I believe he should trust me to own a car and use it responsibly, I wouldn’t expect him to.

So, you know, limit the cars to where we can’t hurt others by indulging our fantasies - not in public spaces.  And certainly not in crowded parking lots.

Or, you know, make people take tests to show that they know how to safely operate a car and have the physical coordination and strength to do so safely.

Of course, I’m also a big 2nd amendment guy who thinks the “well regulated” part is as important as the “shall not be infringed” part, but that puts me ideologically pretty far from the gun lobbies.

Ismone,

Don’t tell me what to do.  You’re not a contributor here.  You don’t set the rules.  You don’t tell me my business.

In fact, just fuck this thread.  It’s clear the trolling is just going to get worse.  I’ve got better things to do than deal with selfish little brats throwing temper tantrums and delusional gun nuts acting like life is a goddamn movie.

What Magis said. My state doesn’t allow you to kill somebody for threatening property either, which I think makes sense. Banks and BK’s have insurance. The lesson here is, shoot at somebody who has a gun, and you’ll very likely get shot too.

Also, it’s really fucking selfish to “man up” or etc. and create a standoff with lethal weapons inside a room with a bunch of uninvolved people. We don’t know what their exchange was before they started shooting, but the reporter certainly writes it as a Clint Eastwood moment. Selfish, and stupid.

For those looking for an excuse, note this.

You don’t have the right to kill someone.

But what if he’s beating someone up? You don’t have the right to kill them.
But what if he’s threatening someone’s life? You don’t have the right to kill them.
But what if he’s raping someone? You don’t have the right to kill them.
But what if he killed someone? You don’t have the right to kill them.
You don’t have the right to kill people. Not even if they’re bad dudes. Not even if they really really deserve it.
You don’t get to make that choice extra-legally and no society with a functioning system of justice (prolly not ours then /snark) can operate allowing someone to make that decision on their own.

If you kill someone cause they killed someone, you’re not better than them. You’re equally culpable.

Each step down the ladder makes you more and more heinous in comparison.

I don’t care if the robber was skull-fucking the cashier with the pistol, the “hero” didn’t have a right to kill him.

And speaking as someone who HAS been robbed as a cashier, Mr. I like to shoot people nearly got that cashier killed. Armed robbers don’t generally fire on their subjects unless they get spooked, like say someone playing John Wayne.

I appreciate that there may be well-meaning people trying to shift through the morass of messages and conflicting emotions about crime and the anxious masculinity and poverty that creates things like packing robbers. I don’t intend to infer anything ill about your characters or intentions, but there is a sickness in this country. A rot wherein property means more than life, where humans are less than corporations, where life and death takes a back-seat to defense of property, where life is literally cheap enough to be bought and sold indiscriminately.

It is at the heart of so much injustice. Health care debate, unemployment, corporate culture, toxic masculinity, gun nuts, minutemen, militias, domestic terrorists, and so much more.

Life SHOULD trump. Regardless of how little you respect how it’s used.

Gerald-

Well as long as the “good people” keep their money, that’s good then.

Glad those groups were properly defined and outlined like in a Batman comic with no grey areas or ambiguity, without outside context or forces, where the cashier couldn’t be a rapist and the robber couldn’t have been trying to save enough money to keep his underaged sister off the streets.

Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill the poor.

If someone threatens another with lethal force, I’m not sure how much it matters whether they are pointing the gun . . . maybe that person doesn’t ‘deserve’ to get shot, but he sure in the hell shouldn’t be surprised if it happens because someone in the area interprets that gesture as immediately threatening.

If you have to wait until a gun is pointed at your face to counter-threaten lethal force . . . well, that might be a little late in the game. You can’t mind read a robber—it seems a little odd to me that the majority opinion here is that you should just cross your fingers and hope for the best, it’ll probably be okay.

That said, if the restaurant truly were crowded, overall it seems like Burger Hero made a really bad call. However, in my opinion, the robber, no matter how well-intentioned he might have been, put himself outside of society’s moral circle when he threatened innocent lives with lethal force if they didn’t do what he demanded.

the difference is: did the robber display the gun, or point the gun. If he levelled the gun at the cashier, then that indicates an imminent threat to kill, and the civilian shooter is, to me, quite justified in shooting him.

Except that, if he’s pointing the gun at the cashier, and you shoot him, there is a very good chance that the gun he’s pointing at the cashier will go off.  On the other hand, the fact that the robber is pointing the gun at the cashier is not a clear indication that the robber is about to shoot.

Norsecats-

Sociology 101 brief lesson.

Saying X causes and/or increases Y doesn’t condone more Y, it merely states that Y is the natural result of X.

In short poverty + lax gun laws = armed robbery. If you want to stop armed robbery, stop poverty. If you want to increase armed robbery, make criminals feel the need to carry a gun everywhere. We’ve tried increasing the threat of death, we’ve tried maximizing punishment for petty theft, some states allow concealed carry, we still have way more than average armed robberies.

That’s because all the sociological data says, oh looky, it’s based on poverty and according to some theories, more specifically the lack of class mobility and basic safety net that promote honest means to move between classes for the most disadvantaged.

Do I want there to be armed robberies? Of course not, no one but apparently gun nuts looking for an excuse to commit murder want armed robberies. But liberals, unlike conservatives, believe that the focus should actually be applied to the underlying source of the problem, that which would actually fix the problem.

It’s a lot like the abortion debate. Want to radically reduce abortions? Make birth control options ubiquitous, sex education comprehensive, women’s freedom non-negotiable, and create proper safety nets for poverty relief. Suddenly, they become safe, legal, rare, etc…

Or we could just have Batman beat them up on a regular basis. That always works in the comics.

If you kill someone cause they killed someone, you’re not better than them. You’re equally culpable.

Bullshit. There’s a huge difference between killing a murderer, or someone raping another, or someone “skull-fucking the cashier with a pistol” being “wrong” vs being equally evil as the deeds in question.

Child-killers and killers of child-killers aren’t on the same moral plane, sorry, even if the law has to treat them equivalently in most instances.

But what if he’s beating someone up? You don’t have the right to kill them.
But what if he’s threatening someone’s life? You don’t have the right to kill them.
But what if he’s raping someone? You don’t have the right to kill them.
But what if he killed someone? You don’t have the right to kill them.
You don’t have the right to kill people. Not even if they’re bad dudes. Not even if they really really deserve it.
You don’t get to make that choice extra-legally and no society with a functioning system of justice (prolly not ours then /snark) can operate allowing someone to make that decision on their own.

And in this little fantasy world of yours, you do what if you stumble in on someone raping your wife or your sister or your mother or your daughter, or beating someone to death with a pipe, or shooting at someone else?  Politely ask them to stop?

There’s a reason there’s a category of killing known as “justifiable homicide”.  This has nothing to do with macho posturing, but with the very real and very natural and very human reaction that if you are an imminent threat to the lives of me and my own, I will defend myself and them, and if you try and continue regardless, I will fuck you up.

(Hell, it’s not even a particularly male reaction:  there’s a reason “Mama Bear” is a commonly understood symbol of what happens when you threaten a child.)

Sure, it has to be tempered by the intellect and what society allows as reasonable, but don’t you dare tell someone defending the lives and safety of others that they are heinous and no better than the ones they are defending against.

But rea, you’re forgetting that these aren’t really people. These are bad guys and extras. Live by violence, die by violence. They learn these values in the hood, you see. You know, on the wrong side of the tracks. In Chicago, wink wink. You can’t reason with them, what with all that rap music out there and my wife deadened to my touch by the years of marital rape and misogyny. It’s self-defense or justice or second-amendment or something like that, hell if I know. /hyperbolic parody of murder apologist

I’m really not against guns in general, but it seems that I keep getting roped into this side of the debate against people who have a really hard time grasping that “bad guys” didn’t stop being human beings with full rights the second they do something they don’t like.

Murder, and that’s what it is, makes one a worse bad guy. It doesn’t matter if he was skinning boxes of kittens while cackling about how great Hitler was. Murder makes one a worse bad guy.

will defend myself and them, and if you try and continue regardless, I will fuck you up.

I bet it felt really good to write that, didn’t it Keith? Almost like you’ve got your finger on the trigger right now. Can you feel the power in the heavy, cold metal in your hand? Kind of like how your big, heavy cock feels when it’s ready to shoot. It’s a little like being God, isn’t it?

Being a thoughtful, powerful Man you keep your urges in check (even though you could easily fuck me up) by tempering your desire with your intellect. We should all be thankful that men like you exist, to protect the rest of society from the murderous savages out there.

But what if he’s beating someone up? You don’t have the right to kill them.
But what if he’s threatening someone’s life? You don’t have the right to kill them.
But what if he’s raping someone? You don’t have the right to kill them.
But what if he killed someone? You don’t have the right to kill them.
You don’t have the right to kill people. Not even if they’re bad dudes. Not even if they really really deserve it.
You don’t get to make that choice extra-legally and no society with a functioning system of justice (prolly not ours then /snark) can operate allowing someone to make that decision on their own.

Of course you have the right to kill someone.  Under what circumstances is determined by the penal code of your particular state.  I’m sure some degree of federal law applies here too.

I’ll say it like this:  If you think for one second I would sit by and watch as my boyfriend got stabbed, if I had a gun in my hand and could defend him, or that I would wait for the cops to show up before I took action against someone raping my mother, you’re crazy.  I have no firearms training whatsoever, so I don’t go near guns, don’t own one, and I certainly don’t fantasize about using one in any situation.  But if by some twisted chance of fate that’s how things went down, I’d point and shoot in a heartbeat.  And if I were ever on a jury where something like that happened, I would never vote to convict someone who was reasonably defending the life or body of another person by using lethal force.

That’s because all the sociological data says, oh looky, it’s based on poverty and according to some theories, more specifically the lack of class mobility and basic safety net that promote honest means to move between classes for the most disadvantaged.

Explain why panhandlers can obtain money without the threat of lethal violence, then. Or are they just panhandling till they get the price of a pistol?

Later news reports say the robber’s accomplice sped off in a Toyota sedan. Does this change the socioeconomics of the situation?

Neat. The ideal scenario to make their case. And if other just as likely outcomes had occurred - employee has no gun so the hold-up guy never fires his and leaves with money, which is only money, and no one hurt; hold-up guy kills employee and leaves injured or completely intact - how would the gun advocates have spun that to support their cause? I suppose they would have ignored the story altogether.

There’s a reason there’s a category of killing known as “justifiable homicide”.  This has nothing to do with macho posturing, but with the very real and very natural and very human reaction that if you are an imminent threat to the lives of me and my own, I will defend myself and them, and if you try and continue regardless, I will fuck you up.

So let’s assume a magical scenario where you walk into your house and find a scary ex-convict beating and raping your wife.  You draw your six shooter and let loose with hot death, slaying the criminal in glorious valor.  Sounds like the happiest of scenarios.

Except the guy is standing right next to your wife, so there’s a good chance that you might hit her too.  And there’s the fact that he could be armed as well, in which case he could attack you or your wife in retaliation.  And sure, you could have pulled out a cell phone and called the cops on the spot, but it makes way more sense to go all kung fu vigilante war machine.

I mean, I don’t doubt the existence of situations when playing cowboy can save the day.  I just don’t see how it comes up so often that we can justify making it cheap and easy to arm up like you’re walking into Vietnam.

Set aside the moral ambiguity of being the killer of a killer.  Unless you spend a few years of your life actually training to use the weapon you’re wielding, who are you helping?  And if you do feel the calling to pick up a gun and protect the innocent, why don’t you just stop pretending and actually join the police force?  Because, while putting out more guns have a rather mixed track record in crime prevention, putting out more cops is the (pardon the pun) silver freak’n bullet to curbing a crime wave.

Years ago, in my state, some genius of a rare-coin dealer chased a robber down with his gun, firing shots as I recall.

He chased the robber, with his gun, through a fucking elementary school.

And yup, the gun-wankers were cheering for him over it, too.

That is all.

Forrester- No, they still are. Sorry, people are people. I fully believe the child-murderer will burn in the blackest heart of whatever afterlife there is, but one does not have the right to kill them and one doesn’t magically become a great and glorious person if they do so. Especially if they feel no remorse in the ending of a human life. That’s how one becomes a child-murderer in the first place. A lack of empathy.

Gerald- Property doesn’t trump humanity and I pity that you’ve bought that libertarian devaluing of your own life while being of a class that doesn’t benefit from that structure. And you know as well as I that prosecutions fall hardest on the poor and petty crimes are treated far harsher than bigger crimes. As you say, that little plant carries a far stricter sentence and more ruthless police intervention than rape, murder of the “correct” groups of people, or robbing an entire country of its wealth.

Keith- My partner was raped, twice. I was minorly sexually assaulted. We’re reasonably certain my partner’s mother was beaten as a child. My best friend was the subject of an attempted murder. Your macho fantasies would not have saved any of us from our fates and if we had in justifiable rage ended those lives, we would have lost pieces of our souls. Do I sometimes wish violence on those who harmed us, sometimes even a wish for death. Of course. It’s part of being human. But if I had ended even one of those lives, I would be a worse person. I would be something beyond their level of heinousness and all of your fantasies only serve to demonstrate the intense impotent illusion you cling to.

For Keith, you won’t stumble on some bad guy doing these things. He’ll be someone you know, someone you loved, someone you trusted or someone who seemed nothing but nice. You’ll shake his hand afterwards, blaming yourself for thinking ill, seeing it as worse than it was cause in the real world, John Woo doesn’t direct you pulling the swarthy man off you and disposing vigilante justice to that man with no past from Bad Guys Ultra Evil. In the real world, you probably work with a rapist, go to Church with a child abuser, dated a thief. In the real world, Batman doesn’t get rid of all the undoubtable bad guys with cheap violence making everyone safe.

In the real world, the problems are systemic and that’s where the real solutions are.

I should know. I believed in the violence to protect code at one point too. Didn’t stop me being sexually assaulted in the middle of a crowded room surrounded by witnesses, unable to process what happened until I was already home. Didn’t stop me unwittingly welcoming into my home the man who made my partner blame herself for the rape he committed against her and certainly didn’t stop me from looking down the barrel of a loaded gun while I emptied the register.

In short, the machismo is the problem (yeah, I’m dismissing the “mama bear” dodge, cause we both know it for what it is). We all think we’ll be perfect action heroes when it’s us or the ones we love. Even if it was true, it wouldn’t make those feelings right nor our actions.

Time is a great teacher, y’all.

Hector B-

Huh, never had anyone try the “why are there still monkeys” approach on something like this before.

If it helps, the fact that Y is caused by X does not prevent X from causing U, V, W, and Z. Some will panhandle, some will drive themselves to rapid aging with more jobs than they can handle, some will sell their bodies, some will pawn all their goods, some will ration their food to the smallest amount, some will just kill themselves off right away, some will accept the situation, making do the best one can, some may even get lucky and catch just enough breaks to escape, some will go hunting in the woods for squirrels, etc, etc, etc…

And sure, you could have pulled out a cell phone and called the cops on the spot… And if you do feel the calling to pick up a gun and protect the innocent, why don’t you just stop pretending and actually join the police force?

And what are the cops going to do? Arrest the guy? What if the guy does not want to wait around to be arrested? The police have no duty to protect any specific individual. They may not show up in a timely manner or at all. In the described scenario, the most likely outcome is that the rapist’s gun shots will be recorded on the 911 dispatcher’s tape.

Think of better arguments. This last one is like arguing if you really want to learn First Aid, you should stop pretending and become a paramedic.

rea,

I think you really need a source on the claim that someone who is shot while pointing a gun at another will reflexively shoot.  (Unless you are suggesting they will deliberately shoot.  If so, you would think they’d shoot the person who was shooting at them.  To save their own life.)  If someone gets hit hard enough that they are dead, it is very unlikely they will also somehow maintain a firm grip, good aim, and a 5 pound trigger pull.  Even if the gun goes off, it would probably happen while they are firing.  If they are not dead, see above about shooting the person who is trying to make them that way.

Cerebrus,

I hear what you’re saying, but I think self-defense and defense of others is acceptable.  I can see how we could disagree on this, but this doesn’t make me into someone who sees the victims of homicides as “extras” or somehow not real people.  They are very real to me.  I just think that sometimes, preventing the death of an innocent is preferable, even if it means killing another human being, who is still entitled to dignity. 

I see the moral conflict though—I have often wondered how “bad” we can permit ourselves to be for “good” reasons (i.e., how much violence to protect those we deem in need of protection), and at what point do the methods become so evil that we are no longer good, even if our intentions are good.  Torture crosses that line for me, the death penalty crosses that line for me, and it is clear that killing crosses that line for you.  (And yes, I realize that there are pragmatic reasons for banning the death penalty and torture, i.e., they are unnecessary and do not “work,” but at bottom, I would ban such practices even if they worked.) 

How do you feel about less than lethal self-defense?  Or self-defense that is not intended to be lethal (let’s say no weapons, but a physcial struggle) that turns out to be?  Is that danger so high that you find all degrees of self-defense unacceptable?

This is not a gotcha, I am genuinely curious, after all, I’ve just acknowledged that I think torture is beyond the pale, and I’m okay with killing people in certain circumstances, which is arguably inconsistent.

Also, re socioeconomics:  I definitely think we should do whatever we can do to address the root causes of crime, to make sure that children and adults have the support they need.  And I think that anyone who argues self-defense guns yay!  and isn’t willing to deal with the aspects of our society that make crime more rampant is an idiot.  But I do not think that taking a pro self-defense position means that you aren’t aware of the social issues—its the whole “walk and chew gum” thing Amanda was mentioning about women’s rights and the financial crisis yesterday.  (And to be clear—I think social programs are in a lot more danger right now than existing rights to bear arms.)

In short poverty + lax gun laws = armed robbery.

In short poverty + lax gun laws != armed robbery. The missing element is an inability to conform one’s conduct to the most minimal norms of society. The robber will take your property at the risk of your life. Threatening his life as well levels the playing field.

Oh wild fantasy of vigilante justice. Bring back that body swinging on that old oak tree.

I can kill all the baddies, nameless mooks of evil intent, of most improbable situation. I will let the fear of the unlikely consume me, drive me, rule all thought, make me clean to false phalli in fear. Because otherwise, I’d have to face the real evils. The faceless corporations, the diffused systems of injustice, the fact that the horrible rapist is probably a close personal friend or me.

Lord protect me from such horrible thoughts. Let me think of better days when the swarthy type is stealing my female property and with a quip and a one-liner I blow him away and never once question who I killed and what they dreamed, who they loved, and how different they really were to someone I consider a friend.

Violent, sociopathic fucks.

Hector-

They’ve tried that. Studies proved, surprise, more armed violence.

Most of us have never and will never need to use violence to defend ourselves or somebody else, but we’d like to think we could and would if the situation presented itself. I think Cerberus is coming at things from the perspective of someone who was the victim of violence and knew that he/she couldn’t and/or wouldn’t use violence to prevent it and thus can’t be bothered with pointless beliefs of what would be justifiable in hypothetical situations. Believing in the use of justifiable force didn’t help Cerberus or his/her partner, so Cerberus feels it’s a fairly pointless and futile belief to hold. I can’t say that Cerberus should be blamed for holding that belief, even if we might disagree with it. After all, the odds of us ever being in that justifiable situation where we actually have an opportunity to use deadly force are just about nil.

Piator advances a good argument for disarming the police. Imagine the sort of person who seeks out a job where he can have a gun strapped to his hip all day long. He must go all day fantasizing about whipping it out and blowng some taxpayer away.

Indeed.  Piator, however, lives in a place where the police are not armed, and on those occasions when an armed response is called for, a specially selected group who are screened and specifically trained are used.  Not cowboys. Not American cops. Not even SWAT members.  And even then they’ve killed an innocent bystander.

Further, I hope piator doesn’t own a car, because I don’t trust him to own a car and use it responsibly. And although I believe he should trust me to own a car and use it responsibly, I wouldn’t expect him to.

That’s why we have licenses.  And that’s why a license can be taken away for behaving dangerously.  Owning a car may be a right; using it in a public place is a privilege you have to both earn and maintain.  Therein lies a parallel for gun possession.

Not even SWAT members.

SWAT = “Special Weapons and Tactics.” If they don’t carry guns, what are the “Special Weapons” they carry? Extra long police batons?

“Let me think of better days when the swarthy type is stealing my female property and with a quip and a one-liner I blow him away and never once question who I killed and what they dreamed, who they loved, and how different they really were to someone I consider a friend.”

I’ve always found masturbation considerably more pleasurable when done in private.

PiatoR,

In most states (not Alaska!) you need a permit to carry concealed, which in most states requires a safety course, and a test.  If you want to expand that test to all gun-owners, and if you want it to include some kind of written portion on the law, the danger of carrying concealed, etc., etc., I would support you on that. 

BTW, although I never would, in California, it is nearly impossible to get a concealed carry permit, but anyone can open carry.  Which do you think is safer?

Ismone-

I appreciate that, really. It is good that you’re considering what it means and I fully understand the impulses at heart. Lord knows, I’ve been there. In many ways, I’m still there. There has been more than one point in recent memory where I have seen some truly spectacular evil and fantasized about how much better it would be if the person involved where to disappear either away to another galaxy or more violently to the sky fairy. In short, I understand the impulse and the dire struggle between wanting to “do right” by loved ones and those who are under threat or powerless and to also acknowledge the deeper implications. It’s the reason people write whole books theorizing on ethics. So, in short, I get where you’re coming from too.

To answer your more specific question, non-lethal self-defense is of course perfectly valid. I mean, yeah, there’s grey areas if you put a little too much nudge in the aftermath, but you’re not likely to be falling to any similar level unless you’re beating a man half to death for stealing a handbag.

It can come with risks though. The one Holocaust survivor prof at the Virginia Tech shootings who saved his class by being the point man or some of the poor janitors taken down trying to stop school shooters from getting any more of their classmates. It can also be successful like how the UU members took down the gunman who tried to terrorize them or my best friend who stopped the attempted murder against him by chasing his assailants while barefoot and bleeding from the skull in prime nordic fury thus dispersing them.

Sometimes it’s even less successful like my partner’s second rape.

But the attempt can be noble, even in failure and should be attempted. Just because no one should be killed (without feeling the humanity of the life ended at least) doesn’t mean that resistance shouldn’t occur. I’m a lefty activist, we’re all about the pointless struggle.

Nor should it stop any struggle against the factors that make it prevalent and I really appreciate your comments on those subjects. It’s too bad, those struggles are so much harder and more abstract than the comforting fantasy of Batman punches out the bad guy. But so goes the long war, eh?

mblile-

Sorry should have put up a snark tag on that.

Gerald-

Yeah, no.

You libertarians are freaky freaky people.

Owning a car may be a right; using it in a public place is a privilege you have to both earn and maintain. 

Agree completely. It’s a tad disturbing to find out (thanks, google!) that I qualify to carry concealed in Florida three different ways. I would recommend more training than I in fact have had, and at least a biennial qualification round.

Tyro-

That’s a fair assessment.

in California, ... but anyone can open carry

Not true since the Black Panthers carried their rifles openly in the late 60s.

<u>Ismone:</u> Your “How bad one can be to protect the good” statement makes me imagine the setting as if it were a Quentin Tarantino Movie, and The Animals “Don’t Let Me be Misunderstood” is playing Ironically over the Restaurants PA system at the time of the confrontation. ...The hapless would-be burglar slumps dead, and blue smoke curls from the end of “Burger Hero’s” weapon. (Cut! Print!... That’s the Martini Shot, everybody!)
Anyone want to help me on the rest of the script?

I generally agree with Jesse, though, and am far more fearful of a Tombstone-style “Justice System” than a cooperative delegatory/system… which we don’t quite have currently, IMO

True or False?
Most “Criminal” problems are actually ethical ones we have a hard time settling?

Hector B.,

I’m not sure what you’re saying about the panthers—I’m pretty sure it is still legal, were they prosecuted?  Or are you saying the law changed post-60’s?

alcoolworld,

I don’t think I’m with it quite enough to get your references.  And yeah, I don’t support vigilante justice as such, just self-defense.

Cerberus,

Thanks a lot for your thoughtful answer.  I think the reason while we still differ is not because of the part of me that gets enraged and wouldn’t personally mind killing rapists (this is not a part of me that I let vote in elections or set public policy) but because as a pretty small person, I think that there are situations where the only effective means I would have of self-defense would be a lethal weapon.  I do acknowledge that the former may leak into the latter a bit, but I do my damndest to see that it does not.  (If someone bothered, perhaps psych research could show whether I or anyone else could be effective at that, and if so, how/why.)

Ismone, All I mean is that I put all these difficult social things in the form of a movie in my head, merely the way I process things… The irony was literary Irony
that is what i meant anyway,
sorry if unclear.

Awkward,

I do not agree with your dichotomy.  If this is self-defense, I think self-defense (or defense of others) is okay, if it is not, I think it is wrong.  I am also in favor of any program that reduces violence more organically. 

I’m not thinking, yay, someone got killed, I’m thinking, it’s a crime if there was no danger to human life, but if there was, it’s just damn said, and a marginally better outcome than a cashier or armed citizen getting killed.

Gerald,

So, your answer to the “your money or your life” question seems to be “both.”  (Yes, you can take that either way.)  Interesting.  But crazypants in my mind.  Buy renter’s insurance or some shit.  (It sometimes covers valuables even when removed from the rental property.)

alcoolworld,

No, thanks for explaining.  I’m a little thick at times.

I can’t say that Cerberus should be blamed for holding that belief, even if we might disagree with it.

I think Cerberus can be blamed for insulting anyone who disagrees with him/her.

This isn’t some sort of masculine inferiority complex going on here.  Another commenter’s insult of KeithM was pretty fucking vile as was Cerberus’ statement that clearly this is only an issue of men wanting to protect their female “property.”  Fuck that.

Cerberus, if you have moral objections to self-defense against violence, if you think acting in self-defense would make you or anyone else a bad person, that’s your right, but fuck you very much for attacking anyone who disagrees with you.  Your morality is not my morality and I’m under no obligation to abide by your pacifist principles.  I have never been the victim of outright violence and I intend to do my best to keep it that way.

are you saying the law changed post-60’s?

From the San Bernadino Sun: Legislation passed on July 28, 1967 that Californians could not carry a loaded weapon in public, even openly. It was prompted after a group of Black Panthers led a protest march into the California Legislature fully armed in May 1967.

So you can carry an unloaded weapon in public, for all the good that it would do you. Exception: within 1000 feet of a school.

I’m glad we managed to get to the point where we’ve established that Gerald believes that another person’s life is worth less than any of his property when that person is depriving him or her of that property.  Execution for the guy who stole your bike light!  Absurd stupidity.

I want to say, again, if you threaten an innocent person with lethal force—directly or indirectly—and you get killed while making that threat, it is your fault.  You opened that door.  You unnecessarily created the situation where people may die, and you put yourself in it.  It is on you.  Just as there is one person responsible for a rape, there is one person responsible for a death during an armed robbery.

Now, there are those who are stating that because they are familiar with cases of totally unjustified violence (the nutjob taking a gunfight into an elementary school), that it is likely that this shootout is also unjustified.  That may be so.  We certainly live in a world of wildly unjustified violence; witness Oscar Grant.  However, the person who did it is currently in the damn hospital, so that’s pretty much been seen to. 

In addition, everyone in this thread has been taking the news report as gospel.  That’s really stupid.  I mean, bone stupid.  We all know that news reports consistently get details wrong, and the justifiability of the act depends crucially on the details of the situation.

This entire conversation consists of penis-waving, the libertarians proclaiming their moral superiority due to their sociopathy and the liberals proclaiming their moral superiority due to their pacifism, all totally disconnected from the facts of the case, which we do not know.  It’s like the perfect storm of internet suck, and it’s long past time to close the comments.

If a person has broken into your home while you are there he/she is assumed to be murderous.

Professor Avenger has remarked on the fact that this isn’t explicitly spelled out in CA law, but it is a fact that nobody, to my knowledge has been prosecuted for shooting a home intruder, AFAIK.

<u>But most of the time, with concealed carry, the altercation is ended when the carrier displays the gun, i.e., lifts the shirt to reveal the butt</u>

When Professor Avenger had a permit to carry(as required in CA), he only had to do that
little maneuver twice:  Once when he was by a BART station late at night with Mother Avenger and a fellow was running towards them, who broke away when PA flashed it, and I was with him when there was a fellow bothering me for money at the Recycle Book Store in San Jose.

when there was a fellow bothering me for money at the Recycle Book Store in San Jose

Wait, what?

It’s very, very possible that I’m misreading you here, but you/someone you were with felt the need to take out a gun because someone was fracking PANHANDLING?! 

Seriously?

Like, for real? 

What part of “I’m going to get the manager if you don’t stop bugging us?” did y’all forget?

I mean, was this dude threatening violence if you didn’t make with the pocket change, or what?

Sheesh, I feel more and more every day that guns. are. friggen. STUPID.  I just don’t see where they convincingly add anything constructive or positive to any situation.

Forrester- No, they still are. Sorry, people are people. I fully believe the child-murderer will burn in the blackest heart of whatever afterlife there is, but one does not have the right to kill them and one doesn’t magically become a great and glorious person if they do so. Especially if they feel no remorse in the ending of a human life. That’s how one becomes a child-murderer in the first place. A lack of empathy.

I don’t think anyone becomes a great and glorious person for killing a child-murderer, but it’s bullshit that I’m supposed to feel as much empathy for a child-murderer as I am for the child. And I’m not quite sure how this somehow makes me a right-wing racist classist misogynistic nutjob.

And sorry, but the idea that killing child-murderers is just the first step to killing children is kinda insane.

I bet it felt really good to write that, didn’t it Keith? Almost like you’ve got your finger on the trigger right now. Can you feel the power in the heavy, cold metal in your hand? Kind of like how your big, heavy cock feels when it’s ready to shoot. It’s a little like being God, isn’t it?

I was wondering how long until someone tried that.  I especially like the part how where I pointed out the instinct to defend with violence isn’t a male-only phenomenon was left out.

Because if you admitted that demonstrable bit of the real world, well, that would ruin your theory that it’s the Almighty Penis, wouldn’t it?

Quite obviously Lydia Angyiou must have been hiding something a little extra, if you know what I mean, in her pants when she took on a 700 polar bear, unarmed, to protect her son and another boy. 

Leigh Anne Hester clearly had to be a man, the way she won the Silver Star defending her unit in an ambush in 2005, running into the teeth of enemy fire.

And so on.  Examples are easy to find.

So tell me, why is it that you have such a low opinion of women?

This is FL the anus of America where they all have guns and still think GWB is a great man… I hope they

Fuck you, Nixx. Maybe they think that way up in Jacksonville, which may as well be Georgia, but Florida is a big state that was always pretty much split on GWB either way. I only know of a handful of people who think he’s a “great man,” and every last one of them is from some other southern state. So once again, fuck you.

Set aside the moral ambiguity of being the killer of a killer.  Unless you spend a few years of your life actually training to use the weapon you’re wielding, who are you helping?  And if you do feel the calling to pick up a gun and protect the innocent, why don’t you just stop pretending and actually join the police force?  Because, while putting out more guns have a rather mixed track record in crime prevention, putting out more cops is the (pardon the pun) silver freak’n bullet to curbing a crime wave.

That’s where context comes in.  Just as you can’t assume that every time a crook gets shot by someone carrying a weapon it was really necessary, you can’t assume that it can never be justified.

Sure, it’s rare.  Sure, it damn well should be.  If, as I said, the Burger Defender escalated the situation, then he bears some responsibility for what happened.  But, to repeat, there’s not enough evidence to say anything.  We don’t know what the robber was doing, we don’t know the experience of the civilian, we don’t know where they were positioned when the shoot happened.  My personal opinion is leaning toward it being unnecessary, given the minimal facts, but I’m willing to be proven wrong either way.

There is no excuse to steal from others, other than sheer stupidity, laziness, or some other personal failing.

That obviously isn’t the justification, as you’re the goddamn poster child fr stupidity, laziness, and a whole host of personal failings.

You’re right. I should not risk my life stealing your things. much better to simply shoot you before I give any indication of attempt at theft and loot your corpse.

Allow me to spell this out for you in perfect legalist terminology: If you use violence to take from someone else, you are a criminal. It does not matter that they used violence to take it from you first, or even if they’re just in the process of doing it at the moment. This is why we have fucking police and courts and shit.

If you are unable to see the difference between “stealing an object, which was admittedly purchased with money legally earned” and “killing someone” please report to the nearest mental health facility and voluntarily check yourself in, because you’re the goddamn definition of “danger to yourself and others.”

Of course it’s stupid to engage in petty thievery.  Stupidity is not an executable offense, or else there wouldn’t be a Libertarian movement.

Allow me to spell this out for you in perfect legalist terminology: If you use violence to take from someone else, you are a criminal. It does not matter that they used violence to take it from you first, or even if they’re just in the process of doing it at the moment. This is why we have fucking police and courts and shit.

I will join karpad’s picket of the Armored Car companies. How dare they use the threat of armed violence to keep people from taking bags of money. That is why we have fucking police and courts and shit. Karpad and I will sit outside their offices singing Kum-Ba-Ya, carrying signs with slogans such as “Think of the Thieves!” and “They Probably Have a Darned Good Reason for Taking the Money.”

Stupidity is not an executable offense, or else there wouldn’t be a Libertarian movement.

Ha!

I would consider myself one of the biggest, bleeding-heart liberals I know.  I have a degree in Women’s Studies, have worked and volunteered for numerous non-profits that advocate for the underprivileged, and have a deep understanding of the cycle of poverty.

I also work as a 911 and police dispatcher, so every day I get to sit on the other side of my beliefs, so to speak.  If you had asked my opinion of police officers before I started working with them every day, I probably would have sounded like many here in these comments, deeply skeptical of their motives and choices.  I am not going to sit here and talk about how proud I am of the police officers I work with.  They are human beings, doing a job they get paid to do, and they have flaws and faults like every other person on the planet.  Yes, their job is to often “get the bad guy” - yet from my perspective, what they are doing is helping victims.  90% of what our officers do is speak with victims - people who have been robbed, raped, assaulted, and victimized.  They hold the 18 year old girl who just found her boyfriend dead from an overdose, they go to an old woman’s house at 2 am because she lost her medication and she’s scared and confused and needs someone to help her, and they find the people who beat a man to a bloody mess for his shoes.  (Yes, I doubted those stories as well, until the first call I took…)

While I can empathize with people making desperate choices due to poverty, I get to be the first person to talk to the Burger King employee who just had a gun in their face, and will most likely suffer effects from that for the rest of their life.  I know the idiot who took out his gun to confront the robber made a desperately poor choice - but I think making an attempt to excuse the robber’s behavior is reprehensible.  In my city, if you were to call my work and say that you had no money for food and your children would go hungry, our officers would come to your house, bring you to the food shelf, and help get you connected with some awesome organizations in town that are working to end poverty in our city.  There is ALWAYS another choice, and offering explanations for why people choose crime is a fruitless endeavor.  I am in full agreement that poverty and crime is a deeply complex issue, but I find my sympathy for criminals runs on the short side nowadays. Perhaps that is due to spending every day listening to the fear and helplessness in victim’s voices.

But what if he’s beating someone up? You don’t have the right to kill them.
But what if he’s threatening someone’s life? You don’t have the right to kill them.
But what if he’s raping someone? You don’t have the right to kill them.
But what if he killed someone? You don’t have the right to kill them.
You don’t have the right to kill people. Not even if they’re bad dudes. Not even if they really really deserve it.
You don’t get to make that choice extra-legally and no society with a functioning system of justice (prolly not ours then /snark) can operate allowing someone to make that decision on their own.

Cerberus,

I’ve met some junior high school teachers who used an expanded variant of your argument to assign equal moral culpability to everyone involved in a school/street fight and punished them accordingly….regardless of whether the individuals concerned were instigators, perpetrators, victims, or bystanders attempting to end the fight. 

It was one reason most of us who were bullying victims had nothing, but utter contempt for such teachers as those victims/peacemakers were often punished as severely as their bullies….or worse if *shudder* the victims attempted to defend themselves from the bully(ies)’ unprovoked blows.  From what I’ve seen, the teachers acted this way due to a mixture of sheer laziness, anger at having their day disrupted by having to deal with the actual responsibilities of being teachers, and strong apathetic attitudes towards students. 

When I was being physically assaulted by bullies who were much taller and heavier than I was in 7th and 8th grade…...thinking about their humanity is on my last list of priorities at that very moment….well below attempting to find ways to escape by exploiting gaps between them and/or by landing an opportune blow to their head, solar plexus, and/or their gonads.

How dare they use the threat of armed violence to keep people from taking bags of money.

It isn’t the threat of violence that keeps the money save. I’m good friends with some armored car workers. It’s the fact that the vehicle is a moving bank which is hard to get inside that keeps it safe.

And as discussed upthread, which you’d know if you weren’t a lazy fuck, you’d know Armored Car employees use the guns to protect themselves only. The money is insured.

If you don’t believe me that using violence to steal from thieves is a criminal offense, I highly recommend you reexamine your state law before you go about your daily business. Most states include use of force to defend life only. If you aren’t about to be killed, you don’t get to kill people, it’s a criminal offense, and you go to jail. If you can get away from the encounter in any way, even if that means losing your prescious car or laptop or whatever, but you chose to shoot a guy? that’s a 10 year prison term.

God, it must be terrifying in your world, where everyone is a criminal constantly trying to rob, rape and murder you. as opposed to the real world, where the overwhelming majority are law abiding, and will follow rules simply because an authority said to.

There is ALWAYS another choice, and offering explanations for why people choose crime is a fruitless endeavor.

Well, not in general.  If there are problems in society that induce people to go to crime and those problems can be ameliorated, then it’s probably worth doing for the simple reason that it’s usually the moral thing to do, and crime will tend to go down as a result.

In the case of the individual, not so much.

There’s a quote from “Manhunter”, when Will Graham is talking about the probable background of their serial killer, and Jack Crawford asks if he feels sorry for him.

“As a child, my heart bleeds for him. Someone took a little boy and turned him into a monster. But as an adult… as an adult, he’s irredeemable. He butchers whole families to fulfill some sick fantasy. As an adult, I think someone should blow the sick fuck out of his socks.

Without time travel, we can’t stop the people who have already been damaged, but we can try and reduce the number who will be in the future.

you/someone you were with felt the need to take out a gun because someone was fracking PANHANDLING?!

Seriously?

Like, for real?

What part of “I’m going to get the manager if you don’t stop bugging us?” did y’all forget?

Read what I wrote. PA didn’t take out his gun.

When I said no, politely, the guy was glaring at me afterwards for a while as if I had done him some sort of injury, and of course, didn’t say anything actionable that I could report to a manager.

It’s one of those things where you had to be there.

in California, ... but anyone can open carry

Not true since the Black Panthers carried their rifles openly in the late 60s.

I think this is instructive, as the people who are all about “law and order at the end of my gun” tend to also be racist fuckwits who see the world in black and white. The fact that they are so predominately racist fuckwits is a major detraction from me taking their opinions in good faith. This reminds me of a former-cop former-roommate who insisted he wasn’t a racist fuckwit, when everything he said aside from “I’m not a racist” indicated his racist fuckwit status.

And no, KeithM, defense by violence isn’t a reaction restricted to men. However, the fact that you felt the need to indulge in your own “well I’d kill that motherfucker” fantasies as a response to a random act of violence is indicative of your own violent tendencies. That you’re apparently a dude makes it easier to interpret your revenge fantasy bullshit as just that is a matter of convenience. Extra bonus points for trying to say I’m the real misogynist. The fact that you made that argument gives me further proof of your personality type.

Cicero:

Right off the bat, this situation is not analogous to the Luby’s Massacre.  First off, the perpetrator of the Luby’s Massacre had only one intention which was plainly evident from the outset - kill as many people as possible.

The man drove his truck through the windows of the restaurant.  When he stepped out of his truck, he began firing indiscriminately into the crowd.

He wasn’t there to rob the place, he was there to kill people and create havoc.  He was a deranged lunatic who didn’t give two shits about any cash in the register.  He wanted people to die, and that was all he wanted.

The BK robber didn’t drive his vehicle into the restaurant.  He didn’t open fire upon first entering the restaurant.  The only thing that is clear is that he attempted to rob the cashier, and that he displayed his gun in some manner as a form of intimidation.  I don’t know exactly how the gun was displayed, so I won’t engage in any conjecture on that without further information.

My main point is that aside from both perpetrators having guns and being in restaurants, the BK incident bears absolutely NO RESEMBLANCE WHATSOEVER to the Luby’s Massacre of 1991, and it’s ridiculous that you would try to make some sort of comparison between the two events.

And that is not a defense of what the Burger King robber did or attempted to do, it is merely illustrating that you are trying to compare apples and lambchops here.  It’s as absurdly nonsensical as saying Jeffrey Dahmer cannibalized a bunch of people and Winona Ryder shoplifted some clothing, therefore Winona Ryder = Jeffrey Dahmer.

I bet it felt really good to write that, didn’t it Keith? Almost like you’ve got your finger on the trigger right now. Can you feel the power in the heavy, cold metal in your hand? Kind of like how your big, heavy cock feels when it’s ready to shoot. It’s a little like being God, isn’t it?

Completely and totally out of line.  Absolutely inappropriate to say things like this to someone to expressed a valid viewpoint in a respectful manner.

No, we shouldn’t bust in guns a-blazin’ for every petty theft or whatever.  This vigilante overreacted and probably escalated the situation.  Hard to know since I wasn’t there.  I do know one thing though: if anyone pointed a gun at my niece, or was severely beating or raping her, I would kill them if I had to, with whatever I had on hand.  I am damn sure not standing around waiting for the cops.

Funny how we can speculate about the robber’s family’s pain, or financial struggles.  Maybe he was watching his family starve to death.  It’s quite possible and it’s horrific and nobody should have to endure that.  Similarly, nobody should ever be deprived of the right of self-defense or defense of their loved ones when their lives are threatened.

Ismone-

I think I can understand your viewpoint. I can even see how easy it would be to imagine such a situation. Imbalance of power, life directly in risk, only thing within reach, etc… though I would also argue that the situations in general are products of much larger forces which include the “violence solves everything” side of the debate in shaping people’s ideas of what deserves violence and what another person’s life is worth. I can get that it’s hard, especially living in a scary world. So yeah, again, this is why ethicists debate this stuff in high levels.

For the most part, most interactions can be de-escalated or avoided, those engaged with someone drunk off the patriarchal violent culture who want to hurt you can be stopped with risk to one’s self. I’m not against violence, but it was far more useful and successful for the UU shooter to be bum-rushed and incapacitated rather than violently and extra-legally executed and indeed it was the violent nature of the shooter’s Church and political life that made him so enamored of the idea of walking into a Church and shooting up the non-people inside. This shit is kinda connected and saying that doesn’t mean I am some Buddhist extremist preventing people from defending their lives as the gun nuts seem desperate to refer to all (not even gun-control proponents, but rather) gun questioners.

Self-defense never includes lethal force, most any martial arts instructor on the Planet Earth will tell you that. Self-defense means incapacitation, removing the threat and risk with no loss of life. It’s the principle of self-defense, because using lethal force doesn’t make your actions self-defense, but rather murder.

The problem I think that sticks most deeply especially in this country is relying on non-lethal force seems risky. With a gun there is distance, an illusion of safety and distance to avoid both the humanity of the target and the feeling of risk that comes in risking your own life (something using a gun still does) in a very real feeling manner. Charging, yelling, knocking away, getting other people out, wrestling, and the potential for real imbalances of power that may make you just at risk of being a target one’s self seems in the fantasy far more daunting then just picking up a gun and aiming for center mass, especially if they are distracted.

That reality doesn’t erase these dangers, that upping the stakes with a weapon may increase the chance of danger (especially if there is an imbalance of power), that real situations are filled with far more complexity and unfairness, makes the whole thing kind of silly in retrospect.

If the goal is really self-defense, you’re probably better off with Judo knowing even then there will be risk and times struggle fails. It means having to think about how systems are connected, how guns on the street is connected to women’s rights is connected to minority rights, is connected to how we view power and poverty. It means having to think big and struggle against impersonal, seemingly uncaring forces on a generational level.

I know this ended up being written all to you, who already get most of that, so sorry about that, but I felt it was important to put it out there.

The fantasy is just that. Gun owners, buy guns, by all means, why not? But they aren’t self-defense tools and the real dangers isn’t going to be an unambiguously evil home-invader/rapist/child-murderer. The larger issues are the problem and the cheapening of lives that comes in defenses of the violent death of any marginal bad guy feeds into that.

To answer one of the gun nuts, this isn’t telling the victim of bullying he’s culpable of the crime to avoid having to tackle bullying, this is tackling bullying against a school administration happy to let it continue to enforce the natural order. Knock the bully down and restrain him and fight against the culture where a 100 kids will crowd around to watch a bully beat the shit out of another kid and call him a hero for it.

In short: It’s all connected. But wait, it can’t be, it’s all compartmentalized in easy to solve pieces. No, sorry, it’s all connected. And solving it is harder than a new sheriff putting some fear of law in the baddie conglomerate.

Guns aren’t self-defense and self-defense is scary and open to failure. Welcome to the real world.

I’m sorry to dismiss some of what is keeping some of you sane in the face of seeming powerlessness, but the real issues really are hitting some critical points and we really need to revolutionize how we value things if we want any real changes to stick. This means growing up a little and risking the dangers of an uncertain world without the fantasies of a security blanket. Women, transfolk, queers, minorities, etc…, we all have to do it every day.

Holy crap, Gerald. You’re not just vicious, deluded and deeply immoral, you’re actually EVIL.

Wow. Color me astonished. I’ve never actually met a person so evil as to value their overpriced crap over someone’s life. I knew they existed, but I’ve never actually seen one in person.

You sicken me. Evil like yours is why this country is the way it is.

Bast

Further, I hope piator doesn’t own a car, because I don’t trust him to own a car and use it responsibly. And although I believe he should trust me to own a car and use it responsibly, I wouldn’t expect him to.

That’s why we have licenses.  And that’s why a license can be taken away for behaving dangerously.  Owning a car may be a right; using it in a public place is a privilege you have to both earn and maintain.  Therein lies a parallel for gun possession.
Phoenician in a time of Romans

Agreed.  That pretty much captures my views on gun possession, that licensing should be required conditioned on safety training.

It seems to me that Cerebus is conflating self-defense with revenge.  I’m pretty comfortable with the general state of U.S. law on the subject where lethal force is permitted to protect or save the life of another or of oneself, but not of property alone.  Once the danger is passed, lethal force is no longer justified.  So, while you may pull your gun and kill someone who enters your house at night (the law presumes a night burglar is a threat to your bodily safety), if the burglar runs out when he hears you coming, you can’t shoot him in the back as he runs out your front door or down your walkway.  It’s not killing someone for what he’s done that’s justified, it is the prevention of bodily harm he’s about to inflict (or one has a reasonable belief they are about to inflict).

Gerald, sorry, but lethal force to protect property alone is not legal anywhere in the U.S. that I know of, and it shouldn’t be.  Correct me with an example if I’m wrong.

In this case, I am with those who feel there’s not enough information in this article to judge the individual one way or another. 

To answer one of the gun nuts,

FYI: Using ad hominems does not help advance your arguments, especially when the assumptions on which they are based are totally off. 

Just wanted to inform everyone how a variant of your very argument has been used by some junior high teachers I’ve had to indiscriminately punish everyone involved in a school/street fight, whether they were instigators, perpetrators, victims, or even bystanders attempting to end the fight.

Unlike those teachers or seemingly…you, I do believe those teachers and everyone else for that matter should critically assess each situation to distinguish each participant so only the former two are punished and the latter two are at the very least, not unjustly punished for something they were forced into against their well/attempting to stop the conflict in the first place and ideally….given relief and counseling by the teaching staff to ensure any trauma and injuries are dealt with. 

The last thing we need is to assign equal or quasi-equal moral/ethical culpability between those who threaten/initiate acts of violence and the victims who end up having to deal with it in any manner they have to prevent imminent physical harm to themselves and/or family and friends.

Magis: Kind of like in Germany where as we know they never have school shootings like we do?

Not that hard to get a gun in Germany. If you are over 18 and never commited a crime, join a shooting club or take up hunting as a hobby. If you are underage or don’t have a clean record, you need someone in whose house you have a right to be and who is hunting or in a shooting club and either break into their locker and steal a gun, or, if they have a lax attitude to gun safety, just take one that’s lying around.

You want hard-to-get guns, try the UK. Which makes for more stabbings, and as internet received wisdom has it that a knife is more dangerous than a gun, is probably counterproductive.

Hector B. In short poverty + lax gun laws != armed robbery. The missing element is an inability to conform one’s conduct to the most minimal norms of society.

Desparation is not especially conductive to cool-headed consideration of the need for societal norms. Watch any action film, before the hero is morally allowed to go on a rampage, they have to be back to the wall, no way out, in the understanding of the audience. If it’s an anti-hero, the audience usually sees a way out when the charactes does not.

You do not want people around who believe they have nothing to lose. A hungry man has no conscience.

The two streams of thought regarding the possible motivations of the robber can both be right.  Anybody who has spent any time at all dealing with real criminals knows that there are essentially two types:
*  The “nurture” criminals who have been “made” and who would, with the right chances and without the wrong pressures would be every bit as law abiding as the next fellow.  They are the “there but for the grace of god go I” types.
* The “nature” criminals who are essentially self-centered primitives who would smash in your face for a pack of gum.  They like being criminals, they like taking things that don’t belong to them and scaring the crap out of people and, in many cases like hurting people.

And to the pro-shooter posters here, I think it boils down to this: even if this hoodlum deserved to die one must question whether a shootout in a crowded family restaurant conforms to sane ROE.

How common are such shootings, anyway?  I’m pro gun control but it seems to me that the large number of shootings predicted by the anti-carry law proponent simply haven’t materialized; this case is in the news because it is exceptional, not representative.

I’m amazed that this is still going!  We don’t even know who fired the first shot?  Do we? 

Here’s some things I do know.  The argument about whether the robber deserved to die is fruitless.  Any violent death is a tragedy.  Nonetheless, whether he deserved to die or not he ‘earned’ his fate.  You pays your money and you takes your chances.

Just because someone talks about their willingness to defend their family does automatically make them a testosterone dripping fascist.

As a person who has fired probably more than 100,000 rounds of pistol ammo in my life, I do not see Burger Hero as a hero.  I could be convinced otherwise but it would appear to me that he put lives unnecessarily at risk.

And as discussed upthread, which you’d know if you weren’t a lazy fuck, you’d know Armored Car employees use the guns to protect themselves only.

Excuse me? The only reason armored car employees need to protect themselves is because they are carrying bags of money. Otherwise they’d go around like UPS drivers.

Consider what’s painted on so many delivery vehicles, “Driver Carries No Cash.” It’s carrying cash that puts people at risk of their lives, from people who cannot conform their conduct to the minimal societal expectation.

I haven’t been arguing in favor of Burger Hero here, only against those who think that armed robbers are not a threat to the lives of cashiers, and in fact everyone who was in the store. What will motivate the person, who pulls a gun on someone to get what he wants, to draw the line there? Any thoughts like, “Well if I was an armed robber, I’d never pull the trigger” are fatuous, because you are a nice middle-class person.

the overwhelming majority are law abiding, and will follow rules simply because an authority said to.

Pardon me, but this sounds a lot like kids behaving only when Mommy and Daddy are looking. The overwhelming majority do not rob stores at gunpoint because they are mature members of society, not because armed robbery is a crime.

Guns aren’t self-defense and self-defense is scary and open to failure.

Why do police carry guns? To make up for their supposed psychological defects?

banisteriopsis,

Seriously, WTF?  Because I support the second amendment, and you think other people who support the second amendment would have passed the CA law (umm, logic, it means no one can carry a loaded weapon, not just panthers), and we are therefore racist.  I remember the convo. my husband and I had at dinner last night because Hector B. reminded me of the panther ban—basically, we discussed how racist that shit was and how that law would never have been passed if it was a bunch of white dudes marching around and vowing to defend their neighborhoods with guns.  But because we shoot at pieces of paper with guns we’re racists?  For real?

Fuck that shit.  I am damn tired of all the names and other views that are being ascribed to people on this thread because we think concealed carry and self-defense with a weapon is okay.  It is beyond straw-manning to say “your argument is bullshit because I will say, without proof, that other people on your side do bad things.”  For pity’s sake, I think Gerald is way the eff out there, but he hasn’t said anything yet that I’ve interpreted as racist.

Seriously, WTF.  I have been reading your comments on this board for years, and I’ve never heard the like out of you.  This is the kind of irrational, non-argument we call out conservatives for making.  (Feminists are sluts who like getting abortions but who just can’t get laid.)

There’s a difference between being called evil and it being a reasonable statement.  I fear that given Gerald’s views expressed here, we’ve hit “reasonable statement.”

If somebody stole my wallet, I wouldn’t want them killed.  That would be insane.  If I were given a choice between killing him without consequences and getting my wallet back, and not getting my wallet back, it wouldn’t even be close.  I’d miss my wallet, but it’s just not worth a random person’s life.*  There is no reasonable difference of opinion here.

One thing we haven’t been discussing here is drugs.  It’s not poverty and access to firearms that’s the problem, it’s the culture of lawlessness created by Prohibition and the fantastic profits available to organized criminal enterprises as a result.  The US has three to five times the murder rate of other developed nations, many of which have similar poverty and ethnicity division problems to ours.  Even Northern Ireland managed to have a civil war with lower casualty rates than random street crime in NYC for a while.  There is an entire class of people who have come to understand that they can make a lot of money by living a violent, underground life.  Think Republican Establishment but with less access to lawmaking capacity to make their bad acts technically legal.  This has a ripple effect, turning neighborhoods into war zones and creating generations steeped in the notion of solving conflicts through the most violent means possible.

*Note that there are plenty of people in the world whose life is worth much, much less than my wallet, people whose deaths would prevent terrible atrocities currently in progress.  But they’re very unlikely to be involved.

How much is his insurance bill going to cost everyone?

I don’t know how you came to that conclusion, but self-defense can most definitely include lethal force.
Gerald

You seem to have no clue what the work “Defense” actually means.
Defense is a flak jacket
Offense is a weapon

A sociopath is one who doesn’t know the difference.

This distinction between lethal and non-lethal force isn’t as bright-line as everyone says it is.  You can shrug your shoulders to push someone off of you, have them fall, hit their head, and die.  Intent matters, but bad things do happen.

Defend (def)  “To protect from danger or harm.”

Sooo….  cynickal, defense can only be passive?  Seriously?  Tell Dick Butkus.  I suppose we should call it the Department of Offense but that is not as euphonious. 

A note on terminology: stopping a crime in progress is _not_ typically considered vigilanteism.

Tracking down a criminal (or worse, someone you think is a criminal, but may not be) after a crime has been committed and punishing them extra-legally is vigilanteism.

There are extremely good reasons that vigilanteism is frowned upon.  Having the state be a mediator between criminals and their victims taking their vengeance helps stop feuds and other violent cycles of vendetta.  It add objectivity and impartiality, helping minimize the tragedies of mistaken identification.

I do not mean to argue that what this guy did was correct, wise, or proportionate, only that it does not meet this (admittedly narrow) definition of vigilanteism.

Gerald, your overpriced crap is neither hard-earned nor EVER worth someone’s life. Period. End of discussion.

Yeah, naming (not calling, because “calling” implies that it’s not an accurate assessment, which it clearly is) you Evil is surely a reasonable statement. You’re not merely just as bad as the Burger King robber, who you claimed valued crap over life. You’re worse. Much, much worse.

Gerald,
Thanks for the reminder on Joe Horn.  His case is a good example of showing the distinctions.  Even Joe thought in the immediate aftermath of the event that self-defense was a better justification than shooting to protect his neighbor’s property, when he told the 911 operator that one of the men was coming toward him in his own yard.  Of course, it turned out Joe shot them in the back and the prosecutors brought a case. That a grand jury refused to indict may have a lot to do with the identity of the burglars (per Wiki, convicted criminals from Colombia who had entered the country illegally, and were members of an organized burglary ring in Houston)  and the population of the grand jury members in Texas. 

I don’t suggest Horn shot them because they were Columbians, but I wonder if the grand jury would have acted differently toward Horn had the corpses turned out to be good ol’ boy dropouts from the local high school. 

It doesn’t bother me that the Burger Hero killed the robber.  I am concerned about the issues of safety of the public in the place and more information on what he did to consider avoiding bystander injuries would factor in my ultimate judgment of his actions.  The article said an argument ensued but that might have been as brief as shouting, “Drop the guy scumbag!”

Oops, “drop the gun”

This distinction between lethal and non-lethal force isn’t as bright-line as everyone says it is.  You can shrug your shoulders to push someone off of you, have them fall, hit their head, and die.  Intent matters, but bad things do happen.

Precisely.

A cousin of mine was the victim of a home invasion a few years ago.  The invader got into a scuffle with my cousin’s husband, and had him pinned to the floor with a knife to him.  My cousin grabbed an aluminum baseball bat and whacked the perpetrator in the back of the head.  The perp didn’t die, but suffered severe brain damage.  He is permanently disabled as a result of the blow to his head.  A little harder blow to the back of the head, and he could have been killed.

Was my cousin wrong for taking the action she took?

Her intent was to incapicitate the intruder, which she did.  The method she used to incapacitate him was nearly fatal, and easily could have been.  Had it been fatal, would that make her a murderer?  Even though it wasn’t fatal, she did strike the perp in such a way that he is permanently disabled as a consequence - should she be seen as evil because of this?  Was her decision to strike the perpetrator to prevent her husband from possibly being murdered heinous?  Is she the real villain?

Follow-up from the Miami Herald:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/968765.html

It reveals that—the gunman was pointing a gun at the employees behind the counter, he did not merely display it.
The concealed carrier told him to put the gun down.
The gunman shot first, the concealed carrier shot back, and killed the gunman.

For what it is worth.

DTG in STL, defense of self and loved ones I can get behind, which is why the self-defense clauses in murder laws are entirely appropriate. Defense of material goods, like Evil Gerald is proposing? Not so much. NOBODY’S life is worth less than some trinket, especially pretend and ultimately meaningless paper trinkets, no matter how expensive that trinket is. Advocating otherwise is just evil.

Bast

I suppose we should call it the Department of Offense but that is not as euphonious.  smile

Well, they called it the Department of War for the first 150 years which seems about right.

Well, Ismone, maybe he is Burger Hero after all.  He diverted the attention of the robber away from the staff and on to himself.  That is a most courageous thing.

Still, one wonders, if he hadn’t intervened would the gunman have take his money and just left?  Tough call; truly it is.

Babieca wins.

Gerald:

I am not, believe me, totally unsympathetic to your viewpoint.  But I’ve had police friends who had to kill perps.  They were justified and one could even reasonably say the perps had it coming.  But it affected them more than you might think; it affected them deeply, hurtfully, permanently.

Stuff is stuff.  Screw the robber/mugger.  Think about what it’s going to do to you.  It’s something you can’t take back.  I’ve never had to ‘drop the hammer’ but I’ve been close.  I cannot begin to describe the sense of relief I had when I was able to worm my way out.

Your overpriced crap may not be hard-earned, but mine is.

No, it’s not. It is literally impossible for you to work hard enough for your overpriced crap to be worth someone’s life.

I go to work everyday for what I have. I put myself through college, so I could get the career that I wanted, so I could buy that overpriced crap. Behind all my overpriced crap is time that was sacrificed in study and work. Time I can’t get back.

So you have to work for your living. So what? Having to work does not give to license to be a murderer, no matter how much time you put into it. And if your time working is so miserable as all that, then you need to find a better job. Since, y’know, you think it’s so easy and all.

I disagree.  I’m much better than the Burger King robber, because I don’t mind working for what I want in life. I wouldn’t dare point a gun at anyone with the intent to take their property.

No, you’ll just murder them so you can keep your stinking iPod, or whatever other crap-ass status symbol you use as a substitute for your missing soul.  You ARE worse, in that you claim to know better, claim to BE better, yet are still quite comfortable with the idea of becoming a murderer over some plastic or paper. That makes you worse. Much, much, MUCH worse, and no amount of disagreement will change that. The thief is a thief, but you? You’re just a murderer who hasn’t actually killed anyone yet. You’ve stated outright that you’re completely comfortable with the idea of murdering someone over your crap. This is supposed to make you a better person than a mere thief?  Yeah, right. Next thing you’ll be telling me the sun rises at night, in the west.

If someone tries to break into my home or car or tries to mug me outside of my home, their life is worthless to me

And that is what makes you so infinitely worse than the Burger King robber, that you call a person’s life worthless, then go on to call plastic crap worth being a murderer-in-training. You claim to be so much better than a thief, yet you’re happy to become a murderer. That’s all the more sickening precisely because you do try to pretend that your murderous impulses are so much more moral than the thief’s. I got news for you—-murder is always worse than thievery. Always. Thus, you, wannabe murderer that you are, are worse than the thief. Always have been, always will be, and whining about the value you put on your crap won’t change that.

Magis said: Stuff is stuff.  Screw the robber/mugger.  Think about what it’s going to do to you.  It’s something you can’t take back.

Stuff IS stuff, and life is life, and life is ALWAYS more important than stuff, no matter what Gerald the Selfish and Immoral Wannabe Murderer claims. It’s too late for him, though. He’s already lost that part of himself that makes for a good and decent person. He’s nothing but a murderer, waiting for the right victim and the excuse good enough to get him off.  I don’t think murdering someone WOULD affect Gerald. I don’t think he’s got enough humanity left in him to feel that deeply. He certainly hasn’t shown any on this thread.

Magis,

That is a good point.  If he did provoke, it is still a bad thing.

Although in the case of armed robbery, or any armed crime, it can be very difficult to know what the armed person has in store for everyone else.  That kind of power differential creates problems, because if you guess wrong and resist too late, you are also faced with a tragedy.

Gerald,

Renter’s insurance.  Really.  (Or homeowners’—I don’t mean to make any assumptions.)

And I put myself through college and grad. school, and I like guns, and I still don’t think I get to shoot people for taking my shit.

Gerald,
Please don’t respond to GLB in kind, though I’m sure you’re tempted to.  She’s gone way beyond argument into personal attack.  Completely wasted effort except in a mental masturbatory way, IMO.

I disagree with you on lethal force to protect property but I understand your position.

... in the case of armed robbery, or any armed crime, it can be very difficult to know what the armed person has in store for everyone else ...

Ismone:
If you will permit me to postulate without adopting….  This quoted statement lies at the core of many of the pro-shooter responses to this event.  Without agreeing with the statements herein it is important to note that an armed citizen in that situation doesn’t know what an armed criminal who is using a gun to compel people to give him money and is pointing that gun at innocent, unarmed people is going to do. 

The criminal is, at an visceral level, entitled to far, far, far, far less of the benefit of the doubt than anyone else is.  There is quite a bit of volenti non fit injuria for the robber.  Having taken a gun into a restaurant filled with children to commit a crime under menace of potential murder takes him outside the parameters where he can expect a bloodless (in both the literal and metaphorical senses), dispassionate, reasoned, balanced response.  As one commenter noted upthread, this whole thing could have been avoided by this fellow not terrorizing people with a gun.  While I disagree with starting a gunfight in the middle of such a situation I do accept at a personal level that the only person unable to claim sympathy here is the robber. 

I would note that some of the most notorious brigands in American history were brought down not by police forces but by armed citizens: the James gang and the Dalton brothers, for example, died when citizens rushed to their weapons to combat robberies.  A modern version of that is not where I personally feel comfortable living—the residents of those areas did not have modern police forces easily at hand by means of a magic, hand-held box—but the fact remains that direct citizen action is a part of American law (the Second Amendment) and its history.  If we are to accept that a sensible approach involves understanding crime, motives and other alternatives vis-a-vis the robber we should also accept that the robbers of the USA must understand that an armed and potentially deadly citizenry is one of the risks of their chosen trade.  Good for the goose, and all that.

Pedant caveat: I should note that members of those two gangs died in those situations, not necessarily the leader(s) or the gangs themselves in their entirety; both dribbled on in smaller, less dangerous and ultimately futile forms.

Your overpriced crap may not be hard-earned, but mine is.

Mine is hard-earned and is also insured. Once again, returning to the example of the armored car drivers: guns are to defend your life. Material things carry insurance (which can be bought for less than the cost of a gun). The stuff that’s irreplaceable (eg, photo albums) generally carries no street value.

This is, however, completely academic. Odds are that over your entire life, you will never be faced with having someone break into your house while you’re home forcing you to make a decision about whether to shoot someone. If it makes you feel better thinking that you would, given the chance, that’s your choice, I suppose.

And yet, a guitar is worth less than a random person’s life, even if that person is a thief.

Ismone you’re right, I went too far. I apologize. I read too much in to someone bringing up the Black Panthers in a discussion about gun violence.

I can understan why people might find something worth dying for. Very, very little is worth killing for. Especially not your iPod.

It sounds, Gerald, as though you like the idea of being able to kill someone and being able to get away with it. Granted, there aren’t that many circumstances where the legal system will condone killing someone else, but I think it would be a better idea if you would look at this as a concession rather than an opportunity.

My dad learned that hard way when his guitar was stolen.

Would a gun have helped prevent it from getting stolen? Probably not.

While I disagree with Cerberus, he seems to be the only person who has firsthand experience with whether the use of deadly force is appropriate and whether belief in the acceptability of using deadly force actually does any good.

[insrance] definitely can’t get your property returned. At best, it only gets you close to what you had.
Who cares? I don’t have any sentimental attachment to my stereo, couch, or television. Some of the data on my computers is irreplaceable, but I’d be just as screwed if it were destroyed in a fire, so my solution shouuld be to keep backups offsite. One of the reasons I got renter’s insurance in the firstt place was when I realized that I couldn’t just replace what I owned out of my savings which was creating an unhealthy sense of attachment and possessiveness to them. Now, I can sleep well knowing that I have nice things while not getting obsessed about protecting them from the possibility that others might take them. My job is stressful enough. I don’t need the burden of other worried weighing me down.

Gerald:

If someone feels like taking an iPod is worth my life, then their life is worth losing for that iPod. That doesn’t make me the murderer. That makes me the person willing to indulge them in their self-destructive behavior. You can call it “suicide-by-armed-citizen”.

Tyro:

Very, very little is worth killing for. Especially not your iPod.

Isn’t this the conflation of two different ideas?  Tyro is saying that the iPod’s monetary value cannot possibly compare to a human life.  That much can’t be argued with.  But Gerald is, in addition to debating such a value issue is also saying that the iPod isn’t the determinant, it’s the catalyst.  The issue is not the value of the iPod, it’s the fact that an armed robber has determined that your life, or a threat to same, is wholly secondary to his desire to steal that iPod.  It’s not the owner who has set the value of the stupid thing in this dynamic, it’s the robber and that robber has said, in effect, “life itself is forfeit over this item”.  Shooting such a criminal is, within that frame, not a statement of the value of the iPod, it’s merely acknowledging and adapting to both the nature of the exchange arbitrarily fixed by the hoodlum himself.  There can be no valid moral position which concedes the right of the thief to threaten or kill but denies the victim the right to respond to that dynamic. 

In a way we are talking about a basic social contract in the micro sense.  The robber has said “your life, the only one you have, is now in the balance over this pointless piece of electronics”.  For the robber to be shot is merely acceptance of the offer with the price paid by him instead of you.

seek6079, I see the point you’re making, but Gerald is explicitly discussing use of deadly force in defense of his hard-earned property, and in the case of an armed mugging, the threat and risk to your life is implicit in the exchange (in which case, as in the armored car guard example, that’s what the gun is for).

Gerald has gone beyond that to make a much more sweeping claim… almost as though knowing that since a robber might resort to force against you, then this presents an opportunity to legally meet him on his own terms. Realistically, if someone breaks into my house and steals something out of the living room while I’m there, the rational response is to negotiate an exchange in which he agrees to leave with my stuff and I threaten to shoot him if he starts coming upstairs to my bedroom. I’m not going to run downstairs, gun in hand, to prevent him from taking my flatscreen TV, because that would be irrational. Gerald would make a different decision than I would, and I argue a bad one.

Tyro, I can’t argue with you if you don’t say something that I disagree with, damne ye.

I think that a fundamental flaw in Gerald’s argument is his assumption that he would handle the situation exactly as he envisages.  Combat and police studies are replete with examples of people having weapons and not even firing them to save their lives, so shocking and unsettling are such experiences.

BTW, I’d recommend against “negotiating the exchange”, even though you speak tongue in cheek.  Immediate flight to call the cops with your gun to be used only in self-defence is the most rational response, if viable.

banisteriopsis,

I appreciate the apology.  I can understand how you might have interpreted the panther comment that way, and sorry if I put too much of what others were saying on you for your one comment.

Iz

Gerald (I fear to tread here),

It’s none of my damn business but it sounds like to me you’ve never been in the near proximity of a badly shot up human or dealt the the emotional harm to the shooter, even when the shoot is “righteous.”

I’ve shot jillions of rounds in IPSC, PPC and “shoot houses.”  It’s good training, but it’s not real.  It can’t be real.  If they’re in your house and you can barricade yourself and call the cops, do so.  If the bad guy is between you and loved ones in another room, do what you gotta do.

One thing you’re right about.  Don’t ever threaten.  I mean if they see the gun in your hand and bug out or drop their’s, swell.  If not….

Well, I suppose I do have to explain that “negotiate” was used in a tongue-in cheek way, in the same way that we were earlier discussing the “transacitons” and “exchange” involved in a mugging.

seek6079 understands the dynamic better: the first response to a home invasion is to escape and call the police. The backup plan is to hunker down and defend your immediate surroundings, usually with a verbal threat. Deciding you’re going to attack based on a home invasion is stupid, and looking upon the fact that in many states the law (wisely) presupposes that a home invader represents a threat to your life shouldn’t be regarded as an opportunity to use lethal force because, hey, this is your big chance to do it would having the law engage in retribution(!) is a bad idea.

Seriously, buglars just want your stuff. Your stuff is insured, just as armored car drivers’ money is insured.

If someone breaks into my home, they will be told to put down whatever is in their hand and leave. If they don’t comply, they will be shot.

That is an act of negotiating. But it makes you feel better if you pose it in a different way. People don’t understand that guns are there to protect your life. You are acting on the implicit assumption that your training, instincts, and opportunities under the circumstances are better than those of the intruder, and you may be lulling yourself into a sense of false confidence. Thankfully, none of us will ever have to put these beliefs to the test, which is why I regard the people advocating the most aggressive responses to be the ones engaging in the most blatant form of posturing. There’s no disincentive to advocate the most agressive kind of response when you don’t have to deal with the real life consequences of those decisions, so doing so ends up just becoming a means of social posturing for the law-abiding audience.

Gerald, even the most cursory examination of recent stories should have made clear to you that use-of-force training for N.Am police forces is poor.  Slowness of recourse to deadly or merely excessive force is not a drawback which seems to be much in evidence of late.

The studies which came out of ww2 and have been the basis of US Army training every since show clearly that a great deal of dehumanization and stripping away of civilized restraint are necessary precursors to ensuring that a soldier will use a gun when he needs to.  It is simply insane to give that level of psychological conditioning to civilians, including and especially civilian police.  (It’s also a good reason why the general police department habit of taking vets may be a very bad idea, especially if you put them straight into SWAT.) 

You can take all the practical shooting course that you want but one fact remains: until there is a living, breathing human in the sights you simply do not know and can not know what you will do.  If, in that key moment, you freeze because much to your surprise, you don’t have it in you gun down another person…  Well, I leave it to your next of kin to discuss whether prudent retreat might have been a better course of action.

“Well, I suppose I do have to explain that “negotiate” was used in a tongue-in cheek way ...”

Uhhh, no, not really.  Besides, if you do I don’t get to be a po-faced pedant, and we can’t have that.

I want to add another thing: in many states, the law is that a home invader is considered, for legal purposes, to be a threat to the life of the person living there, so shooting him is justifiable self-defense. That only means that’s the way the law will consider such a shooting, if it occurs. Just because the law says that doesn’t mean that it will be true when the situation arises. What it means is that the law will trust the homeowner to use his best judgment and assume he made the right call rather than get bogged down trying to second guess his decisions and thinking about prosecuting. When people say that a gun should be used to defend your own life, rather than your property, what they mean is that you should understand when you need to defend your own life, not that you should look at the law, see when it allows such things to be justifiable, and use that as a guide for when you should use lethal force.

The law presupposes a threat to the homeowner’s life not because the law is trying to tell homeowners when they should assume a threat to their lives but rather because they trust the homeowner to figure out for themselves when to respond with legal force and when to escape/hunker down/call the police.

seeker6079:

Actually some of the training is very good.  In “shoot houses” figures will pop out at you that are “good guys.”  That is to say a child or someone in a nightgown, etc.  You lose points for shooting a “good guy.”  The scary part is that almost everyone does, especially at first. 

You are quite correct to say that people don’t know how they are going to react.  Usually people will shoot if they are instantly put at the point of an attack and don’t get to think about it.  If not, many people freeze when they realize the awesomeness of the situation they are in.

People think having a gun will make you less scared in a bad situation.  Oddly, it is often the opposite.  In my state the presumption on an intruder is absolute.  In some states it is cloudy.  Some states, like PA, are “retreat states.”  If you can, you not only should but must, if reasonably possible.

The best thing, is to barricade, call 911, and rack the slide on your shotgun…in that order.  If possible.  For God’s sake let ‘em have the damn stuff!

until there is a living, breathing human in the sights you simply do not know and can not know what you will do.

I’m enjoying the evo psych part of the discussion but I think some of it does not apply:

The armed intruder threatens your life and the life of your children. Only a Mohandas Gandhi would weep at the loss of human potential before pulling the trigger as many times as is necessary. Who means most to you? Your baby or some unknown drug addict? Remember, non-violence has to be taught; violence is the norm. Further, unlike the armed intruder in your home, the threat from foreign soldiers is remote and abstract, especially in situations like Iraq and Vietnam, where the intuitive reaction is “Why are we trying to kill these people?” The goal of soldiers training is to make that abstraction a personal enemy.

The comparison to shooting games I think is bogus also. There is quite a difference between a living, breathing family member and a cardboard cutout you may have never seen before.