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this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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Thanks for the reply. It makes sense, though I would jump off at a different point from you. I tend to feel that if it comes to life vs property, even the life of a robber who is making others miserable and afraid, life generally wins no matter what the property is. That is, I don't myself feel like it is ever worth taking a life to preserve property, and I hope that if I found myself in the situation of being robbed of something dear to me, I would be able to let the property go and the robber live, painful though it would be. But I also don't believe ethical questions can arrive at a final answer. There's too much nuance in every situation so I wouldn't propose this as "the right answer". It's just how I currently feel on the matter. Another aspect of this view is that while I wouldn't condemn in advance anyone who shoots in such a situation, I'd understand it better if they were afraid for themselves rather than just for their property.
Thankfully I'm not a legislator so I don't need to try to codify this into law, and I appreciate your position, which seems that be that although you probably wouldn't yourself shoot in this situation, you don't think others should be branded criminals for doing so. I don't want to pronounce on that matter, but just to observe that your position is probably more common in the USA than in, for example, many European countries, hence it seeming unusual to many of us non-Americans.
And that is my position exactly.
Go on various self-defense subreddits or online forums, like /r/CCW, and you'll find a very similar attitude. There will be a couple who'd say 'shoot the thief' but the overwhelming majority take the position of 'you shoot to stop the threat, in self defense, only when necessary' and many would even take the position that it's a 'bad shoot' to shoot someone just breaking into a car. Confront them maybe, shoot them if they move to attack, but don't just shoot the guy in the back as he's stealing your MacBook.
The other issue is- while I'm not a legislator, I am a citizen of a representative democracy. So in a sense, it is my job to write the law, or at least, to make educated choices in what laws and policies I advocate for and against.
To that end, anyone making any law must consider that there will be times it backfires, doesn't apply correctly, etc. And whenever that happens, I'd always rather err on the side of giving the citizen defending themself or their property more leeway than providing additional protections to a criminal who's engaged in clearly illegal acts against said citizen (which necessarily means punishments for the citizen defending against said criminal).