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Comment by tolgerias | Hacker News Reader

self defense is a human right only in a lawless society. The existence of the state makes it necessary for it to have the monopoly of the application of force, and all matters should be resolved in a civil court of law. Only in the USA is it normal to think that people should have the right to kill in self defense. Even more, many think they should be able to defend themselves from the state.. while that is the definition of a lawless society (a society where the state has no way to impose the rule of law). I get it, guns are fun. But a human right? Definitely not

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> Only in the USA is it normal to think that people should have the right to kill in self defense.

If that's the case, I don't want to live anywhere else. If someone breaks into my home in the middle of the night, they pose a deadly threat to my family. In what country would you not feel the same way?

> Even more, many think they should be able to defend themselves from the state.

Not all states are benevolent, nor are they guaranteed to stay benevolent. Many Americans are wary of our gov't (and IMO rightly so.)

You make a great point. Police forces have been sued for responding slowly or not at all to threats on lives and found to have no responsibility to respond to a particular crime.

Many people don’t actually know this, but police has “no duty to protect”, meaning that they can perfectly legally not Intervene even if they know with 100% certainty people are being hurt or murdered. Look up “no duty to protect”.

I know this from personal experience to be fact.

Why must an intruder, who may be there just to steal something and not harm others, immediately have to pay for their actions with their life?

Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore? The same people who are large proponents of the 2nd Amendment also seem to encourage a massive defense budget which seems backwards to me.

>Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?

Well, yeah.

There are no illusions that a group of people with dubious levels of training could square off against the government and come out on top. However, you can certainly raise the cost of occupation _significantly_.

Despite the US rolling into the middle east with all of its technological might, planes, helicopters, and modern armor, its still bands of people with guns and bombs who, years after "mission accomplished", drag the conflict onward.

People seem pretty ignorant of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)

Who is the threat to invade the United States? Last time I checked, Canada and Mexico are pretty peaceful Nations and Russia is in charge of our current president.

> Why must an intruder, who may be there just to steal something and not harm others, immediately have to pay for their actions with their life?

The loss of property, and the violation of one's home and sense of security are real harms. But the point is not to make the violator pay, so much as it is to merely prevent an injustice.

And many (I believe most) defensive gun uses involve merely brandishing the weapon. Most people do not relish the thought of taking another's life.

> Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore? The same people who are large proponents of the 2nd Amendment also seem to encourage a massive defense budget which seems backwards to me.

It makes more sense when you realize that there is significant overlap between "gun owners" and "past or present military service".

If u intend to "brandish" a gun and you are not prepared to use it. Then you are the person who needs to be afraid for their life .

As I agree with your statement, I'm not sure exactly what you are getting at. One can be under threat, prepared to use a weapon, brandish it, and yet not actually use it. Discipline and restraint are import aspects of firearm training.

>Why must an intruder, who may be there just to steal something and not harm others, immediately have to pay for their actions with their life?

I don't know who you are, why you are in my home, and what your intentions may be. I'm not going to wait and find out if you would attempt to kill me as a result of discovering you are burglarizing my home.

>Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?

Nobody is under any illusions that the US military could roll through with tanks and cluster bombs and annihilate any opposition, but I doubt the government is particularly keen on ruling over a pile of ruined infrastructure. If that's the case, they instead have to deal with a large population of armed guerillas, which the Mid-East conflicts have proven the US is rather poor at dealing with. To say nothing of the fact that a large portion of the US military would defect upon being told to fire upon the people they've signed up to defend. The purpose of the 2nd amendment is to deter the government from using overt force.

To jump from

> I don't know who you are, why you are in my home, and what your intentions may be.

to shooting someone would in most countries be considered a illogical and reckless act.

I'm having a hard time thinking of any scenario where taking someones life is a justified, logical and logically judicial act. Especially in the case you said.

>I'm having a hard time thinking of any scenario where taking someones life is a justified, logical and logically judicial act. Especially in the case you said.

Someone breaks into your house with a knife with the intent to cut your throat and steal anything that can be sold quickly.

People have been murdered by burglars many times so you can't bury your head in the sand and pretend that's not an outcome.

In your ideal world, do you prefer that the victims allow the burglar to eliminate them as a witness?

> Someone breaks into your house with a knife with the intent to cut your throat and steal anything that can be sold quickly.

That is assuming a lot of thinking from a scenario that started as:

> I don't know who you are, why you are in my home, and what your intentions may be.

Even assuming what you said, the right to take a life is not a right a citizen should ever have, in any situation.

> ... the right to take a life is not a right a citizen should ever have, in any situation.

The right to kill in self defense exists in many countries but I belive in most countries it will result in an investigation and you'll probably have to go to court to convince a judge that you had

1. Reason to fear for your or someone elses life

2. considered (and if possible: tried) other reasonable options.

I think it would be extremely cruel to punish someone for defending themselves or someone else.

Also keep in mind that stopping an attacker without the option of hurting them seriously is way harder than if you are allowed to use any means.

Committing a home invasion, whether to steal, to harm, or something else, is a dangerous, immoral, illogical and reckless act. Lethal force is a justified response, period.

Proportional response is a thing, and the state having a monopoly on deadly force is a good thing IMO.

Using deadly force to counter a purely material crime is madness.

Deadly force IS a proportional response to a home invasion - in both the moral and legal sense.

Its not the victim's obligation to quiz the home invader on their intentions before they act to protect themselves, their family and/or their property. A person knowingly and foreseeably puts their own life up for forfeit by invading another's home... and for what - a material crime, as you say? (But I hope we all acknowledge that the stakes are often far more serious and irrevocable than having your ipad stolen while you sleep).

The big open secret here is, no government today or in the past has had a monopoly on deadly force (nor will they ever). They only have a monopoly on punishing deadly force via the judicial system.

Deadly force can be legally prohibited and morally justified. It can be legally justified and morally abhorrent.

Because you have no way of knowing, beforehand, an intruder's exact intentions.

> Why must an intruder, who may be there just to steal something and not harm others, immediately have to pay for their actions with their life?

Why would a guy who grabs a cop's gun and waves it around pointing it at people for a thrill have to pay with the actions of their life when another cop shoots them?

>Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?

Do you really think gun owners would line up on the field to take on the military in the open? Ruling over a country where half of the people are supporters and the other half are armed dissidents would be impossible regardless of military strength. Just look at the failures of the last Iraq war to see how a tiny fraction of the population was able to throw off the whole thing.

>Why must an intruder, who may be there just to steal something and not harm others, immediately have to pay for their actions with their life?

They have the option of wearing a bullet proof vest or use trained monkeys to do their bidding.

> Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?

Note that the US military is sworn to the constitution, not to any current administration. When anti-citizen measures are proposed, the military aligns with the citizens.

Because a man's home is his castle.

> Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?

Nope, some of us citizens believe that the US military ranks will by and large not obey unlawful/unconstitutional orders to attack its own citizenry on our soil. If they choose to do so anyway - good luck, there's more of us than there are of them.

>Why must an intruder, who may be there just to steal something and not harm others, immediately have to pay for their actions with their life?

They shouldn't. But what guarantee does someone have that the intruder won't harm them?

This strikes me as a trolling comment. But if you're serious, and if you can pull the idea that the state owns all manifestations of the application of force out of thin air, then there is no limit to how many of your other human rights that state will take away from you. By giving up the right to self defense, something so fundamental to all living things, you effectively chain yourself in irons and tell your masters to do with you as they will. That's basically North Korea today.

> Only in the USA is it normal to think that people should have the right to kill in self defense.

Really? Your profile was created 15 minutes ago, and this seems like an absurd statement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justifiable_homicide

You're quite incorrect. The state properly has a monopoly on the retaliatory use of force (and none other) under objective laws and legal processes. But self-defense is an emergency, and there is no rational argument to claim that one may not protect oneself, one's family, or one's property against beasts or thugs. On the other hand, if you kill someone in self-defense, you had better be prepared to explain how necessary it was, in the court of law; which is exactly how things work in the USA.

If one is so depraved as to argue that self-defense is unacceptable as such, then one should be prepared to live and die as a slave to the first thug or dictator who walks by one's neighborhood or country.

Self defense should definitely be a right, and I'm not American - I'm Swedish. There's a big difference between responding with full force, or as Swedish law allows, responding with reasonable force proportional to the harm that you're at risk of.

Any limits to the right to intervene should not go further than what the state can fill in for. Since the police is not everpresent in our lives (and shouldn't be!), there will inevitably be situations where you need to fend for yourself, since you can't always just wait for police to arrive.

You can put this through some translation software of your choice;

http://www.domarbloggen.se/sodertorns-tingsratt/ansvarsfrihe...

That's an incredible amount of trust to have in the state. Have governments shown to be infallible or incapable of abuse of power? You can argue guns aren't essential to protect yourself but I don't think you can argue that protecting yourself isn't an innate human right.

The Catholic Church teaches that killing in self-defense in self defense is legitimate. In fact, it can even be a grave duty. So that means this is hardly just an American idea.

I can only reply to myself (low score?) but my point was not that self defense is not justifiable in extreme cases (though I made that point. I didn't choose my words wisely). What I mean is that by no means is the citizen expected to engage in vigilante justice or apply force against the state. That leads to lawlessness and was kind of hinted by the parent comment. The state should have the monopoly of force _to apply in a lawful manner and mantain the rule of law_

The state decides what a lawful manner is, thats about as useful a statement as "it's not illegal when the president does it". The states only rules as long as a certain X% of the populace agress with it. The second amendment tries to balance that X so that it doesn't become something like o ly 1% of the populace needs to agree with the government for it to maintain power.

There's arguments to be made as to what percentage of the populace needs to agree for a stable society to be formed. Both extremes of 100% and 0% are obviously bad as you either get no agreement or total dictatorship.

Just saying that you should listen to the government though ignores the majority of the history of governments

Vigilantism isn't self defense. Even in states with the strongest self defense laws (e.g. stand your ground laws), you can only use force to defend yourself (and I think also your family or immediate companions) when you are threatened. You can't just prowl around shooting suspected drug dealers.

> lawless society

Things aren't black and white. Every country is lawless to a certain degree. Otherwise there wouldn't be any robberies in countries that aren't "lawless" (whatever that means). One difference between EU and US is that a robber has a decent chance of being shot in US and not in EU meaning you become a sitting duck the moment you stop living the socialist life that state deems appropriate.

> Only in the USA is it normal to think that people should have the right to kill in self defense.

I think you are wrong. At least in Norway where I've lived for the last few decades I'm pretty certain people are found not guilty because of self defense.

> Even more, many think they should be able to defend themselves from the state.. while that is the definition of a lawless society (a society where the state has no way to impose the rule of law).

Persecuting minorities where completely lawful in nazi Germany.

I guess you should be looking for another word because as much as I'm against lawlessness that doesn't cut it here IMO.

..only in a lawless society?

Nazi Germany was a country full of laws. (I realize I am Godwin’s law-ing, but the parent implied that self-defense ought not be a right in a society with legal institutions and laws; Nazi Germany is a perfect counter example of how “laws” aren’t always just and that a fear of government is a legitimate concern.)

The existence of the state makes it necessary for it to have the monopoly of the application of force

Note that like most other points made in discussions involving "rights," this is an opinion, presented as if it were an objective fact.

Another opinion is that you have only the rights that you can defend. That one, at least, has some empirical proof behind it.

Why do you pay your taxes? Is it altruism on your part, or fear of retaliation if you don´t? What happens if you were more powerful than the IRS (or whatever force the IRS might send your way to coerce you into paying your debts)? How can a state impose a law on criminals if criminals are stronger than itself? See mexico for example, where drug cartels are arguably stronger than the state in certain parts they control. Or brasilian favelas. This part is not an opinion my friend. Also I don´t claim to have invented this concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

Crypto is a human right only in a lawless society. Only in the USA is it normal to think that people should have the right to complete privacy even from the govrenment.

Even more, many think they should be able to hide their actions from the state...that is the definition of a lawless society.

I get it, HTTPS is fun. But a human right? Definitely not.

It would appear that your sarcasm went undetected.

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