My comment may sound cliché, but I genuinely believe this, no material possession is worth more than a human life. A catalytic converter can be replaced, a life cannot.
So don't go around stealing catalytic converters. Same deal with states with "stand your ground laws". It's astonishingly easy to not get shot: don't invade someone's home.
And on the "replacing" part- on whose dime? What if someone's only means of transportation is affected, and they lose wages or outright lose their job? Are you going to pay for it? Of course not.
No, a better reason to not allow shooting of common thieves is that you don't want ordinary people shooting randomly at each other. The government / police should be able to handle this, but they either don't care or are incompetent.
Which leaves the ordinary upstanding citizen stuck between a rock and a hard place. The Man extracts taxes from their earnings, and thieves who ruin lives get a slap on the wrist because "lives are oh precious".
> Same deal with states with "stand your ground laws". It's astonishingly easy to not get shot: don't invade someone's home.
https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/florida-road-rage-incident-...
But I also think that it is often more-useful and much, much safer to know how to de-escalate when that's possible. When I took martial arts classes, they taught me that the first step towards winning a fight was to avoid fighting to begin with, and always calm things down one notch at a time. If, and only if, that becomes impossible, then: Kick the snot out of them until they stop being a threat.
And running away can be useful: An attacker's ability to do harm decreases with distance. When I took army basic training, we trained a lot on running. They taught me that being able to run reasonably-quickly for reasonably-long distances was a skill that most people lack. Just keep running and the attacker will probably get tired and give up long before you do, which generally resolves the threat. If the threat persists after running away, then: Use the element of surprise and just turn around and stab them until they stop being a threat.
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This is not an exhaustive list of methods and it is possible for any of them to go wrong. It's also possible to do nothing at all as a response and still have a very bad time of things.
It's a complex world. We've got billions of other people with different backgrounds, different problems, and different ideas of how they're going to get a little further ahead today than they were yesterday.
If we all had all of the answers, then we wouldn't have the kinds of desperation that leads to these problems to begin with.
But we don't all have all of the answers.
Also, a news article of some random altercation doesn't change anything about what I said: It's simply impossible to be shot (or clubbed, or beaten up, or whatever) by someone in their home for invading, if you never invade people's homes in the first place. So don't do that. And don't steal catalytic converters either.
> It's astonishingly easy to not get shot: don't invade someone's home.
The clear, plain-English implication of what you're suggesting is: your risk of getting shot (in the US) is, to a large extent, directly correlated to your invasion of other people's homes.
Except that there's no evidence to support this. According to FBI data from 2015-2019, the ratio of criminal gun homicides to justifiable homicides (as in self-defense) was 34:1.
Over 10,000 innocent people are killed by guns every year in the US, including more than 1,000 young people. This excludes suicides, which itself is a number that you'd probably be wise to pay attention to.
Obvious disclaimer: It is completely obvious that freak incidents occur, that there are other ways to die, that there is no way to guarantee the future or that harm will never come to someone, and that there are exceptions to just about every statement.
But one CAN choose to avoid deliberately putting themselves in situations where harm can befall them, such as comitting crimes like breaking into someone's home, or stealing someone's property. It should be completely obvious that one stands better chances in general by not doing things that make other people obscenely angry.
> Over 10,000 innocent people are killed by guns every year in the US, including more than 1,000 young people. This excludes suicides, which itself is a number that you'd probably be wise to pay attention to.
Out of a population of 349,000,000 people. Sad, but most people can live their lives and be completely unaffected. Stop being sensationalist.
Are you really now characterizing incidents of gun violence and suicide as "freak incidents"? They just happen, like a random bolt of lightning in a clear sky that strikes a person out taking a walk?
> Out of a population of 349,000,000 people. Sad, but most people can live their lives and be completely unaffected. Stop being sensationalist.
The figure I cited was for gunshot deaths of innocent people. Every year, over 100,000 people are shot in the US. More Americans die every year due to guns than they do because of auto accidents.
You can dismiss this as miniscule compared to the size of the population, and refuse to compare the numbers in the US to other developed nations, which shows how absurdly more risky the US is versus the rest of the "civilized world".
But what you can't do is pretend that gun violence doesn't have an impact on people that isn't measured in deaths and gunshot victims. Because there is plenty of evidence that the threat of gun violence has a major impact on the lives of Americans. For example, more than a third of Americans have avoided going to certain public places or events out of fear. See: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40205802/
Other statistics, with citations, that I'm sure you'd dismiss:
https://giffords.org/lawcenter/resources/gun-violence-statis...
Yup, as they basically are. Bolts of lighting would fall under "random acts of god/nature". Talking about whether or not guns should legally be ownable by citizens is an entirely different discussion.
> Every year, over 100,000 people are shot in the US. More Americans die every year due to guns than they do because of auto accidents.
Again, over 349,000,000 people. You do the math. Tons of car accidents, yet the world moves on and literally every adult I know, who doesn't live in Chicago/NYC/[rare place that's walkable + can afford it], drives. Find someone or something to blame for the geography of the country. Are we debating infrastructure now for a country the size of the US?
In any case, it does seem that you are capable of understanding what I meant by the original statement. It seems like all you want is to quibble over slight semantics in phrasing, and lecture someone who actually has lived in the US about how dangerous it really is. Have a day.
And a person using a gun to kill someone else is a "random act of god/nature" how exactly?
For someone who seems very confident of his knowledge of statistics, here's one for you: ~20-30 people die from lightning strikes in the US every year. Based on the averages, 4-6x that number died due to a gun yesterday alone.
I'm an American. Born and raised in one of the largest cities. I know at least half a dozen people who have been robbed at gunpoint, dated a woman who had been terrorized by a gun-nut ex, and one of my closest friends lost his father to suicide.
With all due respect, there's nothing more callous than believing that something doesn't impact vast numbers of people (proven by empirical evidence) simply because you apparently haven't experienced it yourself.
> Have a day.
You sure are pleasant.
> It's astonishingly easy to not get shot: don't invade someone's home.
Is pat to the point of naiveté.
People get shot turning into the wrong driveway[1], or knocking on the wrong door[2]. If anything, it's astonishingly easy to get shot in the US of A.
But, you probably meant something like that when you said
> you don't want ordinary people shooting randomly at each other. The government / police should be able to handle this [but don't.
And I agree with that on both points.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kaylin_Gillis [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Ralph_Yarl
Doesn't quite roll off the tongue, does it?
> If anything, it's astonishingly easy to get shot in the US of A.
No, not really. It's easier than other countries, but I'm afraid you've bought into media sensationalism. The country has a population of 349,000,000 people. There will be crazy incidents. And they won't happen to the vast majority of people, at least, people who aren't tempting fate by doing stupid things like home burglary. But the ones that do happen, can get televised around the world.
The way the news talks about life in the US is completely out of touch. I myself have pulled into random driveways perhaps dozens of times. It's not uncommon when navigating suburbia. The way the news discusses it, I should be dead probably a dozen times over. The problem is they never discuss all the other times people do that and nothing happens, which is nearly all of the time.
By that logic, any country with a similar (or larger) population should have similar (or larger) gun deaths per capita as the USA, right?
Take India - population 4.3x but 15x fewer gun deaths per capita. Or Japan - 0.35x the population and 1500x fewer gdpc.
(Admittedly Brazil scuppers my counter-argument slightly - population is 0.6x but gdpc are 1.3x. Poverty and availability of guns seems to be the key rather than "random chance".)
What about a bad medic? Or a thief that helps homeless people in their free time?
If it was easy, we would have simpler laws and better justice systems...
I might suppose that it's usually more the former than the latter, but there's degrees to each characteristic.
They perceive that they need things, and they don't necessarily care who they harm to get the things that satisfy this need.
(When we dress it up all nice and back it with corporate layers and an army of lawyers, sometimes we get CEOs.)
Nobody desperate will dare steal from the gangs since its not just death, but PAIN before death.
Who knows?! Companionship?
How do you come by that? By that logic, Joseph Stalin is as valuable as Mother Theresa!
Yourself, not me.
And what constitutes "invading" someone's home? You know what, don't answer that.
There's a classic saying: "When seconds count, the police are minutes away."
...and going back to the original topic, even the Flock cameras aren't going to stop criminals, if that's what you're implying.
The stolen goods have to be sold and bought somewhere. If they can't accomplish this with the vast resources available to them, (amongst other longstanding issues), then we should probably rethink the taxation process, the election process, or both.
Today it's trivially easy for me to say "property can be replaced, a life cannot" since I am exceedingly privileged. I would not put my life, or anyone else's on the line to defend anything but my and my family's personal safety. But I remember what it was like to not be so ridiculously privileged. So I get it.
Only someone who has never lived a hard day in their life can spew such stuff at other folks. It's entirely circumstantial.
The laws should reflect the prior case, not the privileged one. At least if you want to disincentivize criminal behavior.
This is a very normal commercial insurance problem. Sure, you can supplement it by buying a gun and staying up all night defending your truck, but the family ain’t gonna be happy if you bought the gun in lieu of insurance, especially if you lose that gunfight.
You get your catalytic converter stolen, and you will pay for it three times. The first is you paid for the original one. Then you paid for insurance to cover its theft, and likely your payments over the years have already paid for the catalytic converter a second time. And then after it's stolen, your insurance rates will raise such that you are paying for a 3rd (maybe fourth) converter, just on a monthly plan now.
Now, of course, shooting the thief is only cheaper if you don't invest much in your weapons and training, and don't face any legal scrutiny afterwards and need to hire a lawyer.
Sometimes you get some mechanics' tools. But the best part is the laugh, watching someone running away with their pants full of shite.
But if you had died in the interaction, and let's say the thief at that point even left the goods and decided to leave, that would have totally been a win outcome, because the property with which you provided your livelihood was saved… wait…
> Only someone who has never lived a hard day
Yeah right…
I never understood why people forget this:
- Life is more valuable esp. if "you + property" combo is the livelihood. Okay, let's make this simpler. Probability of tools replacement ≠ 0; definitely >0. Possibility of you being replaced after death =0. Yup, it's not >0 yet, folks.
- When you are going for a life-losing/taking-possibility escalation level, maybe don't forget it's a two-way street..
Except poverty, ignorance, hunger, addiction, untreated mental illness...
Otto's "I blame Society" speech from the movie Repo Man:
I could never sleep at night without thinking about what I have done.'
A life is worth a lot more than $2k for my sanity.
As another commenter said: It's incredibly easy to not get shot; don't burglarize someone's home the same way you wouldn't jump in front of a moving train.
A society which only has low crime because everyone is able to use lethal force to defend themselves and their property isn't one I would call higher "trust" than one that maintains the same crime levels without that threat.
So, either citizens bear force, or they plead with the government to wield their force. But, force is there, either way, keeping people in line. It has never been any other way.
The end state is you can trust others because nobody even wants to or considers it.
Punishing violators is being proposed as how to build the norm that no one wants to steal.
There was nothing that I was doing that was wrong in any way. I was quietly minding my own business when they came up from behind me with other ideas and one of them hit me in the side of my face, from behind, with an intensity that I'd never really experienced before in all of my years.
I lost hours of my memory and years of my mental health. I gained years of occasional intense neck pain that consistently put my mind in very dark places, and thousands of dollars of medical bills.
They gained two unopened packs of Camels and the pocket knife that I apparently failed to effectively utilize. I still had my wallet and my phone.
The police did nothing of any productive impact. A report was taken, and it was taken poorly. When 3 guys were arrested a couple of weeks later for robbing someone with a baseball bat and I recognized their pictures, they didn't care. I walked the local law-enforcement ladder all the way up to the city prosecutor, and also through parallels in the sheriff's department.
Nothing was productively done on my behalf.
It made me feel so angry and powerless. A follow-up that I requested came along with the cop that took the first report, and resulted in such profound and obtuse stonewalling that I became tremendously and irreverently furious. I left the room, while demanding from the other side of a wall that he get the fuck out of my apartment.
This all conspired to make it clear that it was my cross to bear. Nobody of any influence was going to help me along the way.
(I'd probably have a very different story to tell if I'd shot the attackers all dead, but I don't have that story. I was not equipped to do that so there is no direct comparison here for me to make. It is definitely my hope that I never have any opportunities to make such a comparison.)
I got involved in martial arts for a few years after I was attacked for no particular reason by people who were much older than me when I was a little kid, twice in short succession, and my parents felt that this was a good way to help with that kind of situation. I don't know if that was the best response that they could make but I don't disagree with it.
Army training happened later, in a just-post-9/11 world where I was feeling strongly patriotic and also looking for a meaningful job. It had its ups and downs.
Concealed carry classes happened much later, after the incident with the 3 young men, wherein: Either the previous training didn't help, or I was doomed anyway, or both.
I remember everything up to the first hit very clearly. I'd seen these folks way over there doing whatever they were doing, but I didn't suspect any trouble in that little town. I just kept walking. Soon, I heard a set of footsteps right behind me -- at least one of them closed the gap quickly. Before I could formulate a plan (including "run"), I got hit hard and it gets murky. I do remember standing and facing all three of them under a street light and saying "What in the fuck do you think you're doing?" as a means of negotiation; this clearly did not work.
After that, I remember a blur of fast-walking back to my apartment. They were gone, like they'd never been there, but I was scared because I was sure that they were watching me go home anyway. I went around the back side of the building, deviating from my normal route home, watching my back as well as I could in that state.
I got home and I was satisfied that nobody had followed me as I re-locked my front door, and for a period of time (I don't know how long), I didn't think anything else happened. I forgot that I needed cigarettes. I eventually looked in the mirror and saw that it looked like I'd been hit by a car, and later noticed dirt all over my clothes. I called my ex-wife for advice, and then called the police who showed up and took a report (badly) and promised to do ~nothing else, and then called my boss for a ride to the hospital.
None of any of the training I've ever had really covered dealing with a surprise attack from three motherfuckers at once. It wasn't exactly ideal.
I still can't walk around in public with headphones on. I wasn't wearing them that night, but it was something that I occasionally enjoyed and that concept is subsequently dead to me.
"None of any of the training I've ever had really covered dealing with a surprise attack from three motherfuckers at once. It wasn't exactly ideal."
Not much will, I practiced Krav Maga for years and we train for 3:1 , but a surprise attack that knocks you unconsciouses is hard to plan against. But it does teach you to be ultra-aware of your environment, who's around you, what attack surfaces are risky, objects you can use to defend yourself.
You may know this already, so maybe it would help someone else.
I think I would consider myself in that group.
I think some lives are worth negative, and everyone is better off with them dead.
But we're not the only ones: all other animals do the same. Only now, that we've turned into Democrats, is there hope for our kind, now that we know every life is precious and irreplaceable.
a. There's no guarantee against escalation, a property crime turns into a violent crime very easily.
b. Property crime can have a deep psychological impact on the victim - something the perpetrator demonstrably gives zero fucks about.
c. The police and justice system in 2026 don't care about prosecuting property crime. Having no recourse at all if you're being robbed (a common situation when defending your own property is effectively illegal because of the risk to the perpetrator) is grossly unfair.
"Let's not harm the thief but force the victim to cover the damages" is what it comes down to and imo it's a very immoral stance.
Not true.
The conclusion that there is no such triad seems clearly absurd since we allow people to build things for us the construction of which offers them a non-zero chance of death.
It is reasonable to say that a precise frontier is not describable because of Sorites but to say no triad exists implies that you only participate in an economy consisting exclusively of zero risk behaviour[0] That seems improbable.
Once we’ve dealt with that, perhaps we may be able to conclude that catalytic converters exist on one side of the frontier or on the other side or perhaps we might say that they lie along the Sorites boundary.
0: we are not unreasonable. We might even choose to consider imperfect information about the risk, the risk being at a Pareto optimum, the risk being at optimum against counterfactual, etc.
A mugger may be stealing $50 in your wallet, but the crime is the threat to your life.
I have weeds in my yard that are more useful than most of the fancy primates that occupy Congress.
The thief valued the gain of the crime more than the risk of the crime.
You absolutely can cause death to a human and take a human life through material theft.