Whilst Tony Martin’s case continues to ignite a spark of common sense in the public as well as forcing Blunkett in the face of public outrage to promise new laws to protect the rights of householders, people in the rest of the world (i.e. in the US) continue to defend their own…
The last time police came by his Tripe Street home to investigate complaints about drug dealing in the West Ashley neighborhood, William Gates [ed. no relation!] made it clear to them that he had had enough.
“I told the police, ‘Bring the coroner and body bags the next time you come out here,’ ” he said. “Nobody is going to run me out of my home.”
Last Friday morning Gates made good on his statement as he shot a man in his front yard.
Roused from his sleep by the sound of gunfire about 4:30 a.m. Friday, the 67-year-old Gates took up his 12-gauge Browning automatic shotgun, stepped out onto his front porch and fired three blasts at men he said were drug dealers having a shootout in his front yard.
He only wounded the men he shot. But it wasn’t for lack of trying. “I shot to kill,” he said. “I’m not going to lie to you.”
The attitude of the local police was rather different from the one taken by ‘best police in the world’ towards Tony Martin. While they did not publicly approve of what Gates did, they filed no charges against him. Charleston Police Chief Reuben Greenberg explains:
We have no plans to arrest him. We can’t see from where we sit where a crime’s been committed. People have the right to provide for their safety, and we believe that is what he was doing.
Are you listening, Mr Blunkett?
Mr Gates vows that he will be ready if friends of the three men try to retaliate, and he smiled as he said he planned to acquire a gun to protect himself.
They better make sure they get me if they come back, because if they don’t get me, I’m going to kill all of them.
That’s the spirit. And I bet that the ‘friends’ of the drug dealers will think twice about stepping into Mr Gates front yard. Think of all the taxpayer money saved by not having to ‘protect’ the harassed homeowner. (In the case of Mr Martin, a team of Norfolk police officers had to install security and surveillance devices inside and outside of Martin’s farmhouse and prior to his release Scotland Yard’s considered placing him under the witness protection scheme. The cost of giving Martin a new identity was indicated as £500,000, which would be paid by the taxpayer.)
Although the final decision whether to charge Mr Gates will be made by the solicitor’s office early this week, something tells me that his story will have a radically different ending to that of the unfortunate Tony Martin…
Firstly, what Mr Gates used was a Browning SEMI-automatic shotgun. Browning does not and has never made an automatic shotgun.
Secondly, there is a world of difference between the case of Mr Gates and the case of Mr Martin. Mr Gates was responding to a situation where deadly force was plainly and obviously being used, and he may have justification for his own use of deadly force to prevent injury to life or limb, whether of himself or of another.
Mr Martin used deadly force in a situation where none was offered against him or anyone else, and indeed, he shot the unarmed intruders (Barras and Fearon) as they were attempting to flee his home.
The Martin case is actually a very poor one to use as an example of the right to self-defence, because it contradicts a basic principle of law in the US and the UK – that the use of deadly force is only justified to prevent a real, present threat of death or serious injury – in other words, that its use is proportional and in response to a real threat. Neither was the case in the Martin affair.
I can’t imagine why the Martin case has assumed such significance in the UK as an example of an innocent householder persecuted for his use of deadly force. He announced in advance that he was going to shoot intruders no-matter-what, he did shoot intruders even though they offered him no violence and were trying to flee, and he obviously has neither remorse or even understanding of what he did wrong. 5 years for manslaughter is about exactly right, and indeed, he would have likely gotten a similar verdict in similar circumstances in many places in the US. The right to keep and bear arms does not include the right to use them in any and all circumstances.
Just to be clear. I’m writing from the US, I’m a 20-year NRA member, and a rock-ribbed absolutist in the matter of the right of citizens to keep and bear arms for the defence of the person. But the Martin example does not support that right, in fact, it erodes it. You and all the others who support him should find a better example, it shouldn’t be hard.
llater,
llamas
Martin announced in advance his intent to shoot intruders after being burgled 30 times and being told by the police they couldn’t help him. It’s too much to expect of anyone that they should make controlled decisions about whether or when to shoot, after being disturbed in the middle of the night, in an isolated house, by intruders who might, for all Martin knew, be liable to injure, maim or even kill him.
As for remorse, why the hell should Martin feel that? For all anyone knows now, he could have saved his own life by shooting Barras – a hardened professional criminal with 28 court appearances on his record.
I disagree with you: the Martin case is a very good example of the hypocrisy of the State in its attitude toward self defence.
Tony H. –
It’s easy for all of us to be wise after the event. And, to be sure, the decision which Tony Martin had to make, in the middle of the night, in the dark, in unknown circumstances, would be a terrible calculus which none of us would want to have to face.
That being said, most of the arguments which are used to support him, such as yours, are primarily of the ‘woulda-coulda-shoulda’ variety – maybe the intruders might have offered him violence, maybe he felt that he was in danger, and so forth. To use those sorts of arguments to justify what he did, and to say that other people should be held blameless if they behave likewise, is to appoint householders as judge, jury and executioner.
I don’t disagree that the UK criminal justice system embodies hypocrisy of a high, wide and handsome nature in the matter of self-defence. I believe that every citizen has the natural right to the means of self-defence, and to be held blameless when they use it [i]for the defence of the person[/i]. But with every powerful right comes a grave responsibility – in this case, to use it only for the immediate defence of life and limb.
Martin shot and killed a man who offered him no threat, and who was running away at the time. To be sure, we can all understand that Martin might have been confused or unclear as to what was going on at the moment he fired the fatal shot. But he made it clear, in advance, that he was quite prepared to shoot any intruder, no matter what the circumstances, and he does not accept, even now, that he took the life of another because of his own confusion and poor judgement. For that, he should pay.
Yours for the right to keep and bears arms for the defence of the person,
llamas
I think the Martin case is a perfectly good flagsip for a renewed right of self-defense.
First, it nicely highlights the need for individual self-defense and the inability of the state to meet that need. Burgled over thirty times! The cops admitted they couldn’t help! Solid gold, politically.
Second, to most people he was well within his rights. Burglars were in his house at night – ’nuff said. This was, in fact, the law of the land for centuries, and still is in a few jurisdictions. Nattering on about the need to carefully calibrate the threat posed and the exact types and kinds of weaponry concealed about the persons of the felons is not a persuasive way to argue that Tony Martin did the wrong thing.
If Mr. Gates had had a full-auot shotgun (a “street sweeper”, as they are known), then it is unlikely that anyone would have made it out of his yard alive.
R C Dean wrote:
‘If Mr. Gates had had a full-auot shotgun (a “street sweeper”, as they are known), then it is unlikely that anyone would have made it out of his yard alive.”
I’m sorry, but there is no such an animal as a full-auto shotgun – outside the movies.
The firearm most often referred to as a ‘street-sweeper’ is a 12-round rotary-magazine piece of nonsense which has been made and patterned by various manufacturers. But even that is semi-automatic and/or double-action – not full-automatic. Incidentally, firearms of this design, in the US, are classified as “destructive devices” and require a class-3 NFA license to buy or sell. Such a license costs $300 a time.
The previous shotgun to which the term ‘street-sweeper’ was applied was the Italian-designed SPAS-12, which was selectable between semi-automatic and pump-action, but was not full-automatic.
All of the various ‘appearance-enhanced’ shotguns shoot the same old 12-gauge cartridge as Mr Gates’ plain-vanilla semi-auto Browning shotgun. They are no more lethal, no more destructive.
llater,
llamas
Llamas,
Actually fully automatic shotguns do exist – but they are extremely rare. The main problem is one of useability due to heavy recoil. The reason the British army adopted the semi-auto only SLR rifle in the 1970s instead of the more common full-auto FN FAL (otherwise essentially identical) is that after the first round or two you are unable to aim. Also, due to the size of a shotgun shell the magazine capacity is severely limited. The auto shotgun that came nearest was the Acheson (designed by a certain Donald Acheson) as an experimental weapon for the Pentagon. It looked very much like an Armalite with a very fat barrel and magazine (10 rounds capacity) – 12 Gauge (2 3/4 inch non-Magnum, unchoked and hence able to digest Brenneke slugs as well as buckshot ammo). I think only a handful were ever built before the project was abandoned (as, predictably, it was an absolute non-starter as a combat weapon).
As for Martin – well he may have shot Barras as he was running but I don’t care. In my book intruders leave their rights outside when they break in and whatever comes their way is, as Kim du Toit would call it, a ‘Righteous Shooting’. Who is the fucking criminal here after all?
I’m having trouble trying to divine the moral system that governs the use of violence in defence of life and property. Is there good literature on the topic?
As things stand, my gut tells me that you may morally use any force you consider necessary to incapacitate someone who violently intrudes upon your home.
The comparisons with roving vigilante gangs are erroneous. Home invasion is a completly self contained event that can be avoided by simply not breaking into someone’s home. I find the “slippery slope” argument as unconvincing as the claim that decriminalising homosexuality will lead to our children being buggered in the streets.
BUT…
Coming from middleclass centre left background my guts have always told me to be pro-choice. Once I started thinking seriously about the logic of individual liberty and morality the inevitable conclusion was that abortion was *gulp* murder. I’m perfectly comfortable with that now, but at first the idea made me feel [i]deeply[/i] uncomfortable.
Hmm.
I tend to think of it like this: when an individual consciously makes the decision to trespass, they open themselves up to all kinds of possibilities, up to and including death. That’s a deterrant. To me it doesn’t matter what the circumstances are–it doesn’t matter that they weren’t armed and were attempting to flee. Tony Martin is incidental. He’s simply the guy with the gun that the burglars were unlucky enough to run into, at which point they paid the price.
Everyone in a risky profession implicitly accepts the risks, and it is ridiculous to question whether Tony Martin did it in self-defence. The only thing that needs to be proven is whether Barras intruded on Mr. Martin’s property illegally. After that, the gloves are off.
Naturally, outside their own property, a person would have to prove that any lethal force they used was justified. I just don’t see why the same legal standards would apply to someone inside their home–as if their property didn’t exist or wasn’t relevant.
Llamas, the Browing Auto-5 was marketed as an “Automatic Shotgun” , hence the name. The reporter was probably using the description of the weapon given him by the police or Mr. Gates.
he does not accept, even now, that he took the life of another because of his own confusion and poor judgement.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. He took another life because of his “poor judgement” in a situation that was forced upon him by the unexcusable actions of others.
The reality is that Barras was responsible for his fate. Not Tony Martin.
Eamon
Does anyone know whether Martin had previously attempted to ward off burglars through setting up alarms, or somesuch?
I attended a defensive handgun course in the States last September, and it was made pretty clear that even in the Land of the Free, if you use a gun to defend yourself, even against a violent attacker, you can often spend months coping with the nightmare of the US litigation culture. I thought I would mention that in case anyone is under the false impression that the States is a kind of libertarian utopia. It most definitely isn’t.
I agree with Llamas, though – I don’t regard Martin as a terribly good role model. I think his suffering 30 burgaries, though, and the sheer uselessness of the police, are mitigating factors in his support.
And I also agree that if someone enters a person’s house at the dead of night, he/she is at risk and must expect to be so. It’s not like the people concerned had got lost. If they had, they could have shouted out that fact and given Martin a chance to challenge them, show a torch, or do something to prove their honest intent. They didn’t, as as a result, one young man is dead and another spent five years in jail.
Well, Johnathan, I wouldn’t blame Mr. Martin even if they were, in fact, lost, or did attempt to surrender. That would simply make Barras’ death [i]unfortunate[/i].
I thought I would mention that in case anyone is under the false impression that the States is a kind of libertarian utopia. It most definitely isn’t.
Yeah, you beat me to it. Much as I hate to deflect praise, there are many places in the US that would take a Tony Martin to court. Most big cities and nearly all of the Northeast, for example.
The best I can say for those places is that he would more likely be acquitted than in the UK and, if not, would probably have been given a shorter sentence.
In 2003, anyway. Massachusetts, for one, had some pretty egregious anti-self-defense law in the ’80s.
The police did confiscate all seven of Mr. Gates’s firearms, though. I don’t see why that was necessary.
Chief Greenberg is a great police officer and has done an excellent job in Charleston. Savannah has been envious of Charleston for awhile now because although she has similar issues and almost equal resources she hasn’t had such good leadership. It does not surprise me that Chief Greenberg didn’t charge this man.
I don’t think he would have been charged in Georgia though either by the police or an elected prosecutor. Georgia has a specific category of self defense called defense of habitation (home, trailer, even car) which in theory at least provides broader protection than mere self defense or defense of others.
How do people who were not in Tony Martin’s home the night of the shooting know if Martin was threatened or even felt threatened? The people in Mr. Gates’ yard weren’t threatening Mr. Gates they were shooting at each other. I really don’t see the difference. It seems that people massage the Martin story to fit their politics.
That should read threatened or not? sorry.
How do people who were not in Tony Martin’s home the night of the shooting know if Martin was threatened or even felt threatened?
He’d have to be a pretty messed up pup if burglers breaking into his home of an evening didn’t make him feel threatened, don’t you think? Legendary British sangfroid notwithstanding.
I just got back from a week staying with friends who live near Springfield, MA. They had some marvellous stories, the provenance I cannot confirm, regarding people who have lost their homes to civil actions from burglars they injured in the defense of their property.
This case, on the face of it, seems less like Martin and like the recent case of a sub-postmaster who fought off an armed robber and killed him with his own shot gun.
No action was taken in that case; the force used was justified by the threat.
I am not sure why the cops felt it necessary to confiscate Mr. Gates’ firearms. I am not even sure what the legal justification for this would be, especially for the 6 guns not used to shoot the intruders.
I feel that 3 gangbangers having a shootout on your front lawn is a clear and present danger to you, from stray bullets alone, and that you should be allowed to terminate this threat with extreme prejudice.
As for moral justifications to use deadly force to defend your person and your property, it is hard to beat A Nation of Cowards.
My, my, my, there’s a lot of opinions there.
Most can be summed up in this quote:
‘As things stand, my gut tells me that you may morally use any force you consider necessary to incapacitate someone who violently intrudes upon your home.’
Lots of conditionals and riders there.
‘Any force you consider necessary’ is troubling – it makes you the judge of another’s actions, in circumstances where I think we can all agree that judgement may be significantly impaired. That’s why the law in most civilized places sets a ‘reasonable force’ standard, and then only in response to a threat to life or limb.
‘who violently intrudes upon your home’ needs definition. If it means ‘with violence towards a person’, then absolutely, whatever force is required to subdue the intruder. If it means housebreaking, with no violence towards a person – well, that’s something else. That’s giving a homeowner a free ride to passany sentence, up to and including death, for housebreaking. Not a good idea, ISTM.
I am still very troubled by this outpouring of simple hate that says, in essence, that burglars forfeit all their rights and may be shot down on sight. I’m no advocate for the rights of criminals (I have served as a police officer in the US so I know something about the subject) but the sentiments expressed here speak to something rather dark – that burglars are subhuman and may be despatched by householders, like vermin.
Despite protestations to the contrary, that’s vigilantism. The opportunity for error is high, and the damage cannot be undone. One poster describes how he would consider the death of a perfectly innocent person, shot by mistake, to be ‘unfortunate’, and that no blame could attach to the shooter. Sorry, but in my book, that’s a morally defective attitude – it’s the law of the jungle. We’re supposed to be more civilized than that.
A more civilized poster used this line:
‘the force used was justified by the threat.’
and that’s the nub or crux of the issue. The use of force, up to and including the use of deadly force, must be reasonable and justified in light of the threat to life and limb. I’m more than happy to make full allowance for what was in the mind of the person involved – how he or she perceived the threat at the instant of decision. But not to accept the mindset, repeated here now many times, that any threat, or no threat, is sufficient justification for the use of any amount of force without consequences. It’s a sad state of affairs when the UK criminal justice system has sunk so low that people can actually begin to think that that sort of attitude is justified.
llater,
llamas
llamas: no way do I buy the story that you were a police officer in the US.
Not if you believe an untrained householder must guess a housebreaker’s intent accurately before deciding the degree of force morally allowed to repel him. No cop would trivialize how difficult a threat is to assess, except in hindsight, even by those who are schooled to make those judgments.
Counterpoint to Mr. Martin’s troubles. I have a story from a few years back. It happened in Walnut Creek, CA, about 5 miles from where I lived at the time.
A homeowner had a problem with his mailbox being destroyed repeatedly by people driving by and hitting it with a baseball bat. One night, he fired at the car, hitting and killing a passenger. The DA attempted to press charges (but was unable). All told, his legal expenses ran to about $30,000, most of which was covered by donations.
‘Mailboxing’ is a federal felony. He used deadly force to interrupt the commission of a felony. No charges were filed.
His mailbox has not been damaged since, nor have any of the others in the neighborhood.
There was no particular call to change the law regarding the use of deadly force, either. The law that is out of proportion regards mailboxing, not lethal force.
In California, both Mr. Martin and Mr. Gates would have been acting within their legal rights. Mr. Gates would have been on shakier ground, though, because he failed to kill the felon, leaving himself open to an injury lawsuit.
Llamas, when you say, “Martin shot and killed a man who offered him no threat,” you’re engaging in supposition at least equal to that you accuse me of by your “woulda – shoulda – coulda” comment. And in sum (keeping it brief because this could run & run) your position is very close to that adopted by most critics of Martin here in the UK, though I accept your comments more seriously than theirs because you come to the argument from a RKBA position.
Others have already pointed out that it’s difficult not to view an uninvited, dead of night, home intruder as inherently threatening; and frankly I contemplate poor Martin and think to myself, There but for the grace of God…
I don’t go along with the anyone-on-my-property-is-liable-to-be-shot-anytime attitude, but I just think Martin was wholly in the right, society is better off without Barras, a great wrong has been done, and the State’s authoritarian detestation of individual self defence has been thrown into sharp relief.
Good for Mr. Gates! May his tribe increase (and his aim improve).
“Martin shot and killed a man who offered him no threat, and who was running away at the time”
How do you know he was not a threat? Given his background as a career criminal, who had repeatedly broken into Mr Martin’s home with impunity and stolen his property, I’d say he was demonstrably a threat. Besides, the only people who actually know what happened are Mr Martin and the surviving burglar. How can a law-abiding man be sent to jail for life on the word of a convicted career criminal? No one else on earth has any idea what the two burglars did or said that made Martin shoot to kill. Yet you seem happy to convict with no worries about the principle of reasonable doubt, let alone reasonable force.
In addition, you seem to think that force is only justifiable in the defense of the person. So if a gang started trying to burn down your house, and the police could not arrive in time to stop it, you wouldn’t consider yourself justified in using force to stop them? If someone stole a 90 year old woman’s life savings, she would have to try to stop the theft using her bare hands?
Furthermore, you are forgetting the fact that Mr Martin did *not* wish to set himself up as judge, jury and executioner. For all the previous burglaries, he followed the usual recourse of complaining to the police. They subsequently told him that, not only could they not arrest the perpetrators, but that they would not even be able to protect his property in future.
When the state offers its citizens no protection against criminals, what are they supposed to do? They quite resonably decide to look after themselves, rather than be repeatedly preyed upon with impunity. It was not Tony Martin who set him self up as judge, jury, and executioner – rather it was the intruders, and then the state, that forced him into that situation.
Finally, the notion that a householder can calmly assess a threat, like some kind of cold-blooded dispassionate trained marksman, while criminals are burgling his house is pure fantasy. It is simply immoral to punish householders for making errors of judgement, which have been forced on them by criminals. No one should have to judge whether or not someone else is a big enough threat to kill them. But, given that criminals force law-abiding citizens into this position, we cannot hold them responsible if they then overreact. Place the blame at the initiators of violent crime – the burglars – not at the victims who are only trying to defend their life and property.
My, my, my, there’s a lot of opinions there.
This is a blog and the comments section is provided to let people expound on what they think of the article which has been written, which is to say, express their opinions… so saying that is rather like standing atop a ski slop and remarking “My, my, my, there’s a lot of snow there.”
Well… yeah
Do people want to be able to act as judge, jury and executioner in these matters?
What legal boundaries do the proponents of this idea suggest in order to safe guard against problems.
If, for example, a person kills a member of their household assuming them to be a burglar and therefore fair game, are they to be prosecuted for murder (most likely manslaughter) or would people rather that crimes committed in your own property where you believe you are in the right should be no body elses business?
It is simply immoral to punish householders for making errors of judgement, which have been forced on them by criminals.
What if they kill somebody whom in their fear they assume is a criminal but later turns out not to be – surely that is why householders should be careful.
A mistaken shooting by a householder would be treated in the same way as a mistaken shooting by the police or any other armed person who thought their action was legitimate. I.e. a jury would judge whether the response involved reckless use of force, or negligence, or whether it was the action of a reasonable man under the circumstances.
It would be similar to prosecuting people for car accidents – if it’s a genuine accident, then the person responsible would go free; if it was due to negligence or recklessness, they may well go to jail, possibly for quite a long time (but not for the same amount as a true murderer)
Patrick, I wonder if you could comment on the case of Karman Willis, an Albertan teenager shot while joyriding on a farmer’s property?
Now shooting someone breaking into your house is one thing, but I have a lot of trouble with the idea of shooting someone clearly posing no immediate threat, albeit showing a lack of mature judgement, as teenagers are known to do.
Kevin: eh? What does this have to do with anything? Per the article, A was shot on B’s property years ago, and the B family was ostracized locally but not charged for it.
What does that bring to the conversation?
Good for Mr. Gates. Hopefully he won’t have to sell his house to pay for lawyers if he gets sued by those he shot at.
While I agree that Martin’s case is not identical to Gates on the face of it, I’d like to consider the fact that Martin had been told there was nothing the police could do to help him. Essentially Martin was on his own.
I can understand Martin believing his life may be in danger and he had no recourse but to fight back. How else could he have fought back knowing it was up to him alone? It sounds like Martin’s life was a nightmare and he had been pressed against a wall with nobody to help. In such a situation as Martin found himself in, I would find him not guilty if I were on his jury. I would not have given Martin any jail time at all. Scott free.
Someone who has seen the inside of a prison once told me that if I was using deadly force to defend myself, make sure it’s only my word against a dead person’s what happened. I know it sounds horrible but that is what I would try and do… make it my word against a dead person’s word.
To me, the way the Martin case has been handled sends a strong message to make sure it’s only *you* who live to tell the story. I know this sounds awful, but I believe that’s what I’d do if I were defending my house and family from an intruder I thought may be armed.
I’ve been thinking about the Martin case.. and it stinks. It’s not really a matter of self-defense, though that enters into it. It smells to me like a cover-up by an incompetent bureaucracy.
The police screwed up, someone died, they needed someone to deflect blame to, so they pinned it on the freak.
… and as a freak, I’d like to say I really resent a brother anywhere being treated like that.
S. Weasel: Patrick has stated a pretty extreme view, namely “To me it doesn’t matter what the circumstances are–it doesn’t matter that they weren’t armed“. Essentially, endorsing the right of a property owner to shoot trespassers.
I find this hard to believe, so I pulled up a case I recalled where exactly that happened. A wacko offed some teenagers driving on his property in a pickup. I never encountered anyone who did not consider the shooting an outrage. There was no question that the police wanted to prosecute, but were unable to because they were never able to identify who fired the shots. I was curious if Patrick supported the right to shoot even in this extreme case.
A wacko offed some teenagers driving on his property in a pickup.
Where did it say that?
No charges, even years down the pike. If they don’t have enough to prove who did it, how can anyone comment on why it was done?
Ah, this is quite a famous case in Alberta, and a lot of the background was skipped over. For some background search on Wiebo Ludwig and Trickle Creek Farm.
At first Ludwig was a darling of the lib-left set. An eco-terrorist who blows up oil wells and makes junk science claims about miscarriages caused by nearby oil wells can’t be all bad. But then they figured out his farm is a Taliban-like enclave where the women are subjected to head shavings and other medieval degradations. So some teenagers on a joyride found his farm a tempting target, but they got gunned down in the driveway.
The police can’t figure out who pulled the trigger because the entire clan refuses to talk to the police. This “family” farm contains about 24 people and three generations living a medieval existence, except for the oil well bombings.
For some background search on Wiebo Ludwig and Trickle Creek Farm.
It’s your point, you do the legwork.
The most you’ve got a case for right now is a dead teen turning up on some nutty commune. What that is supposed to lend to the discussion, I can’t imagine.
Evidently you’re interested in a pissing contest, not a discussion. Well, piss on your own.
I don’t think I’ll elaborate on the relevance of a trespasser on the Ludwig farm being shot to a discussion on the shooting of trespassers. In any case I was curious about Patrick’s opinion on the matter, and am not interested in a pissing contest.
I don’t think I’ll elaborate on the relevance of a trespasser on the Ludwig farm being shot to a discussion on the shooting of trespassers.
Where’s the evidence they were shot for trespassing? A kid turns up dead out at Nutcase Farm, and that’s your lot. How about a statement from the kid who survived? Any history of harassment by locals? Prior complaints from ‘joyriders’ of a hostile reception? If they can’t figure out exactly who fired the shots, they surely can’t figure out why.
If you want to talk about whether shooting someone simply for trespassing is okay (or, now you don’t want to talk about it, I guess), you picked a bad example. When no example was necessary.
Kevin, for the sake of argument I’ll assume Ludwig pulled the trigger–in that case I think a warning is in order, as well as a reasonable period of time to leave, before any shooting-to-kill commences. In any case, I believe the onus should be on the prosecution to prove that the shooting was unjustified and without warning, rather than the homeowner to justify their actions.
And S. Weasel is right to ask about the circumstances. I base my answer on the assumption that Kevin’s narrative is both accurate and that the trespassing was an isolated and benign incident.
There is, of course, an easy and defensible distinction between someone trespassing on your property and someone breaking into your house.
I think that there should be a strong presumption that a shooting someone who has broken into your house is justified, and I am reluctant to bog it down with requirements to warn, to determine intent and degree of armament, etc. Note that this would be only a presumption, that a sufficiently strong case that the shooting was not justified could still prevail.
As for someone merely trespassing on your property, a different standard would be appropriate, if for no other reason than much “mere” trespass, especially in rural areas, is mistaken or otherwise benign.
Thanks, Patrick. I thought you had a more nuanced view than a simple open season on trespassers. If anyone is interested in more details on the case there is a full book written on the background: Saboteurs. It brings up a lot of interesting questions for a libertarian to ponder. He’s running a religious commune and objected to oil development nearby, but not on, his property. Some of the concerns are reasonable, since they are sour gas wells. Ultimately he took the law into his own hands for both by bombing oil wells and shooting trespassers. For a libertarian advocating strong property rights(of which I am one), there is much to consider about how far these rights go in this case.
I really can’t understand why Gabriel didn’t mention the matter of Gates’ guns being siezed by the police. This is common practice in the US, well predates broader “civil asset forfeiture” laws, and goes way beyond shooting incidents. The police will use almost any pretext to confiscate your guns, any violent crime, any search of your house, or any search of your car, even if you’re transporting the guns legally. They’ll tell you something like “they need to check to see if they’ve been used to commit any crimes.” But, once they have them, even though totally “clean”, you frequently have to sue to get them returned. If you fail to run the gauntlet of “fighting City Hall”, your guns will either be auctioned off or mysteriously become the property of individual police officers.
I could be wrong, but as I remember the case, Mr. Martin shot at 2 burgalers inside his house when he saw them, one carrying a prybar, approaching down a dark hall. To me, that sounds pretty threatening. Here in Colorado, he would have gotten a pat on the head from the local police for saving them the paperwork on the first (dead) one, and making the second much easier to find.
New York has, I believe, 3 cases currently pending in which citizens used firearms to defend themselves, their property, or their families. The justification is transparently there in all three cases, and the DA is trying to figure out how to make these embarrassing cases go away. He knows there will be hell to pay next election if he prosecutes.
As to Mr Gates: Next time use 00 shot.
It all sounds more like baghdad than paradise to me!
S Weasel wrote:
‘llamas: no way do I buy the story that you were a police officer in the US. ‘
Huh?
You may not ‘buy it’ but it is absolutely true. You just called me a liar.
However, I can understand – very well – how you could form that opinion, from the inanity of your subsequent comment, to wit:
‘Not if you believe an untrained householder must guess a housebreaker’s intent accurately before deciding the degree of force morally allowed to repel him. No cop would trivialize how difficult a threat is to assess, except in hindsight, even by those who are schooled to make those judgments.’
If you actually had read, and thought about, what I posted, you would have realized that I understand very well the desperate issues involved in making these decisions in the heat of the moment. What do you suppose the words ‘terrible calculus’ mean, pinhead? In subsequent posts, if you had bothered to read them, you would have seen where I discussed this further, as for example when I wrote ‘I’m more than happy to make full allowance for what was in the mind of the person involved ‘ and other, like sentiments.
Surprise news for you, sunshine – police officers actually think quite hard about all sides of issues like this. Probably because they (unlike you) have knowledge of both sides of such matters and can fully understand the implications for all concerned. I’m not an officer anymore, but when I was, issues like this were common discussion topics at the coffee shop and in the locker room, and it would (obviously) surpise you considerably to hear the sorts of opinions expressed by those who actually have to deal with these matters.
Back to Tony Martin, if we may – I think that Dishman has exactly the right way of it – the police signally failed to protect Martin or prevent repeated burglaries at his home. When he finally lost control of himself and killed a man with (at best) marginal justification, he was prosecuted (in part, at least) to divert attention from the dreadful way in which law enforcment had failed him.
That being said, we might want to also bear in mind that a jury (which heard all of the facts) convicted him, and convicted him of murder in the first instance. Apparently, 12 of his peers found his actions so unjustified that the were able to concur without difficulty that what he did deserved serious punishment.
llater,
llamas
Cobden Bright wrote:
‘In addition, you seem to think that force is only justifiable in the defense of the person. So if a gang started trying to burn down your house, and the police could not arrive in time to stop it, you wouldn’t consider yourself justified in using force to stop them? If someone stole a 90 year old woman’s life savings, she would have to try to stop the theft using her bare hands?’
Your examples are good ones, albeit emotionally-charged.
I stand by what I said – the use of deadly force is only justified in defence of life or limb. As frustrating as that may sound, we do not sentence burglars, thieves or arsonists to death.
To say otherwise is to place property above life, and I don’t think that’s civilized.
Now, in a situation such as Martin’s, I can fully understand the frustration of a person who finds himself unprotected by those who are sworn to protect him. But that still does not justify executing burglars.
A man is dead, and the person who did it should be called to account for what they did. When Martin was called to account, a jury convicted him – in other words, they found that what he did was not justified by the circumstances, as set forth by the physical evidence and Martin’s own testimony. I don’t have a record of the trial before me (maybe someone can link it so we can all be certain what was actually said) but as I recall, Martin never claimed a specific threat to his person, and indeed said that he din’t quite understand what was going on – he just pointed the gun, closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.
Dave O’Neill wrote:
‘Do people want to be able to act as judge, jury and executioner in these matters?
What legal boundaries do the proponents of this idea suggest in order to safe guard against problems.’
and that strikes at the crux of the matter. Many people here apparently do want the right to be judge, jury and executioner, with no questions asked. But the problems are obvious and manifest. That’s why the law has evolved as it has – to say that deadly froce is only justified in the face of a threat to life and limb. The alternatives are simply too unpalatable in a civilized society.
All this talk about how householders have shot burglars and got away ‘with a pat on the head’ are sheer nonsense. If a man is dead, it’s going to be investigated, and if the killer’s story of justifiable self-defence is not unequivocally proven, there’s going to be charges. Such talk is the self-comforting chatter of those who have never had to make these kinds of decisions, and speak to a dark and jungly mindset. Just look at how lightly people are claiming ‘yeah, I’d whack the guy and make sure he’s dead, that way, there’s noone to contradict MY version of events!’, or words to that effect. Heaven forbid that anyone here will ever have to face those choices. If it’s that easy for you to kill someone, you may want to look inside your own head and see where the heart of darkness truly lies.
What would I do, in the cases mentioned? Well, there’s always a loaded pistol not too far from my hand, and that’s where it would be if I were to confront such a situation. In my time carrying a badge, I never had to even think about coming to such a point, and that was sometimes in the face of people about whose ill-intent there was no possible question. But if I chose to use that deadly sanction, I would hope that I could make a judgement that I could justify later, and if it turned out that I was wrong, I would have to carry the consequences of what I did. With every powerful natural right comes grave responsibility.
llater,
llamas
How on earth did a Canadian get a gun?
How on earth did a Canadian get a gun?
As I recall Canadian gun ownership is very high.
Lots of shutguns, hunting riffles and the like. Much lower handgun ownership though and, although I might be wrong, weapons have to be stored “correctly” and not easily available except when in use.
As I recall Canadian gun ownership is very high.
Yes, indeed, in spite of nonsense laws passed by the Liberal elite in Canada, gun ownership is very high in Canada. In rural Alberta attitudes to gun ownership is very similar to those in rural Texas.
llamas wrote: Your examples are good ones, albeit emotionally-charged. I stand by what I said – the use of deadly force is only justified in defence of life or limb. As frustrating as that may sound, we do not sentence burglars, thieves or arsonists to death. To say otherwise is to place property above life, and I don’t think that’s civilized.
I can’t speak for all or even most jurisdictions, however, where I live, the above simply isn’t true. The Arizona Revised Statutes contain specific definitions for when it is permissible to use deadly force. These include the prevention of: kidnapping, rape, murder, arson of an occupied structure, and burglary in the first degree. Both burglary and arson include any structure that could potentially be occupied. In addition, while the law does not allow the use of lethal force in cases of simple trespass, it does specifically allow the threat of lethal force, and the actual use of non-lethal force. So I can’t use a shotgun on the Fuller Brush salesman, but I can threaten him with one, or kick him in the groin.
There are also several southern states, Louisiana for instance, that grant blanket permission to shoot any intruder in a private residence, under any circumstances.
RK Jones
RK Jones –
Please provide a ciatation for your description of the Arizona Revised Statutes. I have looked at them myself, the relevant part is Title 13, Chapter 4.
They do not say what you say they say – or, put another way, your description of the statutes is seriously incomplete.
What the statutes say is that you may use the minimum force that a reasonable person would consider necessary (having regard to the circumstances), up to and including deadly force, to prevent the commission of the crimes you listed. What they do NOT say – and what your post implied – is that you may immediately use deadly force against anyone who you think is committing one of these crimes, and then claim statutory justification.
You may NOT threaten the Fuller Brush salesman with a shotgun and always claim statutory justification. If you do, you may be charged with simple assault, and it’s up to you to persuade a court that your threat was the minimum that a reasonable person would consider necessary to persuade him to leave. That might be a hard thing to do.
Here’s an excellent overview of AZ deadly-force law, from your friends at the Mesa Police Department.
http://www.ci.mesa.az.us/police/literature/useforce.asp
I don’t say this merely to show that I know better. Your description of the law of Arizona is unfortunately typical of widespread misunderstandings about what laws actually say vs what we think they say. Far too often, descriptions in these matters ‘cherry-pick’ the words of the law to produce a statement which appears definitive but which most definitely is NOT.
Shoot a burglar in Arizona, and you will still have to face the same investigation that Tony Martin faced – was your use of force the minimum that a reasonable person would consider necessary to stop or prevent the crime?
llater,
llamas
RK Jones – by way of a supplementary-
I should have been clear when I said
‘I stand by what I said – the use of deadly force is only justified in defence of life or limb.’
that that is a statement of my opinion.
That being said, I can live with wider statutory justifications which may permit the use of deadly force.
Let’s take the Arizona exmaple, since you cited it and it is typical of use-of-force provisions in other states. AZ allows for the use of force up to and including deadly force to prevent the following crimes:
(1) Murder;
(2) Burglary of a home or burglary by a person who is armed;
(3) Sexual assault (includes rape);
(4) Armed robbery;
(5) Kidnapping;
(6) Child molesting;
(7) Arson (burning) of an occupied structure;
(8) Assault involving deadly force.
Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 8 fall well within the definition of ‘defence of life and limb’, so long as the use of force is ‘reasonably necessary’. And I can live with the definitions of 5, 6 and 7, so long as a ‘reasonably necessary’ standard applies.
So you see that what I have been saying all along is about exactly what the law says in your jurisdiction and in many others – as it should, since most of these places derive their law in these matters from the English model. To wit:
The use of deadly force against another is only justified when it is the minimum force that a reasonable person would consider necessary to defend life and limb.
Now – let’s try and shoehorn what Tony Martin did into that definition . . . . .
llater,
llamas
llamas,
You are of course correct that any use of force must be judged reasonable by either a prosecutor or a jury. However, you stated that it was not acceptable to kill burglars, thieves, and arsonists. That simply isn’t true.
If you see a burglar or arsonist attempting to commit their crime who is not dissuaded by discovery, a warning, or threat of force, but who is not actively threatening you personally, it is still acceptable to use lethal force. Otherwise, what is the point of including this specific list of crimes in the law? Yes, the list is there as a set of affirmative defences, not blanket permissions, but that doesn’t change the fact that in this jurisdiction (Arizona), killing a criminal to, in effect, protect property is legal.
The Fuller Brush thing was mostly for schtick. Next time I’ll try to use some sort of wry emoticon.
RK Jones
If you see a burglar or arsonist attempting to commit their crime who is not dissuaded by discovery
Within the remit of the Martin affair, as the one killed was running away and the other was out of the window.
Do you therefore view it that they were dissuaded?
Dave,
Yes, I think that they probably had been dissuaded. And, under the letter of the law almost everywhere, Martin was probably in violation of the law to shoot them. Though in certain locales in the US, he probably would not have gone to trial. I have some examples of this sort of shooting not being prosecuted. Unfortunately, the newspaper clippings are on file at home. I shall try to post them this evening.
All this being said, I personally do not have a problem with this use of lethal force. Given the probability of repeat burglaries, with the attendant risk of physical harm, I think the killing was justified. Though even had this been a one-off robbery, with no possibility of a repeat, I have no problem with the use of lethal force to protect property.
If we are serious when we talk about ‘life, liberty, and property’ being basic human rights, then the use of lethal force to prevent the loss of even a trivial item or sum is fully justified. For my money, the only question is whether the dead were or were not attempting to deprive an innocent of one of these rights. I don’t think there can be any argument on that score in the Martin case.
RK Jones
RK Jones wrote:
You are of course correct that any use of force must be judged reasonable by either a prosecutor or a jury. However, you stated that it was not acceptable to kill burglars, thieves, and arsonists. That simply isn’t true.
If you see a burglar or arsonist attempting to commit their crime who is not dissuaded by discovery, a warning, or threat of force, but who is not actively threatening you personally, it is still acceptable to use lethal force. Otherwise, what is the point of including this specific list of crimes in the law? Yes, the list is there as a set of affirmative defences, not blanket permissions, but that doesn’t change the fact that in this jurisdiction (Arizona), killing a criminal to, in effect, protect property is legal.
The Fuller Brush thing was mostly for schtick. Next time I’ll try to use some sort of wry emoticon.’
I agree with your description of Arizona law. However, I hope you will agree that your restated definition is considerably different from what you originally said.
I hope you will also agree that when you said
‘you stated that it was not acceptable to kill burglars, thieves and arsonists. That simply isn’t true’, that you would agree that that’s not quite what I said. The devil is in the details.
What I said is that I don’t think (note, statement of opinion only) that it’s acceptable to kill B,T and A simply for committing those offences. In other words, to shoot burglars on sight, for example. That is the attitude that many here have endorsed – that it is perfectly OK to shoot a burglar dead the instant that he is found a-burgling. The Arizona statute, for example, endorses my opinion in the matter, setting as it does a reasonable minimum force standard, and then only when the burglar ignores a warning or threat of force.
In other words, it may be legal to use reasonable minimum force to stop a burglar, when all other avenues have been exhausted. I don’t like it, but I can live with it. But that ‘may be’ is a long way from the blanket statement that it ‘is’ legal to do so, a description which (with caveats) still appears in your post. It is from those sorts of statements, from which all conditionals have been removed, that the attitude comes that it’s ‘legal to shoot a burglar’ – at any time, under any circumstance, no matter what.
That being said, let’s parse the Martin case in the light of, let’s say, Arizona law.
Burglars? Yes, indeed, but not in the first degree (armed). Was Martin to know that they were not armed? Maybe, maybe not. Would a reasonable person have made the determination whether they were or were not armed? Maybe, maybe not. Most burglars are not. They offered him no violence and noone ever suggested that they did.
Ignored a warning? No, not hardly. I believe that even Martin himself acknowledged that he understood that they were running away before he shot them. I could be wrong. But the forensic evidence and the evidence of the wretched Fearon seems to make it pretty clear that they were in retreat when the shots were fired. Was Martin to know that? Maybe, maybe not.
Reasonable minimum force? Well, that’s open to debate. Since Martin did not know who the intruders were or whether they were armed – is it reasonable to immediately go to the use of deadly force? Maybe, maybe not.
There’s a lot of ‘maybe’s’ in there. In the middle of all those uncertainties – would a reasonable and prudent person raise a firearm and fire blindly? As Martin did? I submit that they would not. And that’s my opinion. Apparently, 12 jurors – who know everything there is to know about what actually happened, far more than I know – were of the same mind.
If it had just been as I described, Martin might yet have been able to sway the jury that what he did was reasonable, under the circumstances in which he found himself. What did for him, of course, was the testimony about his prior statements. He said, repeatedly, that he had a gun and was going to shoot burglars the next time they showed up. He didn’t say he was going to threaten them, he didn’t say he was going to see whether they were armed or not, he didn’t say that he would only use force to stop them – he said he was going to shoot burglars. In other words, he made it clear that he was both ignorant of the law, and indifferent to it, and had taken upon himself the right to shoot burglars on sight, regardless of the circumstances that a reasonable person might consider in deciding to do that. It would appear that the jury took him at his word. If the law requires (as it does) a ‘reasonable person’ standard in the use of force, a man who goes down the Dog and Bracket and tells everyone who will listen that he does not intend to be ‘reasonable’ should not be surprised when his defence – that he acted in a ‘reasonable’ way in self-defence – is not accepted.
Yours for the right to keep and bear arms for the defence of the person,
llamas
PS, I like the Fuller Brush man example. According to some folks here, it would be perfectly justifiable, although perhaps ‘unfortunate’, to shoot a Fuller Brush man if he doesn’t exit your property promptly enough for your liking.
You just called me a liar.
Why, yes. Yes I did. Let me guess…you were a DEEtective?