Rishon Rishon

Killing burglars

Instapundit writes:

I agree. [That it should be legal to kill burglars in your home - DB] In fact, as self-defense against burglars generates positive exernalities, by reducing the number of burglars, and their willingness to break into homes which might be occupied (thus reducing the risk that people will suffer Mr. Symonds' fate), there's a good economic argument that it ought to be not simply tolerated, but actively encouraged and even subsidized.

It is interesting to compare this with halakha (Jewish law). According to halakha, you are required to kill burglars who break into your home, in self-defense. (In Jewish law, self-defense is not an option, but an obligation.) The reasoning is that a burglar who breaks into your home, as opposed to a thief who steals surreptitiously, comes prepared for opposition - i.e. he is prepared to kill you if he meets you. Therefore, killing him is by definition self-defense.

UPDATE: Instapundit links to a Daily Telegraph article. It is a shocking account of what happens to a society when it refuses to defend itself. It tells us a lot about what's going on in Europe today. Sample:

When I debated this issue with the eminent lawyer Lord (Andrew) Phillips on the Jeremy Vine radio show, he argued that while the number of burglaries would drop if there were an unqualified right of self-defence "the number of injuries to householders will vastly increase because the burglars will get their retaliation in first... It is an iron rule, criminals are more violent than victims."

The victim always has a psychological advantage over the attacker: If the price of aggression becomes to high, the attacker can walk (or run) away. Criminals don't want to get hurt, they want to get away with their actions.

After John's murder my mind was filled with violent thoughts. I imagined his killers strung up on gibbets in Trafalgar Square, being pecked at by the pigeons. Then I received a letter from his friend and fellow Catholic, Lord Grantley, who said: "John would have wanted us to pray not only for his family, but also for his murderers, that they should repent, for otherwise they would perish, a fate he would not have wished on anyone."

There is no contradiction between praying that murderers repent, and killing them in self-defense.

Posted by David Boxenhorn at December 6, 2004 09:14 AM