(June 1, 2016 at 9:38 pm)IATIA Wrote:(June 1, 2016 at 9:09 pm)dom.donald Wrote: Un-banning guns doesn't mean you'd be free to wave them around and shoot people for committing minor civil offences. I guess you're too young to remember this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Martin_(farmer)
Fortunately, Texas laws protect the homeowner.
True, but this is Texas. Which isn't exactly representative of the rest of the civilised world, when it comes to its views on guns.
You say 'fortunately'. But there is a justice system and a series of punishments that are generally proportionate to the crime. Does someone deserve to be killed (by you) for stepping on your lawn? In the UK (and plenty of other western countries), killing in self defence is legal. My problem is with particularly the American view of what constitutes self defence. Now we already know that the US government is a proponent of pre-emptive aggression in self defence, so it's hardly a surprise that many of its citizens feel the same way. Is stealing some furniture to fuel a drug habit worthy of the death penalty? It seems to me that nothing good ever comes out of having guns around. You try to pretend that it's always a 'him or me' scenario, but I would hazard a guess that this isn't the case 99% of the time.
