I think it’s my turn. Aside from the posters here who discussed life=property, I wanted to bring several issues to the attention of those who voted no (or other).
I will assume two things:
1) You have a right to defend your life
2) You have a right to property.
Now, when we discuss the Second Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms, everyone is quick to say that we have the right to defend our lives, and the effective means to do so, among many things.
When the anti-gun people say, “you don’t need assault rifles,” we say, “irrelevant. We have a right to it” (among many things). Presumably, we say this under the pretense that it is our right to defend our lives, and therefore, it is our right to possess the means to defend our lives.
But I’m surprised that the second I replaced “life,” with “property,” the situation changed so much. Others here have already mentioned that life translates into property. We spend hours of our lives working so that we may afford a firearm, for example. So when that firearm is stolen, the thief has stolen not just an object, but the hours of our lives that were used to obtain it.
People here have said, “it should only be okay if you need that object to sustain your life.” That stealing a wallet from a working, single, mother of three is different from stealing a plasma TV from a wealthy man. But to these people I ask: since when was it okay for people to be treated differently under the law? Who are you to say that the working mother has more of a right to her property than the man has a right to his property? Ostensibly, some here would hang the guy and let the mother go (if both were to shoot).
So you are telling me that the wealthy have less of a right to their property than the poor? That it is largely okay to steal from a wealthy person (because they don’t “need” what they have), but not okay to steal from someone who needs that money desperately? That a mother who shoots to defend her property should be released, but a man who shoots to defend his property should be hanged, because as far as you are concerned, the man didn’t need to have the plasma TV anyway? Since when did the issue of “need” stop us from defending our right to keep and bear the very arms that we use to target shoot or defend our lives with? We don’t need assault rifles, plain and simple.
If “need” is no issue with regards to arms, why is “need” an issue with regards to property (assuming we have a right to both, that is). By the way, if you would like to argue that we do not have a right to property, well, we can talk about that too (I won’t for the moment, however).
As you can probably guess, this is not a question of individual preference. It is a question of principle, justice. If you have the right to property, how can defending your property not be? What is to stop someone from taking what is yours if you are not allowed to defend it with the threat of deadly force? At what point is it okay for someone to steal without facing repercussions? Twenty dollars? 500? At what point can a criminal no longer say, “hold on, I’m stealing the amount just below the law (or I’m not stealing enough to endanger your life), so you can’t touch me without me or my family suing you for every penny I didn’t steal yet”?
Many here have said, “well, I wouldn’t shoot if X were the situation, but I’d shoot if Y were the situation.” And for the most part, that point is different for everyone. So my question is, why is it okay to punish someone for his preference and not another, when in fact, you agree that it is justified to shoot over property (if that is the case)? Just because he has a different preference? You should be allowed to shoot someone over your car, but he shouldn’t be allowed to shoot someone over his wallet, because you would only shoot over something equal, or greater in value, to your car? How can we set a point up that is not arbitrary?
I could not live with myself if I shot someone over a few pennies, or a few dollars. Couldn’t do it. But will I damn a person to prison for protecting what is his from theft? Will I damn a person to prison because he has a different preference than I do? Absolutely not. The notion that one should only be able to defend his or her property with the threat of force, including deadly force, only after a certain point, implies that a criminal has a right to everything below that point. That you essentially cannot stop a person from stealing your possessions unless it crosses that threshold.
But when should that be? At what dollar value should one be able to retaliate with force? At what dollar value should one be able to retaliate with lethal force? The answer is arbitrary.
And what this means is that two people can be in exactly the same situation, and do the exact same thing (shoot the bad guy), and one may go free while the other goes to prison for the rest of his life. Is that justice to the people who voted no? Is it justice when a man in Texas defends his life, his property, faces fewer repercussions than the man who defends his life, his property, in California? That your supposedly inalienable rights vary by state? Rights are not supposed to “depend on the circumstances.” In my opinion, a poor person has as much of a right to their property as much as a rich person does. The notion that some people have more rights than others, as a function of the “situation,” is not something I’m quite ready to accept. It sounds no better to me than “separate but equal.” You should not have to surrender your right to keep and bear arms as you cross state lines any more than you should have to surrender your right to your life and your property.
It is true that we are not discussing reality. We are not talking about how the world is, because quite frankly, the world I just described is the one we live in. But we are talking about how the world should be, and if the world is to change at all, we must decide how we want to change, and then act upon that. My proposal is that the world should be a place in which everyone has a right to defend their life and their property in a manner that they see fit. That everyone is equal under the law, and that individuals can live their lives according to their morals, preferences, and beliefs without facing repercussion simply because someone else disagrees.
If a woman were to shoot an intruder over a tea set he was trying to steal, what would you do if you were on the jury? Hang her because to you, a tea set is not worth taking a life over, even though to her, the tea set (which happens to be a family heirloom that has been handed down for generations) is worth taking a life over? How can you reconcile the arbitrariness of taking anything but an absolute stance on this issue? If it can be agreed upon that we have a right to property, and consequently defend that property from being forcefully taken away, why should your arbitrary opinion on when we should be allowed to shoot overrule the arbitrary opinion of someone else? You cannot expect people to be treated equally under the law when random people get to enforce their arbitrary opinion on others. Is this acceptable, to you?
Because it sure as hell doesn’t sound acceptable to me.
Finally, I will address statements along the lines of, "It should be legal, but it is not always right."
I've always found this kind of statement to be funny. If something is not right, why on Earth should it be legal? Should we not strive to create a society in which what is legal is equivalent to what is right? Again, we fall back on the issue of arbitrariness. What makes your moral choices "right" for everyone? Why should the point where you would shoot be applied to everyone else, if it is agreed upon that defending ones property is a right? You say 500, I say 1000. If you're on the jury, a man will go to prison. If I'm on the jury, the man won't go to prison. Then, when we get a different jury, different results will come about. How is it fair or just if a man is sent to prison for doing one thing, but another man is set free for doing the exact same thing under the exact same circumstances? If there is no objective answer, people will not be treated equally under the law (I am of course, assuming that people being treated equally under the law is a good thing).
How can you send a man to prison for defending his car but not send a woman to prison for defending her wallet? Because rights "vary by circumstance"? Is that how it should be?
What is right for you might not be right for everybody. But if we all have a right to property, and the right to defend it, why should your arbitrary opinions take precedent over everyone else's arbitrary opinions?
