Criminal Procedure
By Mitch Berg
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
The law of self-defense does not cover property. So what law does? If the cops won’t do anything, if the prosecutors won’t do anything, if the courts won’t do anything, then the social compact has been breached by the government, and the right to defend property reverts to the citizenry.
They shoot looters, don’t they? These people were looters. They deserve to be shot. Pour encourager Les autres.
Joe Doakes
On the one hand, test cases are for other people.
On the other hand? If the system doesn’t start delivering the justice we pay our taxes for, people start going out and getting it for themselves, without bothering with the niceties of criminal procedure.
January 26th, 2022 at 6:14 am
I am seeing a solution in search of a problem here.
Protect your property. If you feel that this puts in grave physical danger, shoot the robber/looter.
January 26th, 2022 at 6:50 am
Instapundit recently had an opportunity to reiterate another of his inevitably well-formulated phrases. It falls right in line with this post.
Reminder: The justice system isn’t really there to protect citizens from criminals. It’s there to protect criminals from citizens. And within limits that’s a good thing, but when you create a state of nature, you get a state of nature. And in the state of nature people absolutely do kill to protect their property from marauders.
January 26th, 2022 at 8:30 am
Sure, it just makes sense.
But radical leftists and the media know that blacks commit property crimes at a much rate than any other group, so shooting thieves means shooting black people. So protecting your property is the new Jim Crow.
Inverting common sense has worked out quite well for them, the hardcore left (i.e., “strong democrats) is about 20% of the population, but they control the media, academia, the federal bureaucracies, education (including private k-12), and soon the military.
January 26th, 2022 at 10:17 am
OK, one thing to note here is that if someone breaks into your home, you do have the reasonable expectation that they’re going to try to commit a felony, so there is SOME protection of property at least past your door.
That noted, for outbuildings and other things on your land, I do think the law needs to understand that when someone comes and destroys a bunch of your property, they have indeed destroyed a lot of a person’s life, and there are times (e.g. hobbies and classic cars and the like) where insurance simply doesn’t make a person whole. The remedy doesn’t necessarily have to be “shoot to kill”, but as Frederick Douglass might have told you, those who do not get a remedy with the soap box, ballot box, or jury box sometimes do resort to the cartridge box.
January 26th, 2022 at 10:33 am
Bike, if they’ve broken into your house, they’ve already committed a felony and deadly force is allowed according to MN law. As to whether the local DA won’t then try to punish by the process instead of the punishment is an entirely separate deal.
January 26th, 2022 at 10:45 am
Two interesting theories in this regard I’ve read about of late.
The first uses the term “anarchotyranny” and gives an example from the real world: Under anarchotyranny shoplifting rings loot the shelves of your neighborhood stores without fear while your children are arrested for visiting a museum without their papers
The second discusses an apparently known phenomenon from Russia. I seen it described twice before but I can’t verify it. Bolsheviks released criminals from jail. Then they federalized their police forces. Convicted thieves were allowed to possess weapons because “that’s what thieves do.” A law abiding Russian found with a weapon was immediately arrested and prosecuted.
Does this sound familiar?
January 26th, 2022 at 3:32 pm
jdm has the right of it. It’s something well known in our hemisphere, too. Most recently in Venezuela.
I expect that what will happen here is that we will see the old model of hired protection for the wealthy and gangs or warlords for the less-well-heeled come limping up again.
January 26th, 2022 at 3:38 pm
Protect your property. If you feel that this puts in grave physical danger, shoot the robber/looter.
Bingo