ThePeaceFrog said:
Amnestic said:
ThePeaceFrog said:
Im sorry, but however hard you may argue otherwise, the taking of another mans life cannot be justified, the English system works perfectly well. The sad fact of the matter is that if people were too sure of their right to defend themself in their own home than opportunistic acts of 'self-defence' would sky-rocket. Also at the same time, as hard as it maybe for some of you to realize, even those who break the law have rights and if we forget this than we are just as guilty.
First of all, I have little-to-no sympathy for a burglar who has already been charged on 29 other occasions for the same crime and was looking to make this kid's his round 30.
Second, when the adrenaline starts pumping and things start getting crazy, your logic centre shuts down and your Survival Instincts take over. If you think someone's threatening your life you're damn sure not going to be thinking "Well, I should hurt him
just enough so he stops doing what he's doing." This is mostly true for people who haven't had any sort of training for life threatening situations (like, oh I dunno, a Chem Major at college?) You can say "Oh, he didn't need to kill him." but I highly doubt he was thinking straight even hours after the incident occured.
Read Malcom Gladwell's "Blink", Cops shot an innocent man 41 times not because they made the wrong call (he looked suspicious and fit the profile) but because of the way the initiated the encounter.
Instead of wearing police uniforms and having one guy slowly walking towards the suspect while your partner covers you. They had 4 plain clothes drive up to a black man (who didn't speak english very well) get out and start walking towards him. What would you have done?
The solution, which police are doing nowadays is to NEVER chase the suspect until you have backup (chasing raises adrenalin and lowers high level thinking). Similarly, the kid could have called the cops and monitored situation from a window, taking a weapon to face a small time crook (what if he was really an armed murderer?) is really not the best solution.
Ah, but if you see an intruder your adrenaline's already running. Gotta remember this is just a guy at College. It's all well and good us saying "The logical solution to this problem would be to X and then Y, rather than than Z." But if you put yourself in a similar situation you might find you doing exactly the same thing.
I'm not saying what the guy did was 'right', nor am I saying it was 'wrong'. Just that I understand why he did what he did and I can't fault his processes because I know that despite how logical I can be at the best of times, I probably wouldn't have done it any different.
Well, I would've probably used one of those metal bats or a gun, but that's besides the point really. Not the "best solution" I'll agree with, but certainly the one most people would jump to when faced with a burglar in their home.