5
" In the anti-gun Spokane newspaper, internet comments indicated that many people had the clueless idea that Gerlach had shot the man – in the back – to stop the thief from stealing his car. One idiot wrote in defense of doing such, “That ‘inert property’ as you call it represents a significant part of a man’s life. Stealing it is the same as stealing a part of his life. Part of my life is far more important than all of a thief’s life.”
Analyze that statement. The world revolves around this speaker so much that a bit of his life spent earning an expensive object is worth “all of (another man’s) life.” Never forget that, in this country, human life is seen by the courts as having a higher value than what those courts call “mere property,” even if you’re shooting the most incorrigible lifelong thief to keep him from stealing the Hope Diamond. A principle of our law is also that the evil man has the same rights as a good man. Here we have yet another case of a person dangerously confusing “how he thinks things ought to be” with “how things actually are.”
As a rule of thumb, American law does not justify the use of deadly force to protect what the courts have called “mere property.” In the rare jurisdiction that does appear to allow this, ask yourself how the following words would resonate with a jury when uttered by plaintiff’s counsel in closing argument: “Ladies and gentlemen, the defendant has admitted that he killed the deceased over property. How much difference is there in your hearts between the man who kills another to steal that man’s property, and one who kills another to maintain possession of his own? Either way, he ended a human life for mere property! "
― Massad Ayoob , Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right to Self Defense
10
" The book explains – and, perhaps more importantly, photographically illustrates – death of human beings by all sorts of means. Gunshot, knife, bludgeon, stomping, strangulation, automobile collisions and auto-pedestrian strikes, death by fire, and more are thoroughly covered. When opposing counsel says of your opponent, “He only had a knife (or stick, or bottle)”… “He was unarmed!”… ”He was just driving his car!”…”He was only standing there with an ordinary can of gasoline and an ordinary Zippo lighter!”… …I would like you to be able to honestly say, “Counselor, in that moment I knew what he could do to me. My mind flashed back to pictures I had seen of someone stabbed/clubbed/stomped/run over/burned to death. I pictured my mother or my spouse having to identify me looking like that on a slab in the morgue, and I knew I had to stop him.” There "
― Massad Ayoob , Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right to Self Defense