re: So the employee that shot the robber is in custody

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Hypothetical: thugs are stealing your car; you walk out with a nine and unload. Who goes to jail?

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Technically you can only shoot if entering house/curtilage (depending on jurisdiction), or your life is in danger.

So if car is in your garage, blast away. If it's just out on the street, I'd be careful.

However, juries have not convicted shooters for protecting property (no life threat) in TX and LA...still, maybe chasing off with shots in the air would be preferable to a trial for your life?

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it’s never been morally or legally justifiable to try to kill someone for stealing

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Is it morally wrong to choke someone to death that was intent on Murder.

That is your democrat/communist position.

If horse theft was punishable by death then it should follow that theft of the modern day iron horse should carry the same penalty.

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I can see why they charged the guy - the robber took off as soon as he saw the gun, and the guy shot him as he was leaving. That said, if I'm on the jury he's not guilty of whatever they decide to charge him with.

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Agreed on both fronts. Plus store owner guy looked like an amateur with that pistol. Had he racked it then shot, he would’ve been fine but he kept fumbling with it and by that time dindu was leaving

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you're talking to a moron. logic won't work.

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Is it morally wrong to choke someone to death that was intent on Murder. That is your democrat/communist position.

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If horse theft was punishable by death then it should follow that theft of the modern day iron horse should carry the same penalty.

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What in the world? Come on, guys, engage on the issue at least a little bit. I haven’t personally attacked anyone and am just discussing this scenario abstractly.

We’re discussing an employee that shot someone smashing a case from across the room. There’s no evidence that the employee’s very life depended on keeping the items in that case from being stolen. For the sake of our conversation, and consistent with the video, as far as i can tell, there was no immediate threat to anyone’s life. So, we’re merely discussing whether it’s justifiable to shoot someone to prevent the theft of an item.

This whole “horse thieves” got shot back in the day proposition. No one has referenced a law that prescribed the death penalty for horse thieves or examples where the death penalty was applied at a formal trial for theft of a horse. I’m sure there were plenty of lynchings for horse thieves. Are you all sure that you want to hold up lynchings as the standard for whether thieves deserve to die?

Others have suggested that if one’s livelihood depends on the item being stolen, then that justifies shooting the thief. Someone suggested a car is the equivalent of a horse. Ignoring the fact that that argument is relying on past lynchings as justification, how does one propose that the theft of a vehicle equates to the threat to life when millions of people somehow continue to live in America, much less around the world, without a vehicle? I’m sure we can come up with a scenario where one is stranded in a remote location and the theft of one’s vehicle would leave him exposed to the elements, but that extreme scenario is hardly what’s being discussed here.

Others have suggested that theft represents the taking of one’s time, the time it took to earn enough money to purchase the item being stolen. While true, where’s the sense of proportion? Some finite amount of one’s hours being stolen justifies the taking of ALL of the thief’s hours of life until his death? For that matter, how do we deal with fraud and other crimes where money is stolen? Same functional effect as stealing property, but we don’t execute fraudsters.

When has the taking of a life ever been morally justified in response to the taking of property? If the answer is never, then we are forced to look for a justification in this particular shooting by appealing to some threat to life. Someone suggested if the thief was willing to violently smash the case, then he must be willing to use violence against a person and it’s okay to shoot him before there is ever an actual threat to a person. I’m not particularly bothered by the fact that this particular thief got shot, but I can’t exactly articulate, with any intellectual honesty, in this specific case with that specific video, what action actually demonstrated a threat to life.

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So if car is in your garage, blast away. If it's just out on the street, I'd be careful.

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You probably shouldn’t be giving legal advice.

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We’re discussing an employee that shot someone smashing a case from across the room. There’s no evidence that the employee’s very life depended on keeping the items in that case from being stolen. For the sake of our conversation, and consistent with the video, as far as i can tell, there was no immediate threat to anyone’s life. So, we’re merely discussing whether it’s justifiable to shoot someone to prevent the theft of an item.

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Are we talking legally justifiable, or morally justifiable?

I think it should be both. When you are weighing life vs value of property, it is the thief that valued his own life at less than the value of the property.

And from the store owner's prospective, he sells jewelry - a valuable product, and one that thieves target. He must let people know his store is not an easy target. If his life was not in danger this time, it might be next time.

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Sucky situation. Much as we hate crime, it’s never been morally or legally justifiable to try to kill someone for stealing. Whether punching through a barrier to steal some merchandise from a Walgreens or a glass case to steal some jewelry from a jewelry store, it’s not, in that moment, a threat of death or injury to someone. If the employee had moved to physically prevent the theft and the thief then threatened the employee, the analysis would be different.

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Must be a lot of untrained posters giving you the DVs because you are 100% correct. I fully support 2A but the laws do not authorize lethal force for stealing if no threat to person is made. Anyone attending concealed carry training will tell you that.

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I fully support 2A but the laws do not authorize lethal force for stealing if no threat to person is made.

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Since you apparently heard the audio, let us know what all was said. For sure no threats were made, according to you.

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What if I catch you trying to steal one of my other guns?

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Do you not see the nuance I’m trying to discuss?

Is your gun sitting all alone in a field with no one around? If so, you left an object worth, perhaps, a few hundred dollars and someone took it. Once he’s caught, and in jail, do we justify his death because he stole something?

Or are you suggesting this thief is in your house and putting his hands on a gun you know to be loaded? In that case, there is a very reasonable perception of a threat that this thief is in your house without permission and touching a weapon that you know is a deadly threat to you.

Can we not agree that there is a difference between the mere taking of something of value and an actual, articulable threat of death or great bodily harm and that deadly force is reasonable to prevent one but not the other?