How about don’t break into someone’s house?
And ruin every American gun owner’s wet dream?
I’m a gun owner, and I have absolutely no interest in shooting someone ever.
You know how people who say people should eat less meat get a lot of flack because of those annoying vegans who spray-paint leather jackets?
That’s most gun owners. Perfectly reasonable people who have no interest in violence, take gun safety seriously, and store their guns safely.
The thing is part of responsible gun ownership is not wearing a shirt that says “fuck you, I have a gun.” We don’t make guns our entire personality, and we understanding that advertising our gun ownership will make people think we’re like the redneck jackasses you see on TV AND make it more likely to have our cars and homes broken into.
The number one way to get your car windows smashed and everything in it cleaned out is to put a Glock sticker on the window.
Nah, sorry mate. I’d say your stats are wrong. I think the majority of gun owners in US are hateful idiots that would love to shoot someone - preferably a Mexican. There’s no great way to prove this, but it would be foolish to give Americans any benefit of the doubt that leans toward responsibility when stupidity clearly prevails. You might not be a shithead, and perhaps all gun owners are not, but I think the majority of gun owners are. Your Vegan analogy will hold water when the Vegans overwhelming vote for a convicted criminal nitwit platforming on hate and vengeance.
“Source: my ass”
There are around 400 million civilian-owned guns in the US. That’s almost half the entire world’s civilian-owned firearms. The US doesn’t have anywhere close to half the world’s homicides.
With the recent uptick in gun gomocide rates, we reached nearly 20,000 in 2022. That’s obviously very high. But if if we had 20 years straight of those horrifying death numbers, the odds of any specific gun being used in a homicide would still be less than 1/1000.
We have a violence issue in the US, no question, but if 0.01% of guns were used in homicide annually, the murder rate would be doubled. The fact is that the vast, vast majority of gun owners aren’t what you say they are.
I didn’t call them homicidal maniacs. Most gun owners in the US are under educated hateful bigots because most people in the US are. The only convincing stats on what I was talking about would be percentage of gun owners that experienced a home instrusion, had access to a firearm during the intrusion, and did or did not discharge the firearm. I wasn’t able to locate such data but this would be interesting. American gun owner’s don’t need positive assumptions being made about them in the absence of data.
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No offense. Who cares. If someone is an asshole enough to break into someone’s house then they better be ready.
Unless it’s a cop. Then you should have known better and the state can do with you as it pleases while we clap.
Fuck that. Break in my house and watch what happens. It’s not up for grabs. People that steal from other people are pieces of garbage. Steal from corporations.
Do you really think breaking and entering deserves a death sentence? I’m not condoning it by any means, but equally death seems like a disproportionate response, not to mention the long term effects this is bound to have on the child.
On the absolute surface level, you make what seems to be a good point. I don’t think that point holds up to scrutiny, though, and such lazy (no offense meant by this; I’m not calling you lazy, only the point you’ve made) reasoning is not far removed from using “think of the chldren!” to justify an agenda.
Any dwelling that is not yours is generally assumed to be off-limits absent an invitation to enter. Ignoring that and breaking into said dwelling is implicitly a statement that you are disregarding the safety and security of the inhabitants. That further implies that you equally have no regard for the health and well-being of the inhabitants, as your actions are putting your needs or desires ahead of theirs. You have, wittingly or not, made yourself a threat to the inhabitants of the dwelling.
Responding to an immediate, credible threat against one’s life with lethal force is quite rational.
I have no doubt that this will have detrimental long-term effects on the boy. I also have no doubt that the very experience of being present during a home invasion would have had similar long-term effects.
You appear to have completely missed the point of my post and focussed on a side point. There’s a world of difference in defending yourself and thinking someone deserves death for entertaining a house.
To your other points, first off I haven’t said anything about the rights or wrongs of the child defending themselves, I’m not sure why you’re making the argument about that. I do however disagree there’s a basic assumption that anyone entering a house uninvited has no regard for the health and wellbeing of inhabitants. The rest of the post just looks like leap after leap from that point forward.
It only looks like leap after leap to you because it doesn’t agree with your basic premise.
Well, no, you’ve gone from “threat” to “threat to life” that’s a leap. I’m not sure where it disagrees with my original premise, I’m not sure it has anything to do with my original premise.
I don’t have the facts of the case, but it’s not like the defenders have the luxury of knowing the intruders intentions and how they will behave, but considering they are already doing something severely illegal, it’s not much of a stretch to think the intruder would be willing to put their life at risk, and in that context, it is absolutely justifiable to kill in defense.
Nobody breaking into inhabited houses is going to show up holding a feather duster.
If an intruder knows he is intruding and he doesn’t leg it as soon as he realizes someone is in the house, it is a very reasonable assumption to make that he has also got some kind of weapon.
The kid does claim the suspect threatened to harm or kill him.
The state shouldn’t be executing people for it but a regular person defending themselves is a different scenario. Police (allegedly) are trained in safely restraining criminals and taking them into custody. A regular citizen defending themselves is not. The safest thing for them is whatever takes their attacker down the quickest. Unfortunately that is generally going to be lethal force.
There’s a world of difference between defending yourself and feeling someone who breaks into a house deserves death.
I didn’t say they deserved death. I said you shouldn’t be worrying about the outcome (which is a decent probability of their death) while defending yourself. No one should be expected to hold back when their own safety is on the line. They didn’t put themselves in that situation. It’s entirely on the offender. If you manage to restrain/run them off without killing them, great but don’t risk your own life to do so.
I’m not really sure if you read my original post or not, it doesn’t have anything at all to do with what someone should or shouldn’t do when someone invades their home. It’s entirely to do with the “he had it coming”/“he deserved it” attitude a lot of responses seem to have.
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Yes
That sounds utterly unhinged if I’m honest.
Indeed, putting yourself and other at risk is unhinged , why would you violate the sanctuary of others like so otherwise?
Do you lack reading comprehension skills?
Agreed, you break the law you forfeit your life.
So you are down with someone breaking into your home and taking whatever they want including sexual liberties?
You are a better Christian than me.
Yeah that’s exactly what I said. Well done.
Also: Don’t be poor
Lots of poor people don’t break into other people’s houses.
and they remain poor
What exactly are you implying? That poor people must break into other people’s houses to escape poverty? Or that being poor just naturally gives one a predilection to break into the houses of others? Because the former is shitty, irresponsible advice that will get people maimed and/or killed, and the latter is insulting to the dignity of the less fortunate.
no I just meant that it’s only natural that poverty leads to crime
Get rich or die trying I suppose
fucking dies or goes to prison for life because even the kids be packing in America
being poor has nothing to do with breaking into another persons house.
just because you’re poor doesn’t mean you lack the ability to differentiate between right and wrong.
IMO stealing is an acceptable method of survival but stealing from an individual is wrong, while stealing from corporations is fine because they steal from individuals on an hourly basis.
From 2016 … lets talk about the child that just killed their family/sibling/neighbor/school with daddy’s gun, too.
Which one from the last month, you ask ? Doesn’t matter … pick one.
Yes, but that’s not Le Epic Chad Uber Cool. You don’t get to experience glee at the thought of being this person.
Why would I want to read something that makes me feel bad? Good Feels Only.
Most of this thread falls into two categories of people -
Shooting someone, under any condition, and not pouring you heart out for the person = psychopath
People who do illegal things are not actually people, please more authoritarianism
It is pretty obvious that almost no one, commenting here, has been in a situation where your life is truly being threatened, after your safety has been violated, and people who do not understand the how, and why, of criminal behavior. Yet they are all making very self-assured, absolutely black and white logic, statements as if they are the herald of truth.
To add to this comment…
People turn into animals under pressure and they cope with stress in unusual or seemingly unreasonable ways.
Taunting someone that you view as a threat to your safety may be a coping mechanism that serves to calm your own nerves, by making light of the situation and maintaining a sense of dominance over the aggressor.
It seems cold but in a life threatening situation there isn’t much room for thoughtful compassion, you have to do what you have to do to survive and there is no way to know what’s coming next. Even if things seem to have deescalated, it doesn’t end for a very very long time, thats what PTSD is all about.
Now, people who are engaging in illegal activity are people. I’ve been held at gun point, I’ve been shot at, and robbed. As much as I think these people deserve to go to jail I also hope that they eventually learn that what they did was wrong and want forgiveness. I would forgive them. All people are victims whether they know it or not, in various capacities.
The people that shot at me, probably had a harder life growing up and this is them fighting for a better life, as fucked up as it is, and as wrong as I think they are… Now, even with all of that said if I had a gun when this happened and I could get some good shots in, I might be talking some shit and I dont see that those two things conflict. I can be understanding of their situation, feel for them and feel bad for having to shoot them but also be taunting them at the same time. When I was robbed I jokingly told them to calm down as I was popping the register, they were pointing the pistol point blank at my face as I was being slightly dismissive of them, partially because thats who I am and also, Im sure, as a way to release tension.
There’s also the fact that the intruder was shot in the leg and didn’t die.
Yeah, and the kid is 11, instead of thinking “man, a full grown man broke into an 11 year old’s house, then threatened his life, and he shot the guy while running away, and then said mean things to him, he must have been in the middle of a big mind fuck, one that adults have issues dealing with, at 11, and isn’t acting normally, and this will have effects down the line we can’t foresee” many are like “I know exactly how people should behave to this specific childhood trauma, and this child is definitely a psychopath”.
OK bud, why don’t you tell me if the kid’s story makes sense, ok?
Kid was home alone petting the dogs, when he heard a noise upstairs. He was scared and grabbed a knife.
A man then appeared in the stairwell, saw the kid, and ran back upstairs. The man then reappeared moments later, and was now holding a gun. Making sense so far?
Now the man is coming down the stairs and this is when the kid claims the man is now telling him “he is going to kill me, [expletive] you, and all that”. Instead of running, the kid said he “upgraded his weaponry, picking up a 9mm handgun that was in the home”
So now the kid says he threatened to kill the man and ordered him to get out of the house, “I guess when I pulled the gun put on him he didn’t think it was a real gun cause he didn’t worry about it, he just kept walking”
Are you with me so far? The man supposedly has a gun and threatened to kill the kid, but doesn’t shoot. The kid suddenly has a gun and threatens to kill the man and orders him out of the house. The kid described the man as LEAVING the house.
Once the man is outside, the kid “fires a warning shot”. The man, carrying a stolen laundry hamper, starts running. That’s when the kid empties the magazine by firing 12 shots at the intruder.
“I shot through the hamper he was carrying. It was a full metal jacket bullet. It went straight through the back of his leg. He started crying like a little baby.”
That is the kid’s story of what happened, and it sounds like the kid invented a gun and a threat to his life in order to justify shooting someone who was running away. Also, how do you think that guy held a gun on the kid while holding onto a laundry hamper full of what I assume was stolen items?
Your story doesn’t make a lot of sense, but there are a bunch of extra details that don’t appear in either of the articles I’ve seen:
https://www.wptv.com/news/national/chris-gaither-11-year-old-boy-shoots-intruder-who-cried-like-a-baby
https://globalnews.ca/news/2675426/he-started-crying-like-a-little-baby-11-year-old-shoots-suspected-home-invader/So if you want to discuss the story’s details, maybe we should agree on those details, and you can give us something more than “trust me bro”.
Also, eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and traumatic events make it even less reliable, and when you’re talking about a kid it’s even harder to get straight. I ask my kid what they said 10 seconds ago and they can’t give me a straight answer. Maybe just fucking lay off the child. Jesus christ.
“Confidently incorrect”
I understand that it’s self defense, but does it feel weird to anyone else how comfortable a kid is with killing another person?? He doesn’t seem to have much remorse.
I got no proof other than my personal experiences growing up and observing kids while teaching them in groups at a school.
Children by in large seem to have little empathy for others. Children have little to no problem with bullying others without any emotional issues. Even to the point of pushing other kids to suicide. They have little regard for others and even less control over maturity.
I think empathy is something that you develop as you grow older. It’s more a mark of adulthood than childhood.
Sadly, this is very similar of my wife’s understanding of teaching kids from 11-18. Emotional intelligence is very different from standard intelligence, and it develops at different times for different people.
Sometimes it’s a pure lack of empathy, and other times it’s simply not being able to understand that people have their own shit they’re dealing with. It can be simple stuff like bullying someone going through a rough time at home/school, or showing zero remorse when a kid they’ve assaulted goes blind due to brain damage because “the kid was a fucking dweeb”. Some of the stories I’ve heard second-hand are absolutely fucking tragic, even in good schools.
I don’t know about that. I think a lot of kids feel empathy from a young age, and bullying behaviors are rather caused by a harsh environment and how they are treated by other people, especially parents.
I’m not so sure. Children have a lot of desire and drive to monopolize an adult’s attention and resources. This I think gives any one child a leg up on getting the best resources to survive better. And you can see it when you work with a group of children. They will group around you jostling for the best position to be first and get the best from you. They do of course, get better with age and as they learn patience, but there is still a lack of empathy to be found in their base behavior.
After all, if you grew up with siblings, I’m quite sure your parents at some point in your early childhood told you “Be nice to your siblings! You love them!” more than once. Or some variation on that theme. And if you are a parent yourself, you have used that phrase at some point also. Because who has better reason to want to “kill” each other than brothers and sisters? They want to get as much of mommy and daddy as possible. Those resources are scarce and your natural drive is to fight to get them.
And hopefully, as children age they learn to get and show empathy to those around them. Most do, but some never quite manage it.
He didn’t kill the intruder.
The guy was shot in the leg. It doesn’t say in any of the news coverage that he died.
Is it not possible that this photo was taken prior to the incident, and that the kid was bothered by the whole situation? I have a hard time taking the “little baby” comment too seriously. People act in very unusual ways when overdosing on adrenaline.
There is a news logo on the bottom. This is likely a still from an interview about the incident
Fair point. I can see myself using some comment like that to cope if I were in that situation.
Murca
A world where a kid can remorselessly shoot someone. Isn’t that great. DGAF if the guy “deserved” it or not for breaking in.
These kids are our future.
not if they stay in school long enough !
either thanks to education, or murica freedom bullets…
The only thing that can stop a bad kid with a gun is a good kid with a gun.
username checks out
Ok…. Can this trend on news site die crying like a baby too?!??
What trend is the image showcasing? Repetition?
Yeah! You just want to read an article and it turns out it’s just the headline repeating over and over
SEO baby!
I thought you were just upset that it was demeaning to babies. Sort of like “throw like a girl”.
As someone who used to be a baby, I feel offended by this article. I didn’t cry like a home intruder.
Isn’t this basically the plot of “Home Alone” and it’s very popular sequels playing out with a firearm? With FPS games as the cultural backdrop, why is anyone shocked at this? Or is this just hand-wringing?
The bandits in Home Alone had many chances to turn back and abandon the job.
You shoot someone, they stay shot.
Many of the cutesy cartoony traps in Home Alone would have absolutely killed the bandits in real life.
That’s the beauty of it
Unless you are a criminal. Those fuckers can handle a LOT of bullets inside their bodies. Not to count stabs. SO MANY stabs
Doesn’t look like a dancer.
I don’t know if teabagging counts as dancing anyway
I mean good but is no one worried about the kid not having any issues with taking someone’s life? Maybe I’m missing out on some extra pieces of info, but it is a bit concerning even if it is an intruder.
He’ll probably turn out “normal,” which is to say an asshole with several mental disorders.
So Lemmy. Nice
He didn’t actually kill the intruder so that’s something he can probably look forward to either after joining the military or law enforcement.
But joking aside, children by in large, don’t seem to have much empathy about such things. You can see this in the bullying they do in schools and on the playgrounds. And it doesn’t seem to bother them much.
He didn’t kill the suspect just injured and the suspect had threatened to kill him.
If you break into a home you get what you deserve and that includes insults and\or deletion.
apparently lemmitors hate themselves so much that self defense is incomprehensible to them
Hilarity ensues when Lemmy subscribers start buying guns en masse to ridicule and own republicans after losing the elections, becoming the very thing they swore to destroy
In this case, a bullet to the leg which he survived.
I used to be a burglar like him, until I took a bullet to the knee
cant believe the amount of people feeling bad for the intruder
like, do you also feel bad if a nazi gets punched?
No but death is always tragic. It’s almost impossible to deserve death. You can defend yourself, but mocking someone you just killed is psychopath behaviour. Things like this don’t happen in other countries.
Good thing the guy didn’t die then!
Death is not always tragic. Life is cheap and always had been. The natural world shows us how little the world cares about life and always has. Just accept this, try to be better than this and move on
they definitely do happen in other countries. look up the necklacing incidents in Nigeria. If you look into it, you’ll find that many cultures do not take kindly to theft or b&e and respond in far more violent ways than you may expect.
Comparing the USA to Nigeria is delusional.
Yes, Nigeria appears to be more civilised.
“this doesn’t happen in other countries”
“yeah it does actually”
“how dare you”
🤡
someone makes an argument: pick the most extreme adgecase imaginable where rule doesn’t apply while not addressing the problem at all 😎😎😎
The life expectancy of nigeria is 55. That’s 20 less than the world’s average (and apparently north korea?). I should have said developed country, sure. But the point stands. Murdering is not funny. The USA is one of the richest and most developed nations in the world, but is 57th in homicide rate (right behind zimbabwe to give some perspective)
nice soapbox bud, I suggest you go and start breaking into homes in finland or kosovo for example and see how long it takes before you find yourself full of holes
you never specified which countries can be compared
Ok? I didn’t say that I did. Doesn’t make it less delusional.
Wait until that intruder is a postal worker/drunk neighbor/ distant relative. Capital punishment is too severe.
Why is the postal worker letting themselves into my house and threatening with language like “I’ll F you up?”
yeah sorry buddy but if someone is forcing their way into my home, how the fuck am I supposed to know what their intentions are? I’m bashing their head in
Some Lemmings have this weird idea that just because simple thieves don’t deserve death for stealing bread or whatever that home invasions shouldn’t be treated as deadly threats.
Now if you want to talk about a duty to retreat, or that when an invader flees you don’t have a right to shoot them in the back because they’re no longer a threat that’s one thing but it’s not even a matter of the “nuance” our resident hypocrites like to babble on about when it’s a kid and we don’t know what the invader was doing because it’s a shitpost meme and we don’t have the full story.
If he was stealing bread, as a former fat kid, I get it…but he would’ve been doing the kid a favor. Last thing he needs is more carbs.
…dude.
Looooong list of punchable people in the US atm.
Line up, fuckers!
Imagine living in a society so deeply fucked up that some people feel the need to become burglars and others feel the need that attacking them with deadly weapons is the only option.
And then imagine that this is celebrated.
Oh well…
Na, fuck that, This guy might be a saint with the most tragic relatable backstory imaginable but the last thing this kid should do is hesitate long enough to hear that story or believe it, also a kid just can’t fight back even if he could he shouldn’t take the chances, as far as him saying he cried like a baby, 🤷 you broke into my house dude you aren’t gonna be praised. This kid has every right to be proud, in this situation we are nothing but animals and he did exactly the right thing.
you broke into my house dude you aren’t gonna be praised
Of course not.
This kid has every right to be proud, in this situation we are nothing but animals and he did exactly the right thing.
So is it right to put deadly weapons into the hands of children?
What if he had killed the burglar? Good thing to have on the conscience of a child, right?Don’t get me wrong. I totally understand that in extreme situations people should defend themselves. But was this an extreme situation which justifies these actions?
What the child said is already deeply disturbing:
“I told him I was going to kill him if he didn’t get out of my house,” said Chris.
And why the fuck do children have access to weapons?
he grabbed a 9mm handgun
Then there is this:
The intruder made it out the front door, but that’s when Chris started firing off bullets. As the intruder was about to jump a fence, Chris’s 12th and final shot hit the bad guy in the leg.
( Citations from: https://www.wptv.com/news/national/chris-gaither-11-year-old-boy-shoots-intruder-who-cried-like-a-baby )
Intruder was outside, going away, and the kid started shooting.
The kid could’ve just ran away. Instead of trying to kill someone or getting themselves killed by such a behaviour.No. The kid shouldn’t be proud. Neither should anyone. That’s just fucked up. And raising kids to become possibly killers is not making it better overall.
He can be lucky not to have killed that man and that he (the kid) didn’t get seriously injured.People can and should be better than this.
Anytime someone forces their way into your home it’s an extreme situation. The kid shouldn’t have followed him past the threshold but beyond that whatever means necessary to protect himself is justified. No one should be worrying about the safety of their attacker when they are defending themselves. The invader could have ensured his own safety by simply not doing that.
but beyond that whatever means necessary to protect himself is justified. No one should be worrying about the safety of their attacker when they are defending themselves
Are burglars usually murderers? Don’t they usually care about stealing stuff to make some form of profit out of that?
I don’t share your view. You don’t need to kill someone in order to stop some form of crime. Especially not if there is no or a low risk of bodily harm.
Self defence only goes so far as to inrerrupt and disable an attack. The mildest means possible are the preferrable ones. For example, if some wants to beat you up, you don’t go on and kill them after you’ve defeated them and they’re unconscious on the ground.
In this case, the best the kid could’ve done is to just run away and call for help. It would’ve been safer for himself and prevented that he possibly might have become a murderer.Self defence has limits. And for good reason. You can’t just do anything you want, just because someone attacks you. You do what is necessary and possible for you. Nothing more, nothing less. Otherwise you yourself become a culprit.
Are burglars usually murderers? Don’t they usually care about stealing stuff to make some form of profit out of that?
Sometimes they are. Sometimes they’re rapists. There are some sick motherfuckers in this world. When I was a kid a woman just down the street was raped in front of her kids by three home invaders. You can’t know the intention of the person breaking into your home. The safest bet for yourself is to assume the worst. There’s no way to know their intentions until they act and by then it may be too late. Especially if you’re not trained in “the mildest means possible” or are smaller and weaker than the intruder. You don’t owe these people anything. They put you in this situation. If they invent a gun with a stun setting like in Star Wars by all means use that. Until then lethal force is the most expedient way to disable an attacker. You don’t execute them if it renders them no longer a threat but if they die that outcome is acceptable.
I don’t understand how this comment has been upvoted, especially as a response to another comment that boils down to “it sucks that people are driven to burglary and it sucks that people have to defend themselves with deadly force from burglary”
Because when you’re a child alone in a house the motivation of an intruder just doesn’t matter and you shouldn’t make a kid feel bad for doing what was necessary in a life or death scenario.
No one in this thread is saying the kid should feel bad for defending himself, the original comment was pointing out how terrible it was for the kid to be in that position at all.
Because it’s an interesting point on its own. Upvotes aren’t necessarily agreement.
Saying “this kid has every right to be proud” about resorting to lethal violence is an “interesting point”?
Yes
No, you’d have to say a bunch of other stuff around that quote too.
The “bunch of other stuff around that quote” is them saying “fuck you” and then a bunch of chest thumping
Sounds pretty legit to me. It’s fucked people need to rob but you come to take someone’s things and you’re naive if you don’t think violence is a potential outcome.
It’s not the taking the things that’s the issue, it’s that the method of taking the things inherently comes with the either implicit or explicit threat of bodily harm or violence in order for the criminal to get what he wants. Nobody’s going to break into your house for your stuff, or leap out of a dark alley and demand your wallet, and when you tell them “no” just shrug and walk away. They’re going to shove a gun in your face or try to beat you up.
If you show up with the intent of employing force, you absolutely should not be surprised if people employ force against you in turn.
That, and if you want to stick it to The Man there are much more suitable targets than victimizing individual people who just as likely have it as tough as you do. Go knock over a Walmart or something. For fuck’s sake.
and you’re naive if you don’t think violence is a potential outcome
Currently, of course. Point is, people can be better. On both sides. And instead of nurturing our compassion and collective support, we praise violence and let continue the wheel to roll which has already destroyed countless of lives.
It’s just text on a screen. No idea of the details or even if it’s fabricated from whole cloth.
The only thing that’s important is the image of blood and terror and pain being worshipped by people who secretly yearn for the chance to inflict it on others.
