“I’m a gun owner; Tim Walz is a gun owner,” Harris said.
“I did not know that,” Winfrey replied.
“If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot,” Harris added. “Probably should not have said that. But my staff will deal with that later.”
The article has a video clip. I love the bullshit “probably…” It’s a 100% certainty she spoke with her staff and workshopped the phrasing and presentation of gun stuff. Plus I bet she practiced her lines. No American politician is going to wing it when talking about guns.
Definitely a weird way to pander to the right, but whatever.
The thing is, I can sort of agree? If someone breaks into my home at night while I am asleep, I’m not going to stop and ask questions about their intentions. I will assume they are here to do me and mine harm, and I will react accordingly, which very likely means shooting them. Breaking into someone’s home at 3am is very different from trying to rifle through the shit in their car. But fantasizing about it on Oprah is fucking crazy, even for a politician.
It’s too bad that warning shots aren’t legal
Warning shots are not inherently illegal. . It is a myth that they are.
Where there is a credible, criminal, imminent, threat of death or grievous bodily harm, you are allowed to use any level of force, up to and including lethal force, necessary to stop that threat. Your lawyer will be telling the police, the prosecutor, and if necessary, the judge and a jury that you faced such a threat, and you used a degree of force you reasonably believed necessary to stop that threat. Your lawyer will explain that you didn’t think any lesser use of force would have convinced them to stop, and the fact that they did stop is evidence that additional force was not necessary.
The prosecutor could potentially argue the threat wasn’t sufficiently imminent, but that doesn’t mean a jury will believe it.
If you do shoot the attacker, the prosecutor can feasibly argue that a lesser use of force, such as a warning shot, would have convinced the attacker to stop and run, and that your ahooting him was unnecessary. Again, though, that doesn’t mean a jury will believe it.
What you don’t want to do is start telling the police your whole life story. Make your complaint against the attacker, don’t tell them shit about what you did, and lawyer up.
Or you can be like Breonna Taylor and end up riddled with bullets because it turns out it’s not a burglar, it’s the police doing a no-knock raid.
I mean that’s gonna happen whether I’m armed or not in that case
Yeah, preparing to react with violence if some stranger comes into your home unannounced is not the crazy thing a lot of leftists like to claim it is. Desiring safety and security in you living space is a basic animal instinct. But I’d rather just the person get scared and run, since I’m not exactly willing to kill someone over my pc.
Killing in self-defense isn’t a bizarre reaction, but hanging on discussing such scenarios, bringing them up unnecessarily, fantasizing about them, these are pathological behaviors that suggest using the extremity of the situation as a moral pretext for getting off on murdering someone (especially a dirty poor)
Oh, no disagreement there. I ain’t fantasizing that, nor is that a worry for most folks, even those living in rougher sides of town. The only people wanting to do any killing are these rich fucks.
Home invasion robberies are three times more common than house fires. I bet you have smoke detectors and fire extinguishers, and you’ve thought about how to keep yourself, your family, and your property safe from fires.
Planning and preparing for an emergency event three times more likely than a fire is not “pathological”, nor is it indicative of some moral failing.
There were people who denigrated others for choosing to wear seatbelts in their cars, or helmets on their motorcycles or PPE on their jobs. You sound like one of them. Do better.
You’re scolding me over a complete distortion of the facts. The vast, vast majority of home invasions are intended to be while no one is home, so you will have no cause to shoot someone because either you aren’t there (this is most likely) or you are there and you will scare them off with a threat (if not your mere presence). Cheshire Home Invasion situations are so rare that there’s a reason many people outside of Connecticut know its name, because this scenario of sub-human sickos aiming to break in while your family is home and murder you happens less often than people getting struck by lightning.
Fantasizing about shooting people is pathological. Do better.
DOJ reports 1 in 3 home invasions involves violent victimization, which makes it just as common as the house fires that any prudent person considers and prepares against.
While the actual rate of violent victimization during home invasion is a few orders of magnitude more prevalent than you acknowledge, your lightning analogy actually serves to demonstrate my point: As a society, we have deemed it prudent to establish extensive plans specifically to avoid getting struck by lightning. We cancel or delay sporting events, from youth soccer to major league baseball. We are taught to seek shelter indoors. If stuck outdoors, avoid tall structures. Don’t stand under loan trees, or near flagpoles. If stuck in a field, lay down on the ground. We take all sorts of measures to avoid this extraordinarily rare event.
Prudent people plan for the eventualities you argue are too rare for rational people to even contemplate. Preparation for equally serious and much more prevalent emergencies is perfectly reasonable and rational.
It’s common courtesy when you make a citation on a forum like this, that you actually link to it. I must assume this is the report you mean, which, if so, you misread or misrepresented, because what it actually says is 7% of home invasions involve violent victimization (in most cases just assault). Anyway, it’s my fault for inviting us to get too stuck in the weeds.
I’m never said people shouldn’t take measures against burglary, and on the contrary have nothing against having locks, deadbolts, cameras, security systems, and signage for the latter two. Probably the main thing that I have against keeping guns is that you’re more likely to hurt yourself or a family member or someone than a Home Invader, which I’m sure you’d agree is only prudent.
But even that’s sort of a distraction because my main gripe wasn’t with people keeping guns but with them focusing on this specific circumstance of killing a home invader as an automatic response. As another poster said, it is both more humane and more sensible to hypothetically use the gun mainly as a means to threaten the hypothetical Invader. They aren’t going to be interested in attacking someone with a gun, it makes things easier if you’re being a moron (as many people apparently are) and just mistaking some innocent person for a threat, and it’s also not just treating the Home Invader’s life like it’s de facto fit to be ended by summary execution. But no, Americans would rather play King of the Castle and hype themselves up to murder the Unworthy, indeed getting so excited that they are, again, more likely to shoot their own family member or some random drunk guy who thought he was at his own house or something.
lmfao idiot. you still wearing a mask for covid big boy. please talk to me more about being denigrated for taking health and safety seriously. do it. I dare you.
Every time I get COVID, certainly. It’s the responsible, civic-minded thing to do.
Wrong answer! You can be an asymptomatic carrier at any point while Covid is still hanging around the general public, and especially while no one is taking mitigation seriously, you caring guy, you! You should be wearing a respirator any time you will be away from your home. You should be wearing one any time you would be in public, not just while you are sick, until Covid is gone; extinct, or cured. If you actually cared, you would know this. But of course! You’re a regular Semmelweis, only instead of being hanged for washing hands you’re at the stake for shooting and killing people. Of course you care!
May we never meet.
Respirators do not filter their exhaust. They protect the individual wearing the respirator. They do not protect the public. With one exception, your advice is nonsensical.
I wholeheartedly agree.
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Just because it’s “not crazy” and based in some basic animal instinct doesn’t mean we have to entertain it or that it’s not something that extremely easily leads to reactionary violence.
We literally the slope this leads down in people gunning down strangers at the door bell or literally in the drive in just approaching the house.
Agreed, but you have no direct control over that. The decision to get scared and run is theirs, not yours.
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Used to break into homes. I was prepared for violence. You’re just wrong.
Anyone coming into your house on purpose at night is willing to hurt you. Giving them the chance and trying to be the nice guy by telling them your armed just announces where you are.
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The strongest doors in your house are the exterior doors. Those are the doors I’m going to be behind.
Anyone willing to come through the tough exterior doors into an occupied structure can be reasonably presumed to be willing to go through a cardboard-thin interior door into an occupied room.
Waiting for them to break down the door demonstrates I value their lives much more than they do. I’m not giving up the most defensible position in my own home to doubly prove that fact.
Who the fuck thinks like this?
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Exactly. Why are they assuming there are no guns behind the heavy front door, and the only guns are behind the thin bedroom doors? What kind of moron do they have to be?
The scenario I “created” is functionally identical to the scenario the parent comment created. I simply clarified that relying on a weak interior door is monumentally stupid when a tough exterior door is available. You know it, I know it, everyone reading along knows it.
Why do you believe people break into homes in the first place? What could possibly cause people to be so desperate 🤔
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If you could answer that question, you could keep 1.1 million people from trying to commit suicide every year.
The answer is Capitalism.
Speaking of suicides, why is the suicide rate in the US so much higher than in China, Cuba, and the DPRK?
I’ve got my popcorn. I’m excited to hear how I am singlehandedly increasing the suicide rate.
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Better for them to “bail out” before coming through the front door. They won’t even catch a charge if they do that.
Clearly, we aren’t talking about the kind of people who “bail out”, so I’ll invite you to think on that a moment.
I was raised by gun people and brain poisoned from a very young age and now, years later, I still have to consciously remind my brain sometimes that my phone or laptop isn’t worth more than someone’s life.
I hate that growing up in this country made my default state a violent, terrified, antisocial mess that needed hard work to change into something resembling a normal human.
Very few burglaries are done in the middle of the night while the residents are home. Unless the burglar is very stupid they’re gonna burgle when everyone’s at work or on vacation etc. So in the extremely rare case that someone does break in at 3AM while you’re sleeping, I wouldn’t necessarily assume it’s definitely a robbery.
This isn’t to defend Kamala, I hate people who fantasize about implausible scenarios where they get to lawfully shoot somebody. A security system would likely deter any home invader regardless of their intentions.
Burglaries during night are less common but not that rare. Night burglars are more often under influence of drugs and in general less experienced. Which means that a confrontation is more risky and should be avoided if possible.
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I dont know the right way to handle this, but announcing your position is a good way to end up shot yourself.
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Which don’t even happen that often.
I swear middle America is a bunch of cowards
I think you are confusing yourself by thinking of a typical burglary - I.e. a burglary where the burglar has done what they can to make sure people aren’t home (e.g. struck during work hours, saw the mail piling up and came when the person was on vacation, etc.)
But that’s not the situation being contemplated here. The OP specified a nighttime break in. This is the opposite of your standard burglar - they’ve struck when people are the MOST likely to be home.
Of this subset, what percentage have doing something bad to you in mind? Or more to the point, at what % are you morally obligated to not take actions against them? Let’s say 49% of the time does the nighttime breakin burglar actually intend you physical harm. Do you have to eat it at those numbers? (I’m asking genuinely, since you seem to have a strong moral intuition here. From your other post, you said you couldn’t put a value on human life, so the only other value I have here is the resident’s life. In the 49/51 example, since it’s more likely than not that there’s no harm intended, this maximizes the amount of lives).
You just want an excuse to legally murder someone.
There will be no excuse for the terror
But we’re not arguing about homicide by magic spell here, this is a pretty specific and extremely spotlighted type of crime, the only reason to conjure coinflip percentages out of thin air is to entice specific sentiment, fascist sentiment in this case.
“take what you want and leave” just generously assumes that what they want isn’t to hurt you
Stores have insurance for shit, how many people have “burglar coverage”? Most people don’t have infinite wealth to just let walk out their front door
It’s not generous to assume what is easily the most plausible interpretation. Unless it’s like a gang hit or something (including by cops), who the fuck wants to brutalize an entire family? That happened one time in Cheshire, CT and conservatives the whole country over have been milking it for a decade and a half.
lol
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burglars typically get the fuck out if they learn someone is home, if they stick around after a warning they’re far more likely to be dangerous.
Crunch the numbers then big man, how more likely is far more likely here.
Even if theynare putting a price tag on it, they are only making an “offer” on a home invader’s life. It is entirely up to the home invader as to whether they want to “accept” that offer.
idk if someone is going to do harm to me, I don’t care about the sanctity of their life
The only difference between the bourgeois exploiting me and some shithead stealing from me is one is a class traitor
Comrade Beanis here made it explicitly clear that shooting someone in defense of your and your family’s actual safety is legitimate. That’s the whole point of the “point the gun at the door” thing.
the thing is yall don’t consider taking my shit to be doing harm to me, someone living paycheck to paycheck who would never be able to replace any of it in a reasonable time frame, and you’re fucking wrong
like are you really so incapable of conceiving “harm” to a person beyond just bodily harm? Like if I come steal all your fucking food and you starve to death, it’s fine because I didn’t assault you? Literally fucking social murder, but it’s fine because uhhhh burglary is cool and good? Christ in fucking heaven, stop arguing with me about this
If you have a house, you should have insurance. If you have an apartment and lock your door, it’s extremely unlikely someone is going to loot it because apartments are just bad targets (and low-rent ones are typically going to have much less in them worth stealing).
No one is going to break into your domicile to steal loaves of bread, and even if they did, they’d need to come back on a regular basis and also rob the local soup kitchen(s) for it to be remotely viable that you starve even in this Twilight Zone scenario.
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The massive assumption here being that by default they will do harm to you, this is true crime brain.
“Stealing my shit” is doing me harm because I am a poor person who can’t just magic a new life out of nothing. I have no fucking sympathy for anyone who tries to steal from me, sorry. And idk but i’m not going to trust renters insurance to just go “oh, someone stole all your shit? here’s the full value of it” 🤷♂️
You know what else is really valuable that is easy to steal? Guns
yeah i don’t have a gun which is why any burglar attempting to take my shit will face the sword
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Literally every homeowner in the US that hasn’t paid off their home (read: most of them) have homeowners insurance, which has theft and burglary provisions. A good many have renters insurance, too.
Is this a potential eventuality you should be preparing for, though?
Is it a rational thing to fear based on evidence, or is it driven by reactionary fearmongering?
I’m sure it happens more often than never, but the level of fear Americans have about it is almost definitely rooted in that “savages coming for your women” white settler shit.