Summations Only

So then why do your police have weapons? Also, I think "more inclined" isn't true. The homeowner is fighting for their life and the lives of their loved ones. The invader is looking for portable things of value he can easily take (like, well, handguns.) In your own home, where you know the terrain intimately and he's never been there before? Where he's potentially outnumbered? Where he's subject to the full legal ramifications of home invasion with a weapon, and you're largely immune to prosecution under self-defense and castle doctrine?Yeah, it's not a fair fight at all, it's heavily weighted in favor of the homeowner. Handguns do work for home defense in the hands of those trained to use them - that's why police, security forces, and soldiers all use them - and the training is not tremendously difficult (probably the easiest part of those professions I just named.)There are pluses and minuses to gun ownership. But the stats seem pretty clear; they're a very effective tool for the prevention of crime, though the owning of a handgun dramatically increases the risk that residents of the home will be accidentally shot by it or use it to kill themselves. I don't advocate for or against guns for these reasons - it's just not clear-cut, and people have to use their own sense about whether or not they're capable of the care and training that make gun use effective in a self-defense context.But people whose job it is to defend things, even in Canada, use guns to do so. That strikes me as pretty compelling evidence that they're effective.

Right. So, why do they have them if a handgun isn't an effective way to protect yourself from an attack by an assailant?Do your police draw their weapons when apprehending suspects? That can happen here, too, though we give wider latitude to self-defense. The principle is that one is put at risk simply by someone else's act of committing a crime involving a weapon. You just said that they do. Isn't assaulting an officer of the law a crime in Canada? Isn't it a crime to assault a regular citizen?I'm not saying handguns reduce all crimes - it's hard to see how embezzlement or littering could be averted by a .45 Desert Eagle - but they clearly have utility as an item for personal defense. That's not one of our goofy American myths (like "health care waiting times"), that's sound science, and the reason that firearms are employed by those who have a need for protecting themselves and others.I'm not familiar with your gun laws in Canada, though. Under what circumstances can a private citizen own a modern firearm? (I'm assuming there's at least some latitude for antiques and nonfunctional replicas.)

Something whose interest is primarily function (i.e. shooting), as opposed to historic, aesthetic, or personal value. Very informative. What if any are the license requirements for a "regular" firearm, and what weapons would fall under that classification?

That's certainly not how our police operate. I think I like it your way better. Like I said I'm not a major proponent of guns, I don't own any, and the knowledge I have about them comes solely from some target shooting in the Boy Scouts and various video games (with the result that I'm aware of the properties of a surprising amount of fictional guns.) I think the Second Amendment in our country has had the unfortunate effect of making much reasonable gun regulation impossible, and I believe that guns should be very well-regulated indeed. I don't think you have the basis to conclude that. If guns couldn't prevent the murder of a policeman, why would policemen carry them? If a firearm wasn't to some extent a deterrent to being victimized, why would police carry theirs prominently on their belts, and draw and aim them to force compliance and deter attackers? In one fairly old study, it was estimated that as many as 1.5 million incidents occur in a year where a gun owner uses a firearm to defend himself from crime in the US. In less than 8% of these cases was the weapon actually used to hurt someone.Gary Kleck , Marc Gertz, Armed Resistance to Crime, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminality.That's what I could find with a quick Google, I guess. If you want to speak specifically to home invasion, I can try to narrow it down, but of course home invasion isn't the only crime you can use a gun to defend against. If you're convinced that US stats can't apply to Canada, I'd like you to elaborate on that notion. One website estimates almost 300,000 home invasions occur in Canada every year.Also Canada's legal code seems to be somewhat different than has been portrayed here:

quote:

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Canadian law states that in your home, you are able to defend yourself, and your household with the necessary force to prevent the attack from continuing:

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Canadian Criminal code sections:

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34. (1) Every one who is unlawfully assaulted without having provoked the assault is justified in repelling force by force if the force he uses is not intended to cause death or grievous bodily harm and is no more than is necessary to enable him to defend himself.

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Extent of justification

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(2) Every one who is unlawfully assaulted and who causes death or grievous bodily harm in repelling the assault is justified if (a) he causes it under reasonable apprehension of death or grievous bodily harm from the violence with which the assault was originally made or with which the assailant pursues his purposes; and (b) he believes, on reasonable grounds, that he cannot otherwise preserve himself from death or grievous bodily harm.

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Defence of house or real property

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41. (1) Every one who is in peaceable possession of a dwelling-house or real property, and every one lawfully assisting him or acting under his authority, is justified in using force to prevent any person from trespassing on the dwelling-house or real property, or to remove a trespasser therefrom, if he uses no more force than is necessary.

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No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.canadacarry.org/subdream/index.php?categoryid=12&p2_articleid=151From what is apparently Canada's gun rights lobby, for whatever that's worth. Are they wrong? Relevant to the topic, it seems worth noting that Canada must have inherited the Castle Doctrine from the same place the US did - English common law.

I think "necessary force" is the standard in the US as well. But the law understands that a firearm is a lethal weapon.I'm no lawyer, though.

Nah, just "see a gun." It works great, especially if you're white and the intruder was of color.I don't think people should be shot willy-nilly, but, you know? I don't think people should feel like breaking into someone else's house doesn't put their lives at risk. And I kind of think the physical risks of engaging in crime should be borne by the criminals, not by the victims.And I think maintaining that principle is worth a few human lives.

I take your point about needless shootings. But, you know, I'm not sure that people who are intruding in someone else's home deserve to be afforded the extreme benefit of the doubt. There's a certain allowance to be made for the possibility of honest (or drunk) mistake, but it's violates the fundamental principle of not expecting the victims to shoulder the burden and risk of criminal decisions to expect a home defender to exercise excessive due diligence.Of course, people who exercise no diligence at all are just as bad and shouldn't own firearms.

I don't know that I could either, and I own no firearms so really I guess I can't.And, you know, I've had people open my front door and walk into my apartment by mistake. Obviously I didn't immediately leap up and gut them with a sword. If I thought that would be the safest, fastest resolution of the situation I would too. If I thought that the safest, fastest resolution of the situation was to attack with a weapon that's what I'd do. Ultimately what we're agreeing on is that the most important tool in personal defense isn't a firearm or training - it's your own ability to arrive at an accurate judgment about the tactical situation you're in. And you can't pre-judge something like that. Probably not. But if someone is going to die as a result of their mistake - which often happens when the "mistake" is aggressive, armed criminality directed at others - I would rather it was them. No offense.

Agreed. I'm not making an argument against diligence, but I am saying it's unreasonable to expect a besieged resident to make a detailed inspection and interrogation of an intruder before using force to defend himself.Frankly if you're unlawfully in someone else's home we should be talking about your responsibility to demonstrate that you don't pose a threat. The resident of the home is there lawfully and you're not. I don't think it's the resident who should bear the risk of someone else's criminal activity, which is why I think we should be careful of setting up an unreasonably high standard of diligence.Moreover, owning a firearm is not a privilege in the United States, it's a right that Americans have under our second amendment.

True, just as armed home defenders can and are injured or killed by assailants anyway. Or better. That's why I nether oppose nor advocate gun ownership, nor own guns myself. Owning a gun and training to use it has unambiguous pros and cons. The decision to own a gun and use to to defend one's person or home is a decision that only the individual can make for themselves, after assessing their capabilities and temperament.

Well, but you're in danger before you're aware of all the dangers. Being unaware of the intention and capability of an invader in your home is dangerous. They pose a danger simply by being someone who isn't supposed to be there.It's not at all like a random stranger in your living room while your family is asleep in bed is a perfectly safe state of affairs until he announces that he's armed and capable of hurting you. That's a situation that's immediately dangerous, that poses an immediate risk to the residents of that home. The way that it's better is when someone comes in your house to kill you and take your stuff, you kill them instead. It's better because you're alive and the person who was going to kill you is dead. People do actually come into other people's houses and kill the people who live there, as happened to Sean Taylor recently, or to the Clutter family as detailed in Capote's In Cold Blood. These crimes do occur, and it's more likely that an intruder is in your home to commit a crime than by mistake. Someone entering your home to commit crimes puts you at risk, and it's not fair to ask you to shoulder the entire burden of that risk. Simply being someone of unknown intention and armament unlawfully in someone else's home puts the residents at risk. That risk should primarily rest on the invader. "Average citizens" don't reside in homes, individuals do. There's no such thing as "the average individual." Every individual has to determine for themselves whether or not to open fire on an invader in their home. Nobody can make that decision for them except after the fact, when it's too late. People can easily avoid being shot as home invaders by not invading armed people's homes.

Because someone is engaged in a criminal act in his house. The threat is that there's a criminal trespasser who has invaded his home.

Whether or not he's found guilty of a crime is irrelevant to whether or not he's committing one. Who's not a resident or anyone else who is supposed to be there, and is thus trespassing. Are you under the impression that a deaf, retarded kid isn't capable of having the intent to harm someone? Isn't capable of the act of hurting someone? (Individuals with mental retardation are more, not less, likely to commit crimes.) Mental retardation doesn't vacate criminal culpability unless it's literally so profound that the individual doesn't know right from wrong. And of course criminal culpability has absolutely nothing to do with self-defense - you're allowed to defend yourself using lethal force even against persons incapable of having the intent to harm you, because they can still harm you. If the kid can't or won't take any action except those that demonstrate threat - like breaking, entering, and refusing to leave when asked - then the use of force in self-defense will be a tragedy, but the resident, who is not the one breaking the law, shouldn't be the one who bears the burden of another's risky criminal activity.

If someone knows they can't hear warnings being shouted at them, they're the one who needs to factor that into their behavior, not total strangers. In this particular case people who cannot hear warnings being shouted at them should realize that it makes home invasion robbery a much more dangerous crime for them to engage in, and they should probably refrain. No, it's less likely that they're there by mistake, because the mentally handicapped are twice as likely as the non-handicapped to commit crimes. Especially if they had to break in, which is what we're talking about - breaking and entering, not people just teleporting into your living room.

Yes, abundantly. Having an unwanted stranger in your home, at night when people are asleep, is inherently dangerous. Obviously that's a dangerous situation long before you know anything at all about the intruder. That's why it's illegal to tresspass in people's homes; because doing so puts the legal occupants at risk. The "escalation" is an unknown stranger in your home, when he's not supposed to be there, of unknown intent and capacity. That's an inherently risky situation that a home resident has the right to use force to bring to a safe and immediate end. They're in danger because an unknown person is in the process of committing a crime inside your home, an action that inherently exposes the legal occupants to risk. With that fat thing at the top of your neck. You know, the one that exercises judgement? You know that's not true, Oni. You must be aware that being homeless increases your risk of being the victim of a crime nearly a hundred-fold, at least, according to relevant statistics. Being homeless doesn't make you safe, it puts you at risk.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.