Texas recently passed bill(House Bill 4110) making this crime a felony, I wonder if this will make it easier for owners to be covered under Sec. 9.42 code which will let owners use deadly force against anybody who is under your car or running away with your converter during night time.
Texas is 2nd highest in US for this crime, somebody is gonna pay with their life for this crime.
Huh only in America it might be considered OK to execute a person for a theft of an automative part.
Its like - there is someone committing a nonviolent felony of stealing a minor part from your car, and now you are deputized to be judge jury and executioner and can perform a quick public execution, for your convenience…
I mean I get it sucks very hard to have something being stolen from you _in front of your eyes_ but does this justify an execution? Isn’t that why we have monopoly on violence and for that matter insurance?
I’ve had stuff like that stolen from me, by a member of my country’s repressed minority, and it was in front of my eyes, I was sleeping when the act was committed, right next to me, so I guess my life was also in danger. I woke up just as they were making their escape. I did have the urge to chase them down true, but never in my dreams have I thought these lives were beyond redemption and I have the right to execute them then and there, and I would live happy afterwards…
How does the moral calculous work for Americans? Genuinely curious. Is it “something bad is being done to me, I am therefore justified to use any means necessary” kind of thing, or there is something else/more?
I am not american, but I really wish it was legal to shoot thieves where I live.
I see no moral issues with that act - it's really simple to justify. First - why should I value life of someone who's actively robbing me? In my mind, the moment they attack my rights, including my property rights - I don't owe any moral consideration to them anymore, they broke the social contract with me, and I'm going to use anything at my disposal to stop them.
Second - if it's generally accepted that if you're gonna steal something you are putting your life on the line - that means people would think twice before stealing something from other people. You should fear for your life if you're going to try and violate other's rights, and I doubt there would be as many people keen on stealing something valued at 100$ by betting their lives on it.
And finally, when you're getting robbed it damages you. It's not even about the thing itself getting stolen, but more about the fact that the sanctity of your belongings vanishes and a bit of trust you had for others vanishes with it. Ask anyone who ever got mugged or had their house broken into - it's hard to feel safe after that happens to you once, ever.
I really don't think that someone who's a victim of an ongoing crime should ever stop and think about the criminal committing it as someone worthy of moral consideration at all.
This is the problem with our police not investigating property crime. If you could trust society will stop these people in short order, then there will be less crime and the chance of this happening will be low, and you'll just feel especially unlucky.
But I live in an area with high property crime and the police do nothing about it, as desired by the local government representatives. That's a recipe for vigilantism.
In the US they’re far too busy prosecuting people for having a gram of cocaine on them to have time to prosecute people stealing catalytic converters and actually hurting someone.
In my city they're too busy running from one violent crime to the next, they're understaffed (under statutory minimums) and if you didn't get shot they won't come help. This is seen as the socially progressive thing to do.
I was attacked in a road rage incident, they didn't come. There was video, a witness, a traffic camera all available, they didn't investigate or prosecute.
Shots were fired outside of my apartment on the street the other day, the police didn't come.
I would rather not take the law into my own hands, but what choice does a person have?
It does end up working that way in practice, though it’s not quite as straightforward as that. What’s really happening is that courts are very backed up, jails are full, and judges release most people on their own recognizance within about 72 hours of the crime. They still have to go to court for that crime…eventually, but in the mean time, there’s nothing to stop them from going right back at it when they get released. There are people who have been arrested dozens upon dozens of times, and by now must have a list of court hearings a mile long, but they keep getting put back out on the street while they await their hearing. So in effect, at least for now, they are immune to prosecution.
> In my mind, the moment they attack my rights, including my property rights - I don't owe any moral consideration to them anymore
Wow, seriously? No proportionality at all, no consideration of any mitigating factors that may be present, just simply "they broke my property rights so their life is forfeit".
I'm glad that in general society has moved on from such crude ideas of justice.
I've been mugged, and I've had my house broken into. Yes, it's shit. In neither case did I think anyone should die for it.
You've said the things I wanted to say, but much more succinctly.
Killing someone is something you can't undo.
Even if you truly believe that someone's life is forfeit for stealing something of yours, there's no time given for evaluating the facts.
A split second decision, a bad judgement call, and you find out that the person you shot and killed, is actually some innocent bystander running to get away from the robber.
Maybe they are the person robbing you, but your shots hit someone else who's in their own house.
Indeed, letting individuals decide who does and doesn't deserve to live, is how we end up with endless blood feuds. "They killed my brother so their life is forfeit."
I've read a saying that a government is an entity with a "monopoly on violence." I think that however imperfect it is, giving the government this monopoly means that there's an objective process for deciding who deserves to live, and who doesn't. Personal satisfaction as a criterion is always going to produce outcomes that are massively disproportionate, and will simply shift the dissatisfaction to someone else.
not how the social contract works. Read Rousseau's "Du Contract Social", or just ask à french person if they think stealing deserves death
I mean come on guys this is pathetic, like HN is known for meticulously breaking down people's arguments point by point line by line, explaining each logical fallacy and you believed it would be okay to dive into justifying death of people... it sounds like you are sad about something personal
That's not adressing his point. That is, it's not how a social contract works. It's collective. You break it with everyone or no one. And it's collectively enforced as well. OP's notion that his in charge of his own little arbitrarily determined social contract that inform the worth of the life of the people surounding him and has sovereignty over his surroundings is disturbing. I worry of such people being free to walk about and I sure hope he's not from my country.
You may not understand this if you are from a foreign country, but the relationship of states to the Federal government in the US is not like the relationship of provinces to the central government in France.
The US is a truly federal system in which each state has its own constitution and its own legal code. This is not a purely theoretical point, it's quite true that there are wide variations in laws between states as well as wide variations in state constitutions, which is one reason why, for example, a lawyer has to pass the bar in each state.
And like any nation, the legal code of a state is the result of historic and ethnic forces applicable to that state. For example, my colleague, who is from Italy, was worried about his mother being mugged repeatedly by some local youths, and he was telling me how worried he was about her. The last time she went to the police, she had the following conversation:
"Why do you keep releasing them? They will just steal again."
"Yes, but they are underage, so there is nothing we can do."
"But if I refused to give them my purse, they could kill me with the knife."
"Possibly."
"But if I were to get a gun to protect myself, and then shoot them the next time they threatened me with a knife, I would be arrested."
"Of course".
"So what can I do to protect myself?"
"Just give them your purse."
"But this is the third purse they have taken, and I can't afford another. Will you pay for the purse?"
"Of course not"
"And you wont put them in jail? You will just release them again?"
"Unfortunately, we have no choice"
"If I wait for them to try to hurt me with the knife and then shoot, would I still be arrested?"
"Probably"
So there are some things that are very difficult for Americans to understand that may make sense to someone from Italy and there is bafflement going in the other direction. In the U.S. if someone threatens you with violence, you generally have the right to defend yourself and to shoot them. You never need to allow someone to physically intimidate you into handing over your belongings, and you always have a right to defend yourself. But apparently this is considered unspeakably wrong in other countries. Fair enough, to each his own. But I will point out that strict laws against defending yourself are only possible in very peaceful societies. In more violent societies, the public will not tolerate being repeatedly robbed with no possibility of self-defense -- that is the origin of mafias in Italy, basically groups for protection when the central government was too weak.
This is one example of how there is no such thing as a "universal" social contract, as all of these rules are contingent on questions like what is the likelihood of being victimized by crime. Social contract theory is itself just a philosophy - and a poor explanation of legal codes - as laws and norms are the results of evolutionary processes involving trial and error, not social contract theory.
I can't think of many social norms or government rules worse than ones that consider it despicable or, as you say, "unspeakably wrong" to have a right to defend yourself. The example of the grandmother in your text should be a clear case of someone doing exactly what is the only obvious thing when the policing system has failed at its job but criminals continue to victimize. What kind of absurd, twisted logic would claim otherwise to a constant victim without protection by the state?
no one can decide for themselves what their social contract is. that makes no sense.
even if you mean texans collectively decide what their social contract is, they don't, it is determined before them. it's what they were collectively born into.
> First - why should I value life of someone who's actively robbing me?
Jesus Christ. You're actually arguing that killing someone for theft is a reasonable and proportionate response? That is a dangerous and unhinged statement and I roundly condemn you for saying it.
The person above wasn't making a reasoned persuasive argument, they were making a moral assertion. The purpose wasn't to insult someone nor to convince them. It was just an expression of moral outrage.
Yes, but your comment reads as if you were giving feedback. Implication is that the intent was or should be persuasion, and you saying it's failing at that. Anyway, I don't think "I condemn you for X" is an insult of the normal sort where it's ad hominem, even though it would be better and less ad hominem as "I condemn the idea" (as opposed to the person).
Thank you. This is exactly correct. I was fully aware that I wasn't making a persuasive argument and it wasn't intended to be one. I wanted to emphasise and reiterate what I believe is a widely held moral norm.
The commenter I replied to seemed to unaware how far they had strayed beyond reasonable ethical statements. I don't think I could persuade them to change their position but I couldn't let that go unchallenged. Norms change one person at a time and speaking out is important.
What, exactly, is the persuasive counterargument for basic morality? Why isn't morality axiomatic?
Let's put it this way - the argument above would also apply to saying that a private citizen who catches a thief stealing their catalytic convertor can torture them slowly and painfully for weeks without actually killing them. You owe them no moral consideration, it's a deterrent, etc. Do you need someone to make a persuasive argument against the merits of that to realize that it's abhorrent?
If morality were axiomatic, then worldwide we would have a collective shared understanding of what is right or wrong, immutable over time. That’s clearly not the case.
Certainly morality is a shared part of us all, it was evolved to create ingroup cohesion and resist outgroups in humans, so there are a lot of commonalities like reciprocity, justice, etc.
It’s the divvying up of ingroup and out group that tend to create disagreements in morality. I.e. we understand forgiveness, but we disagree who is worthy. We understand justice but we disagree who deserves punishment or why.
That tends to make a pretty big difference in results and conclusions.
You make it sound like everyone has complete knowledge of a thief's intent, and that the motivation for shooting them is retribution rather than self defense.
If a thief breaks into someone else's home in the middle of the night, they should have a healthy fear of being shot to death. If the homeowner believes their life is in immediate danger, it seems to me like they are well within their moral and legal right to incapacitate the intruder with a firearm. There's no judgement involved, only reaction under fear of imminent violence. If the thief dies, it was due to their own poor decisions.
Likewise, if the homeowner catches a thief jumping out of a window with their beanie baby collection, it would be unreasonable for the homeowner to take some shots at the thief just to try to injure them, and would probably be a chargeable felony. If the thief died, it would probably be deemed a homicide.
Sure that's the original topic, but I thought this thread was relatively deep down a more general tangent. Regarding whether or not it's justified to shoot someone making off with an automotive part, I personally wouldn't consider that inherently just, but it depends on the details of the scenario. If the car was parked on the street, then definitely not. If the car was in a closed and locked garage and the thief broke in, then the owner caught them in the act while armed with a firearm and the thief did anything but lay down on the floor or dart out of the door, then shooting them is probably justified. If the car was jacked and taken to a chop shop with the owner's toddler in the back seat, then I personally would be fine with a "Liam Neeson" level of response.
I think the earlier poster's question about the legality of defending property with force in Texas is interesting. I also think the subsequent poster's belief that society would benefit from more readily shooting criminals is a rational claim rather than an unhinged one, whether or not it's a good idea. It's certainly true that there would be less theft, whether it's because of deterrence or by the simple fact that thieves would tend to get shot. There's most certainly some complexity and nuance to appreciate there. Singapore canes people for overstaying their travel visas to discourage illegal immigration, and unsurprisingly it seems to be an effective deterrent.
No, we're talking about pointing a gun at a guy under your car and another one holding a bat standing and looking out. They can then either back up and run away or get shot. It's their decision.
A significant portion of our waking life is spent doing things to obtain property. When thieves steal it they are stealing spent life and possibly livelihood.
I don't find it surprising that thieves face more gruesome punishments like hanging, cutting off hands, etc in places especially when there may be little recourse for the victims of theft and the theft represents a significant impact on their life.
I think reasonable argument against such things is that it is too easy for people to mistakenly hurt a non-thief on accident. That's more convincing to me than simply saying property < life at all times. If I was poor and needed my vehicle to get to work everyday and you're stealing it then yes I would be willing to shoot you to stop you.
But I don't get back the time I spent acquiring the property. I can't replace the two weeks of work it would take to buy a new one. And what if it gets stolen again?
You keep talking about how you can't take back killing. The thing is I don't want to take it back. The kind of person that would steal things that people rely on to survive has ceded their equal protection under the law.
> You keep talking about how you can't take back killing.
Yes, which is one of the things that makes killing different from property theft.
> The thing is I don't want to take it back.
That's not relevant to the discussion here, which was one in which posters were claiming that their property represents part of their life, time they cannot get back, and thus taking it is somehow equivalent to taking a life. My point was that this is a false equivalence.
You do not appear to be making such an equivalence argument, so it's hardly a surprise that my counterpoint doesn't apply to whatever your reasoning is.
It's like jumping into an argument about which shade of green is better and saying "My favourite colour is red". Uh, good for you I guess.
It sounds like you're saying that anybody who wastes my time deserves death? Pretty sure busybody neighbors would be far ahead of thieves in that line...
Even if we assume that there is some kind of property-value-to-life exchange rate (that's not a given), by killing someone you are taking, potentially, decades of their life in exchange for the loss of your two weeks.
If you kill someone who has 30 years of their life remaining to avenge your lost two weeks, you are extracting a 780-fold punishment on them. Unless a geriatric steals your Ferrari, the numbers will be similarly lopsided in other examples.
Well you can’t replace anything, exactly. If your house burns down, and insurance builds a new one, it’s still a different house. Your dog dies and you get a new dog, it’s a different dog.
If you say, people can’t be replaced because they’re just inherently irreplaceable, that’s a tautology.
That logic wasn't meant to be exhaustive. Even an irreplaceable thing can be recovered from a thief. A life taken cannot be.
FWIW I don't believe that even making the comparison is valid. By the time you're weighing up stuff against literal human life, you've already gone wrong.
We weigh stuff against human lives all the time. Cars, bridges, buildings, and industrial machines all make tradeoffs between safety and cost. We generally value a random life at about $7-10 million - much less than a faberge egg. In reality, adding up all the grief of loved ones, $7 million might be about right.
Treating life as some sort of priceless treasure really is divorced from reality too. I think most people would choose to shoot an arsonist before they could burn the Mona Lisa, and that's totally rational.
This modern softness is absurd. Let the Mona Lisa burn, let the Library of Alexandria burn, bomb the Louvre. It's ok, it's never worth harming someone to prevent.
We'll be polite and refer to it as pacifism, but the truth is it's cowardice.
This extreme pacifism, if actually practiced by anyone not so absurdly privileged to be able to take that stance, would lead to the downfall of civilization.
> I think you might be surprised at how many didn't think that was all that reasonable.
The magnitude of my disgust would seem to be growing, yes.
So, I believe this is in part because of lax enforcement and the seeming ineffectiveness of the state with regard to property crime.
The endgoal is low crime, that's what most people want. If the more humane methods fail, people are going to happily go along with more brutal methods. If the state is sufficiently derelict of it's duty, then you'll see vigilantism.
> if the Muslim way is more representative of what Americans would like to live,
Its not, generally, and for the faction for which it is in many respects, it is not specifically in being Muslim, because that faction is zealous Christian theocrats.
Many people in the US who admire the conservative aspects of Muslim religious law (as commonly perceived) also fear forced religious conversion or subjugation and believe that Muslims would like to apply their religious law in the US.
I vouched for trasz’ comment but can’t reply to it. Yes, I would say that abortion is an example of what I was referring to. While there is a social-utilitarian aspect to opposition to abortion, the primary motivation is religiously-derived morality. Islam actually has something similar in its belief in the existence of a soul at a certain point in gestation.
The downvotes on my comment are funny because I have no idea if the right or left is upset with it! It’s an uncomfortable topic either way, certainly.
If you (or anyone else) see no moral issue with killing someone over petty theft of a catalytic converter, which insurance should cover, I'd say there's a non-insignificant probability you suffer from some kind of antisocial personality disorder.
I'm not saying this to attack your character - I'm just saying that normal and well-adjusted people do not think that way.
I've seen signs saying "trespassers will be shot", and never felt the need to test them. The fact that the shooter was doing something illegal doesn't change the possibility that you may no longer be alive.
After using any type of force, lethal or otherwise against a trespasser that type of sign would be used against the owner in court to their detriment.
There's a requirement for "no trespassing" signs to be posted around property but the "will be shot" verbiage could be construed as premeditation since non government land owners aren't allowed to kill trespassers merely for the act of trespassing itself. It literally suggests that the property owner is waiting to shoot anyone who trespasses, which isn't kosher.
Trespassing on government land such as a military base could result in the trespasser being shot accidentally or otherwise and there are typically warning signs posted that will say things like "Use of deadly force authorized".
Over my life I have had thousands of dollars stolen from me in the form of stolen wages or services paid for but not rendered, but I feel like no one in this thread arguing for shooting of thieves would be fine with me shooting up the local Fedex because they lost my package and refused to reimburse me
I think that you have the right to protect your rights at all costs. If your rights are being violated it's OK to reclaim it by returning the favor. If you don't believe it then there's a discussion to be had about if you even have any rights to begin with or if these are just privileges granted to you by the others.
But surely there are degrees to this? I mean, if someone tall sits in front of you at the movies, they are violating your right to full viewership of the movie. If you get cut off in traffic, your rights are being violated.
Where is the line? Why is property theft deserving of the end of a human life?
In the case of the article, we’re not just asking about blanket “property theft”. I don’t think any of the proponents are say shoot someone who’s stealing a loaf of bread.
In many parts of the world, a car used to get to work. If you can’t get to work, then you can’t make money, and if you can’t make money then you can’t eat.
Does everyone who gets their catalytic converter stolen have enough money to get it fixed? If not, then this crime might be tantamount to depriving someone of their whole car
It’s not just a random part of a car their stealing. It’s entirely possible that loosing the catalytic converter cascades into being jobless and homeless.
This is an argument that the system in which you are operating is flawed, society should ensure that you are not so vulnerable that a vehicle failing will make you end up jobless and homeless. This is not a good argument that criminals disabling your vehicle for profit is an acceptable justification for killing them.
I don’t agree that you should shoot someone for stealing your catalytic converter either, but just for the sake of argument…
So what if the argument that having your car disabled could spiral you into homelessness is more of a critique on our lack of a safety net? What can the average citizen do about that? At this point, not very much. The system is cruel, yes, but it’s the one they live in.
In my city, catalytic converters thrives are known to be highly organized, armed, and prone to violently confronting people who try to chase them off. A few people have even been shot for trying to do so. The police are too busy with shooting after shooting to do anything effective to try to stop them. When you have a group of people going out night after night, stealing with impunity and threatening anyone who gets in their way, it becomes very difficult to muster any compassion for them.
(little bit confused by your first sentence, I definitely do not support shooting people for stealing ones cat converter, just for clarification)
So if the police are useless and you are beholden to this powerful and highly organized pack of thieves, you think going out there and shooting them is going to make your life any better? What happens if you don't 'get' them all and now you're in a shootout with multiple armed opponents? What about the rest of their organization, reckon they will let you get away with it? Personally, I'd rather have my car temporarily damaged.
What can an average citizen do about their safety net in the US? Probably a whole shitload, anywhere from political participation, union involvement, volunteering, voting for politicians that support a better safety net.
However this argument can be made for so many things. Even just the tall person in front of you argument, what if the movie (about lottery for example) was so moving to such a person it would have changed their life, bought a lottery ticket and gotten rich, is the person justified to kill the tall person for potentially stealing their livelihood? Joking aside, I can think of a million examples, each more comical and absurd than the last
You can't drive a car safely without a catalytic converter (unless the thief has been kind enough to patch up their damage with a straight piece of pipe, which never happens.) With a damaged exhaust system under the car, the driver is at substantial risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. And with a driver so intoxicated, everybody else on or near the road is at risk as well.
When the cat is removed your car almost certainly violates noise ordinance, so it's undrivable unless you know someone quick with exhaust pipes and clips or a welder.
So, yeah, you can drive a car without a cat, but not without a muffler (generally). Fix it tickets still incur a monetary cost.
This is incorrect for modern diesels that have a DPF system and inject DEF fluid. The cats are required hardware. You may be allowed 50-250 miles without them then the vehicle will not operate. It is well within possibility that someone stealing your cat between two places in Texas could be a big problem for you.
I think you're confusing rights with something else here. I'm specifically talking about natural rights, and I don't know if you're trying to steer the dialog into "what is a right" or just have a wrong idea, but I am not interested in philosophy or deconstruction of well established concepts
And who is it that gets to draw the boundary around "natural rights"?
The point being that humans defining natural rights goes against the concept of "natural". The entire exercise is a catch-22.
Funny how in each case where this comes up, natural rights always means something different. Almost as if the term is consistently used retroactively to justify extreme measures rather than to inform people of their rights per se.
A natural right is a right that you are born with. Rights aren't defined prescriptively in the way that you imply. They're enumerated and acknowledged. Not granted.
We draw the line ourselves. This line will be the aggregate maximum punitive multiple that you'd append to a theft.
Property theft to many, even implicitly, is very much the equivalent of the theft of some quantity of their life. People work and struggle, expending some quantity of their life to acquire property. To forcibly deprive them of their property is the removal of some portion of their life.
The other way to view this is that in an ideal world, this is done by the state. The state alone possesses the means for other punishment. The individual cannot detain, nor can they fine or garnish wages. The sole means of action available to the individual is force. Thus, if the state is derelict in it's duty, the citizen has only the application of force at his disposal. When you're applying force, you'd better be willing to go to lethal, since being unwilling to do so drastically increases the risk to yourself if the counterparty doesn't play by the same rules.
> To forcibly deprive them of their property is the removal of some portion of their life.
This portion can be made whole again by replacing the property, either through insurance, through restorative judgements against the perpetrator, or various other means.
Replacing property is still depriving others, just in aggregate, rather than on an individual level. Are e so divorced from the concept of how property is obtained that we think we can magic it out of an infinite pool?
I see property in the current context as a proportion of a life. People invest time and effort, the better part of their lives to create and acquire property. The theft of such is thus a theft of said life.
> to use force (up to and including deadly force) to defend oneself against an intruder
Perhaps only one place (Texas) uses this to justify regaining possession of property, which is what the GP was talking about.
Also:
> At most the Castle Doctrine is an affirmative defense for individuals inevitably charged with criminal homicide, not a permission or pretext to commit homicide.
What gives you the right to make a life-ending determination?
The perpetrator delegated it to me when he chose to break into my house.
If you want to argue that human life has inherent value that can't be voluntarily given up, such that it's never right for me to take someone's life in defense of my property, the arguments in favor of that seem to be religious in nature. They don't always begin that way, but ultimately you have to back up your opinion with something objective if you want to convince me that I'm in the wrong. Basically you'd need to cite a higher authority in order to change my mind, and then proceed to convince me that the authority (a) exists; and (b) backs up your position.
Unless there's an argument I've overlooked, which is always possible. Are there other points of view on this, that don't boil down to either appeals to emotion or appeals to a mysteriously-absent higher moral authority? (Yes, there's the philosophical argument that the state should have a monopoly on violence, but that has the same flaws as the original argument, and can't always be applied in the heat of the moment.)
I agree. Throughout time there have been cultures without the concept of private property. I've been reading recently how hard-hittingly critical Native American commentary on European culture was back in that day, pointing out all the numerous problems that come with money and private property. Kondairock for example, as related by the French author Lahontan.
Lethal force to defend a life makes sense. Most cultures do not approve of using lethal force to defend property.
There's also the problem of the shooter misjudging the situation, shooting some teenager's playing chase, for example, or someone with alzheimers, etc. I actually know of a drunk that tried to break down the door into his apartment, but it turns out he was in the wrong building. Didn't deserve to die.
But I understand why people feel this way. Nobody wants to be robbed. In our consumerist culture possessions are the most important thing to many people.
I have a problem with those: when the Europeans came they brought with them disease. Other than Columbus's initial contact (which didn't last long as only hit islands), we are no longer dealing with the same situation. The population was greatly reduced and never recovered. This would of course make a lot of major changes to the culture, and for the most part they didn't leave a written record of what things were like before. Gift giving in a culture is something that we cannot learn from unwritten records. Even if there was a written record, in general people write down what they want to be seen as not what they were.
I'm not saying that they didn't give gifts. Lots of people like to give gifts. I'm saying that ownership probably was a bigger deal than we give them credit for - but we will never know.
> for the most part they didn't leave a written record of what things were like before
Europeans and Native Americans interacted. They observed each other. They talked to each other. For quite some time.
Kondiaronk [0] was a highly respected chief, statesman, and political philosophizer. Louis Armand de Lom d’Arce spent time in North America and wrote a book based on his dialogs with Kondiaronk [1]. This book was famous for a while. It contrasted the freedom and justice Indians had for themselves with the injustice of Christianity, subjugation to lords, and the problems associated with money and other facets of the European way of life. The book precipitated a lot of philosophical soul searching, an off-shoot of which was the idea of the "noble savage", which was used to eventually discount any ideas these primitives had as irrelevant to civilized modern people.
I'm not sure if I understand your comment. Are you saying that Kondiaronk would not have known how Indians lived?
He was commenting based on the culture he lived in at the time and based on their known history, and how different it was than European culture. He made a point that it was much better in many ways.
I wouldn't think that the spread of smallpox invalidates what he said, just because things may have been different in the past, maybe for his tribe, maybe not so much. I'm sure that he would have known if a disease drastically changed his culture a hundred years prior.
Even before smallpox there was quite a variety of native cultures, Kondiaronk being Huron, who were quite different than the Inca and Aztec, for example. He probably would have criticized them, also.
I'm not saying there is nothing to learn from him. I'm saying be careful as we are limited to his viewpoint. (history is about trying to find a truth from limited information and biases sources)
Agreed. I'd say that we've tended to be more biased against and dismissive of his viewpoint, though. Primitive. Noble savage. Convert. Re-educate. Exterminate. etc.
Not necessarily. In a home-invasion situation, the only person who really knows what's going on is the burglar. I have to assume that he doesn't just want my stuff, he wants to harm me or my family. It's unreasonable to require me to trust the intruder's good faith. These things aren't exactly negotiated in advance.
which, in the OP's world view, does exist, and it overrides the burglar's right to life.
Your argument against the OP's moralism is that the burglar's right to life should not be overridden by the OP's property rights. This is why moralistic arguments are flawed - different people (perhaps different cultures) have differing morals. The law, as codified by society (and hopefully, agreed to democratically) is what should be used to judge actions, not moralism.
How so? I don't follow. It's true that the original question posits a robbery or other home-invasion scenario with the goal of stealing property, but how am I supposed to know that the intruder is only interested in my stuff?
There's no threat created when someone simply moves into a shared space.
The word "burglar" assumes that property rights exist.
Note that I mostly think the inconsistency is silly and should be pointed at, I don't have a problem admitting that property rights exist in most societies.
edit: "intruder" has the same problem as burglar. Along with "home" and "robbery".
No, I'm arguing that the right to protect property is the same sort of social construction that the value of human life is.
Without a layer of social construction, it's just the use of dominating force, an exercise of power. If you want to argue that is how the world works, that's fine, but you are demanding that other people justify their social constructions and then assuming that your social constructions are not social constructions.
but you are demanding that other people justify their social constructions and then assuming that your social constructions are not social constructions.
It's natural for me to defend my property with lethal force. (Consider how many animals will do the same thing, if another animal tries to take their food or mate away.) Consequently, assuming it's your position that I should not be allowed to do that, you have to pass a law and use force to stop me.
That means that yes, you're the one who gets to justify your unnatural (but still potentially optimal) point of view. Exactly why are we better off if we strive to remove the personal safety risk from criminal acts? It seems that we're starting to see the results play out in real time -- ask anyone who was shopping at the Nordstrom's in Walnut Creek the other day, for instance.
Does that mean I'd be inclined to shoot someone for stealing the catalytic converter from my car, parked at curbside on a public street? Honestly, I can't see myself doing that, because according to my personal values that would be a pretty sociopathic thing to do. But I'm also not inclined to interfere if someone else wants to do that. The recent trend towards de-policing and non-prosecution of property crimes will certainly lead to more instances of this kind of dilemma playing out on the street. If law enforcement won't act, you can't be too surprised when individual citizens do.
If human lives are valuable, then I suppose the same also applies to my own life. If a hostile stranger appeared at night in my house, I would take his life to protect mine. Yes, the entire situation is regretful, but it was his choice to make it happen, not mine.
I wouldn't kill a person over stealing a candy from me, or trespassing on my lawn.
> if it's generally accepted that if you're gonna steal something you are putting your life on the line - that means people would think twice before stealing something from other people.
what they'll think twice about is making sure you're not around when they steal your stuff, either by not being at home or not being alive. and i have bad news for you, the aggressor has the advantage.
You see someone under your car, shoot them dead, and it turns out to be a teenager who was crawling after their pet cat.
It doesn't matter what happens to you after this. The child is dead. And the killing of that child was encouraged by your hypothetical "legal to shoot thieves" law. Barring that law would have saved that child's life.
Coaxing a cat with a cordless angle grinder? Your hypothetical concern might seem plausible the way you've written it, sparse on descriptive details, but in real life there is a lot more information to consider that will almost certainly disambiguate the situation.
> your hypothetical "legal to shoot thieves" law.
Not hypothetical in Texas. So if you've got any real examples of teenagers looking for cats under cars getting shot, by all means trot them out.
The court seems to be doing its job then. I could cite many examples of justified shootings due to the stand-your-ground statute in Texas, and there are a few examples that are unjustified.
In the unjustified cases, the shooter is found guilty. That's how the system functions: by shooting, you are certain enough that the individual is committing a crime that you are willing to go to jail if incorrect.
It's certainly better than the alternative found in other states, where people are tried and found guilty for defending themselves, their loved ones, and their property.
> In the unjustified cases, the shooter is found guilty. That's how the system functions: by shooting, you are certain enough that the individual is committing a crime that you are willing to go to jail if incorrect.
And meanwhile, the innocent dead person remains dead. Your system may be "functioning" but that's hardly a good outcome.
> if it's generally accepted that if you're gonna steal something you are putting your life on the line - that means people would think twice before stealing something from other people.
For how well that works, see:
- drug related crime in countries where it’s a death sentence
- militarized police forces and the overall outcome for society
- effects on crime levels in US states where such a crime is a capital offense vs states where it isn’t
All this does is raise the stakes and people committing the crimes resort to more violent means of committing the crime/avoid capture.
While it might feel good to know you’d be allowed to kill a thief, it won’t stop it from happening. It’ll just make it that much more dangerous to be around when that crime happens and more likely to get shot as a result.
They also have programs to tackle drug addiction. The effects can't be attributed solely on the death penalty when trafficking. If that worked, we'd have no murders in US states where it yields death penalty.
>The effects can't be attributed solely on the death penalty when trafficking
Sure, everything is multimodal. But likelihood of getting caught (consistency of enforcement) and penalty size can both mediate the incentive. I'm not sure why everyone likes to boil it down to "PENALTIES DON'T WORK ONLY SOCIAL PROGRAMS".
>First - why should I value life of someone who's actively robbing me? In my mind, the moment they attack my rights, including my property rights - I don't owe any moral consideration to them anymore, they broke the social contract with me, and I'm going to use anything at my disposal to stop them.
Well then you've just broken the social contract. Since Hammurabi created the first written rule of law(at least this was taught growing up, but I believe they've found earlier tablets since) society generally agrees that an eye for an eye is the rule. The most you can do to an offender while being morally justified is the equivalent. Except in the case there's a proximate threat to your life, of course, owing to the fact that dead people can't get justice.
If you kill someone for stealing, off to prison you go. To put it into terms similar to yours-- why should I value the life of someone who broke the social contract as well as the law? The death of a man shakes me more than the theft of a catalytic converter, and the second you kill a man in my country you are affecting me far more than some common thief. Now you're making my family feel unsafe
It’s a bit more complicated in practice though. Are you saying you’ll be OK shooting a mother stealing a loaf of bread for her kids? What about a child stealing a loaf of bread?
What about the neighbor who likes your wife and decides to shoot you and then plant his wallet in your pocket?
Besides, vigilante justice is breaking the social contract. He's committing the same problem and therfore by his own logic subject to the same treatment
The problem with this approach are those cases where it is not clear cut.
The consequences of being wrong outweigh the benefits of being right.
And have you ever taken someone's life before? It is not to be taken lightly and will no doubt haunt the shooter for many years. And for what, because someone stole $1000, $100, $10 or $1? If you are comfortable putting a value on someone's life and ending it with a bullet without remorse, that would make you a sociopath or a psychopath.
Yeah, if it's not clear cut - don't shoot anyone. I'm talking about people who are in the process of the crime when you caught them as it happened, not about some kind of vigilante track-them-down.
As for shooting someone - I haven't, and I hope I'll never have to, but I can't imagine feeling remorseful for stopping a crime against myself. Yeah 10$ is pushing it, but as I've said - it's more about the violation than the actual value here. I have no idea what someone is trying to steal from the car, but just breaking into it is enough.
> Yeah, if it's not clear cut - don't shoot anyone. I'm talking about people who are in the process of the crime when you caught them as it happened
Can we trust you to accurately determine which situations are "clear cut" (and therefore justify summary execution)? Can we trust any random with a gun to make that determination? And can we trust them when they're the only surviving witness?
Is it a crime worthy of death when someone wanders onto your property due to some kind of mental illness? Is it a crime to accidentally open the wrong door? What about when you accidentally open the wrong door (see Amber Guyger)? Is it a crime to be in a store 1 minute after closing time? Or to walk on someone's property to deliver a package?
Is it a crime to upset someone at the bar and then turn up dead on their property, "in the process of committing a robbery"?
You are advocating for giving everyone the power of judge, jury, and executioner, regardless of whether they are qualified or honest. And you are encouraging those people to engage in gun battles where the "victim" is also at risk of death.
> Is it a crime worthy of death when someone wanders onto your property due to some kind of mental illness? Is it a crime to accidentally open the wrong door? What about when you accidentally open the wrong door (see Amber Guyger)? Is it a crime to be in a store 1 minute after closing time? Or to walk on someone's property to deliver a package?
One does not have the luxury to perform moral analyses of this nature when somebody hostile is running toward them with ill intent. In the heat of the moment, you have to make split second decisions to survive.
It’s not quite enough for me, but I would not judge others if they drew the line there certainly.
Also keep in mind that while it’s happening, you have no idea how far this individual intends to go. Were they just intending minor theft? Or maybe they broke into your car because they were trying to get to you? If they announce their intentions, do you even believe them?
Of course it’s easy to make the decision in the middle of the day with perfect information. Now picture waking up at 2am to sounds in your drive way and there’s 2 or 3 guys out there fucking with your car.
Again, very easy to say as you talk about the issue in the abstract, behind a keyboard across the internet. Wake up in the middle of the night to strangers at your home - you just caught a bunch of people in the middle of committing a felony and maybe they are not the type to leave witnesses behind.
I don't know if you are putting on the airs of being a brave knight, or you truly are detached, but there's such a thing as visceral fear that people are coming to take your stuff or hurt you. Be glad that you've lived a privileged life where you've never known such a fear
The strangers are outside my home, and your suggestion is to leave my home to confront them? With lethal force?
That is crazy to me. Truly insane. If they tried to enter my home or harm my loved ones, that’s a different story. But if I saw people destroying my property, not attempting to get to me, I would call the police and lock the doors, not go fucking hunting.
No one in this thread that I've seen is using the language of hunting. No one is saying "boy I wish some fools would come try some shit so I can bag a couple of heads". Do those people exist in the world? Sure, of course there are. There's a few people of every view point given 7 billion of us.
Here people are saying, "Well I can't just let them have this valuable part of my car (that I might not be able to afford to replace). And I'm pretty sure the police aren't going to help me. And I don't think they will stop if I ask them. So I guess I have to shoot"
If you've already judged those people in your head as "hunters", then you're the one who's lost, not them. You have this completely distorted perception of your fellow human perhaps based on the media reporting on 0.0001% of crazy people in the world, and now you believe everyone who lives in texas thinks that way or something.
No, no one in this thread is using that vocabulary. I am, because I think that's what people are describing, and it makes me sick.
I'm not misinterpreting a thing you said. No, I'm looking at exactly the situation you are describing:
I'm in my house. It's 2am. I see a couple of people in my driveway fucking around under my car.
And you're saying that a valid moral decision is to leave my house with the intention to kill someone?
That is seeing a situation that you know you could leave alone, and choosing to introduce lethal force. That is fucking hunting for conflict to a degree that is absolutely frightening.
> I don't think they will stop if I ask them. So I guess I have to shoot
You are not saying "I would confront the thieves and bring a weapon in case I am attacked".
You are not even saying "I would use a weapon to threaten them into compliance".
You are saying you would shoot on sight. Instead of de-escalating, you would take the opportunity to ambush and kill. Can you see why some people might call that "hunting"?
I'm sorry you live in a world where the theft of a car part is a life-threatening event. I can see how vigilante justice would make a crazy sort of sense in that situation. However, in a stable society, those actions would be considered a serious crime.
'Wake up in the middle of the night to strangers at your home - you just caught a bunch of people in the middle of committing a felony and maybe they are not the type to leave witnesses behind.' Literally every country deals with this problem, the vast majority of us do without using firearms.
Do you think that 'visceral fear'? only exists in the USA? Normal people in England, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, etc have had their home invaded or the car broken into and have dealt with the situation without guns.
Well what do you want me to do? Apologize? Parts of the US are shitty and not as good the countries you listed. The police show up and beat the people who called them
You can judge us if you want. It really doesn't matter what some far away people who have no understanding of the way of life here think. It's good a thing we have a system where we are judged by a jury of our own peers here.
Police have beaten people who have called them in Australia, it does not justify me shooting criminals for taking my car parts.
You say 'not as good as the countries you listed.' Yet you dismiss the thoughts of someone from who is trying to explain why people like YOU think we are 'good' countries.
Your last sentence is the summation of the modern American attitude that is so problematic, it is parochial, arrogant and unable learn from the rest of the world unless it is for profit.
And re jury, who do you think the jury is in each of those countries I listed? In Australia my jury is made of my 'peers' too buddy. It just my peers in my system don't believe crime against property justifies summary execution.
Not the idea, but the act, if I'm going to be pedantic. If the law would've been on my side and I would've seen my car broken into with someone in there, I would not hesitate to use lethal force at that point.
Wow, okay, I guess we are just on fundamentally different pages. That is, quite frankly, sickening to me. I cannot imagine valuing human life – any human life – so lowly.
Do you think a person who is stealing catalytic converters thinks like that? They already could get crushed by the car and don't seem to care. You are the only one in the situation who thought it through and still made the decision to end a life, you are a sociopath.
I think this comment is really good at highlighting the rift here.
So the "poor kid" should know that it's OK to steal from decent folks, because they would never "devalue" his life for such a small thing.
But, the same "poor kid", would've never risked stealing from sick psychos like myself.
The only conclusion I get from this is that it's better to be a sick psycho, because then people would only try to steal something from you by mistake.
People dont choose the circumstances they are born into, most of us non-US folk consider criminals as victims of their environment who need guidance to recognize that there are better ways to go about their life.
We tend to believe that there are some criminal that are doing what they need to survive, and some who like doing their crime but that both, with genuine rehabilitation, would prefer to NOT be engaging in crime.
This does not absolve them of responsibility for crimes or harm done to others (In the cat converter discussion, this is the punishment a court would give them if they were prosecuted. Not a citizen executing them.) , but it does grant them the same humanity as everyone else. This is a part of why we don't believe in court ordered execution in Australia.
You conclusion feels very representative of the US on killing each other, clearly the superior option to being a psycho or being the victimized 'decent folks' is to improve the quality of life for the thief and create disincentive for criminality by providing opportunities.
Instead you focus on the retribution/threat element, using your almighty constitutional rights to enforce the protection of a car part.
Look, it has been many many many years now in which US citizens have had guns and the right to shoot motherfuckers, how's that violent crime rate? what about thefts? muggings? any less cat converters getting stolen?
Funnily enough, yes! Just in others countries that aren't so focused on punitive bullshit that they think its at all ethical to kill anyone for a car part.
See, I'm not an american, as I've mentioned before. I can see both points, and this is my view of the situation, that you are free to call hypocritical, yet I wouldn't be able to offer anything better:
Both views are right depending on your vantage point. Yes, criminals as a class/as a whole deserve pity and rehabilitation if they are apprehended by the law. I see no point in just punishing people for extended amount of time, especially because it's proven not to decrease the repeated offense.
If someone's in custody and receives the sentence - yes, give them the rehabilitation and help, let them enjoy the second chance and all that - because that would make people more safe, as opposed to less safe, that's a good outcome.
However, I would also say - do not expect mercy or pity from individuals you're committing a crime against. I don't think it's reasonable to expect someone who's a victim of a crime to offer any sympathy or moral consideration to the criminal in the act, and we should not look down at or punish people using lethal force to prevent a crime. IMO and individual has every right to protect himself in any possible way, as long as it prevents him from becoming a victim. I would never be able to accept that sometimes it's better to let someone commit a crime against you to not victimize them instead.
Can we have both? My opinion is that yes, I see no contradiction here. I don't think we should have the same standards for the justice system and the individual.
The contradiction I see is that (IMO) your property is not you.
If an individual is committing a crime against your property, I do not believe you have the right to kill them. In this thread a lot of people are relying on the logic that stealing your cat converter could lead to you losing your job and spiraling into homelessness.
If someone is doing something that you can reasonably interpret as trying to kill you (or assault you) then you are allowed to defend yourself. This may be shocking to people of your perspective (not a personal attack), but in Australia individuals have been sent to jail for the second punch they have thrown after the first punch had effectively reduced the risk of death or injury to 0 (eg knocked out the criminal, the criminal began fleeing).
This is exactly what I am referring to when I said that we grant criminals the same humanity as everybody else. In Australia (and some countries in Europe), Criminals DO expect mercy or pity from their victims, lest the victim risk legal trouble themselves, and if you go and compare the crime rates and violent crime rates of these countries with those that do not practice this philosophy, I think you will find that our harm minimization policy works better.
I sort of understand that point of view, but I still think that killing should be absolutely last resort in a civilized society, and that society should find other ways to deter crime and/or protect and help the victims. In a broken (or broke) society, it might be the case that violence and vigilantism are your only choices left for deterring and preventing crime, but that is not a state of affairs I would aspire to.
And I agree with your very broad statement, our views aren't opposed to each other. Just don't confuse "the society" and "me, the individual". As an individual, I don't care about retribution, I never said that if someone steals from me then I would track them down and kill them. Instead, I only care about one thing - preventing crime against myself, with lethal force if available.
If I'm allowed to protect myself and my rights with lethal force and the society as a whole manages to lower the crime rate through any mean, be it through a better prison system, rehabilitation, or other means - that would only mean I would never have to use my right to protect myself with lethal force, and I'd be happier as a result. But I still wouldn't give up that right.
Here's another viewpoint: why is 10$ so valuable and life-ending for you?
I would argue that the fact that one would be so scared of losing money would be that they fear losing their shelter, food, water etc., no?
Would it therefore not be more condemnable that a society is pitting people against each other in such a way that money is survival? Isn't this Squidgame's whole point?
Thank you for the response, so many interesting points. I’ll try to address most of those from my viewpoint, and why I think the current solutions US are attempting are not effective, but comments like this help me understand other peoples’ point of view so they are really valuable.
So here we go.
The way I think about it its perfectly fine to use a bit of force to protect yourself, a little bit of thrashing of the thief will make him reconsider their actions. What I find weird is the execution bit. We condemn public beheadings and hangings in places like Singapore, but think its totally ok if our neighbors does it? Is our neighbor wiser than a whole state + the legal system?
If you shoot him dead, first of all there is little lesson learned, as there is noone to lean from. Yeah somebody else might hear about it, but how much will it affect them? The stats from the US are quite clear that deterrence does not actually happen, and other more lenient policies can be more effective. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel just copy some of the more successful societies.
I’d imagine a thief who gets a beating, some punishment and a path of redemption will be a hugely more influential to future thiefs as it will act both as a deterrent and a guide. Being dead doesn’t seem to be teaching anyone, or at least thats what the stats show us.
You are totally right about the emotions of being mugged, or live in a house that’s been broken into. Both have happened to me (though maybe on a much lower scale than what I see is the norm in the us). But to be honest I don’t _really_ want to punish the person for that. What I want is for that to never happen to me again. Punishment is just a tool for that to happen, and I believe a very blunt and ineffective at that. I want to leave in a society where stuff like that just doesn’t happen. And we have plenty of examples of more effective solutions. I’m not aware of any state that’s “solved” it, but I think more than half of the world are “better” based on objective stats and talking to people who live in those societies (highly subjective based on my experiences).
Funny thing - where I live you are not aloud to take someone’s life even in self defense, if your home is being robbed. E.g. if you wake up to someone in your house going through your things and shoot him with your shotgun you will be charged with murder. With mitigating circumstances, but still murder. Its only when your own life is threatened are you allowed to defend yourself.
Lots of people dislike this, but its actually surprisingly safe to live here, so I guess its effective.
For example, nobody has pulled _any_ weapon on me in my entire life (35 years) and I’ve never seen a drawn gun outside of a range.
And I’m pretty happy that the chances of someone ending my life on purpose (or even accidentally) are astronomically low, I kinda like living.
Just piling on, the big thing that I note is that it's not just stuff for the poorer people in society. It's their livelihood. If you screw up someone's car, you are taking away their ability to get to work, to drive their kids to daycare, and so on.
I'm privileged enough that if someone puts my car out of service, I can swear gratuitously, call my boss to tell him that I'll be late to work, and get a rental while my insurance handles my car. As frustrated as I might be, it's not a life-and-death situation for me.
By contrast, Jimbo the night-shift line cook at Waffle House has significantly less margin for error. If he doesn't show up to work, he at best doesn't get paid and at worst gets fired. If he gets fired, he's now behind on his rent, plus he has to fix his car with money he doesn't have. He might need to take out a payday loan, or sell something important, or borrow money from family who is just as poor as he is.
With this in mind, I'm not going to say that Jimbo is morally justified in whacking a criddler who's messing with his car, but I'm not going to say he's not, either.
You see the same thing in action with immigrant-owned bodegas. It's just entries on a spreadsheet to Walgreens and CVS, but that's rent and food to Mr. and Mrs. Kim's family, and it's not surprising that they're significantly more inclined toward the shotgun-and-bat approach to loss prevention.
> By contrast, Jimbo the night-shift line cook at Waffle House has significantly less margin for error. If he doesn't show up to work, he at best doesn't get paid and at worst gets fired. If he gets fired, he's now behind on his rent, plus he has to fix his car with money he doesn't have. He might need to take out a payday loan, or sell something important, or borrow money from family who is just as poor as he is.
This is in large parts because of the cruel society the US chose to build even though the economy is developed enough to support a less exploitative model. I’m not saying poverty and hard lives don’t exist outside the US, but being fired from your minimum wage job because you called in sick once which kickstarts a series of events which has a very real chance of making you become homeless and without health insurance is a uniquely US-specific thing.
Perhaps that makes "standing" one's "ground" towards thieves catharsis-by-proxy? ;)
There is much less recourse for having one's surplus labor "stolen," as it's normalized. Legally-sanctioned shootings could be the U.S. society's relief valve.
Even on an individual scale, I suspect it is only a short term amelioration that exacerbates the underlying problem in the long term.
The grand scale ratcheting-up effect is a result of processes that, while not narrowly focussed, most acutely apply to those associated with shootings.
> Very fitting parallel for the greater whole: zero sum
Its not zero-sum (if it were, the grand-scale effect would be neutral.)
Yes. It seems like there's a baseline tension in the U.S. from socioeconomic circumstances that doesn't allow for a long-term approach. It's like constantly being in survival mode, one happenstance from ruin (real or imagined).
As if the lower one's income, the closer one is to the heaping mass of natural inevitability: decay and death -- its gravity crushing.
> Its not zero-sum (if it were, the grand-scale effect would be neutral.)
I think I was referring to emotionally. There are so few great sources of positive emotion to tap into, that the zeitgeist is simply "take as much as you can for yourself, before it runs dry."
That in order to escape from "loss," you must create negative externalities and emotions -- no matter how small.
It feels cultural. There is no great basin of tradition and culture here; the positive emotions built off the backs of forefathers that sacrificed and endured negative emotion for the hope of a better tomorrow: missing.
this is absolutely true, when you startup your car it will become immediately obvious because the engine exhaust sounds will be tremendous. Basically all those exhaust strokes of the engine pour out directly to the atmosphere never making their way to the muffler which muffles their sounds.
Right, but it won’t impact the livelihood of the victim which is the reason the person I am responding to has justified violence in response to catalytic converter theft. For what it’s worth I think people should be able to defend their property with force- but at least let’s be clear as to why.
Diesels with DPF systems will not operate correctly without cats. You will have 50-250 miles on DPF system error that you MUST get it fixed or the vehicle will go into a limp-in mode.
So we’ve got a government that isn’t enforcing any sort of rule against catalytic converter theft but is also forcing us to pass an emissions test after someone steals my catalytic converter.
You are drastically underestimating the level of danger a criminal presents.
First of all, they are ready to damage your property to the point where it puts your life in imminent danger. A car without the converter might still drive, maybe with a light on the dashboard and a loud noise, while ejecting hot exhaust gases under the passenger section and straight towards the fuel tank. Some diesel cars periodically inject unburned fuel to clean the filter at temperature over 900K. A fire in the passenger section is a distinct possibility, but imagine even just the panic response of someone who thinks they are on fire while running on the freeway.
So whoever is interfering with the safety of your car already has little regard for your life.
Secondly, they are risking a long prison sentence for something that's worth a few days of unskilled labor. So they have decided they won't even spare a few days of their life for the value they can steal in 10 minutes - let alone years in prison. If caught in the act, they will most certainly not put their tools down and say "Oh, you got me, darn, I guess we need to call the police now". They are by definition ready for violence, and they WILL use force against whomever attempts to retain them.
So a law abiding individual has a choice between confronting a violent criminal, by all accounts ready to kill them, and not protecting their property. It's a violent blackmail, and one solution, unless we want everybody's catalitic converter to be stolen, is to balance the violence disequilibrium and make it much more riskier for the thieves.
There is another choice; Just file a claim and let your insurance take care of it.
Insurance companies can lobby for political or policing changes if it becomes a significant problem for them -- just like they already do for a plethora of other reasons.
Sure, it's a hassle being inconvenienced by a disabled vehicle, but having to deal with the image of some kids brains splattered all over your driveway is inconvenient too, and maybe for much longer.
Investigative resources can be devoted to following the illegal supply chain and prosecuting those who either run or purchase from illegal smelters.
We could also recognise that many of the actual thieves may be junkies funding a fix, and treat their condition as a medical problem rather than criminal one.
Ok, but if you see someone steal your catalytic converter (which you must in order to be in a position to shoot them...), you know it's gone so there's no danger of a fire on the freeway or whatever.
>How does the moral calculous work for Americans? Genuinely curious. Is it “something bad is being done to me, I am therefore justified to use any means necessary” kind of thing, or there is something else/more?
In the USA there is what in known as the castle doctrine. If someone tries to break into your home you may defend your home no different than a lord defending a castle. Pouring boiling oil on their soldiers scaling your walls ... Or more appropriately the modern equivalent action with your AR-15.
Texas goes one step further, they allow you to use force to protect your property from nightime theft or criminal mischief. It's not about retaliation, it's a matter of protecting what is your property.
I’m a life long Texan. I’d agree with it being about property and it one’s right to protect at all means. In a sense, we feel it’s a Wild West mentality. We shouldn’t have to wait for cops to come, much of the state is rural and out of reach of first responders, or reasonable response times. I’m not sure most people would actually shoot someone outside their house, doing minor property damage/theft but they would pull their gun if they had one (many of us do) and it could escalate from there.
However, saying that, I recall when I was a kid it was legal to shoot someone just for stepping on your real estate property (or was widely believed if not current law). I recall “exploring” in rural areas and being encountered with people with rifles telling us to “get off their land”. Usually with a “next time I won’t ask, shoot first” type comment. If I was an adult/POC, it could have gone any direction.
I personally don’t like to agree with these laws, but I don’t see any reduction of crime and I’d like the ability to protect my home and property without having to think about whether I’d become a criminal if I did have to use my weapon.
Not American, but I've really liked this one line I've heard.
"Property and freedom are the past and future of a human life"
People invest nontrivial amounts of their life into the acquisition of property. The theft of property is a theft of that proportion of their life. All you need is a sufficient punitive multiplier to said theft, or a sufficiently valuable item stolen, before lethal force becomes an option in said moral calculus.
Where I am, theft is punished severely, thus I see no need to take things into my own hands. The social contract is that the state handles such crime, and in response citizens forgo vigilantism. If repeated thefts of my property were met with no response, or a consistently ineffective response, you'd probably see a very different reaction from me.
> How does the moral calculous work for Americans? Genuinely curious. Is it “something bad is being done to me, I am therefore justified to use any means necessary” kind of thing, or there is something else/more?
Generally speaking, it works just like it works everywhere else--we don't execute people on the street. We sometimes have the legal grounds to use lethal force in defense of our safety or that of our property (rarely, but apparently in Texas), and we very rarely choose to actually use it.
Intrinsic morals don't have a whole lot to do with laws.
> We sometimes have the legal grounds to use lethal force in defense of our safety or that of our property (rarely, but apparently in Texas), and we very rarely choose to actually use it.
That's not how it works in most first world places. You can't murder a person to protect property.
A man with with a crowbar breaks into your house at 2 AM. Do you feel obligated to figure out if he's after your property or your life, or would you justify killing him on sight?
A man stealing your cat converter infringes not just on your property, he's possibly making you unable to go to work tomorrow, unable to pay your rent next week and putting you to the streets. If I was in a situation where the livelihood of my family depended on a piece of property I would definitely kill to defend it.
Even if you compete illegally there is typically much less urgency in those matters. You can't quite send a cease-and-desist letter to a guy wrecking your car.
It might be advisable to take their point in good faith by considering what they may be saying instead of resorting to mentioning something about US foreign policy.
Based on the definitions I can find of murder in various dictionaries, it seems almost universally defined as an unlawful act. If you choose to go by the commonly-accepted usage of the term, it would not be a murder if the killing is found to be lawful. There are other words, such as homicide, that could be used here [1, 2]. The CPS themselves (in the UK) have a whole page about this distinction.
I was just pointing out that definitions can be really flexible. Sure, murder is a crime of intentionally killing someone. So if something is not a crime then it's not a murder. But since criminal law is vast and varied same deed in one country might be a crime and in other it is not. I used the word "murder" in non-US definition of what crime is. And pointed out that such actions are not a murder specifically in USA. Implying that with respect to other countries laws they might be. And they are.
And calling indiscriminately killing people "a foreign policy" and legal is another can of USA made worms.
Check out how narratives created and pushed by evil people affected your moral sense.
It is still defense of life in robbery cases. Robbery is potentially lethal violence or the threat of violence to get what they want. That is what justifies self-defense.
When life or health is threatened it's understandable, but if just the property is threatened? In most first world country you are not allowed to go out of your way with intention to kill the offender.
People who do wrong should be punished. Otherwise, they will continue to do wrong. The wrongdoers, most likely, aren't going get prosecuted by the relevant government officials and the police aren't going to investigate. The best way I have to punish them and prevent further crimes upon the area in which I and my friends and family live and work is to use a gun, as this is quick, highly punishing, can be explained by self-defense, and used with minimal danger to myself.
A lot of men who’ve never been to combat like to imagine themselves as John Wick, and look for opportunities to execute what they’ve been practicing. There is such a reverence for the military here, and these men have the subconscious hope that they can spring into action with their gun, prove they are “men” and save the day. That overweighs the thought about someone else’s value. To answer your question, these people don’t think about what the other person would think or feel, or what their life is worth. They only think of themselves and their experience.
A lot of us also know how to diffuse a situation using the threat of lethal force without actually using lethal force. (I don't, which is why I'm not a concealed carry holder.)
Don't go to Texas and steal stuff, and you won't get shot. I don't really have sympathy for crime rings being executed by vigilantes for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property.
What inevitably happens when this is legalized is an individual without law enforcement background or training but with a gun ends styling themselves as a neighborhood watch and killing an innocent person (usually non-white, who in this case might be working on their own car). This prominently happened with Arbery and Martin.
People have looked beyond fearmongering at these policies, and unbiased research (which is why it is banned from being federally funded) always shows castle doctrine / other stand-your-ground laws are not a net benefit to reducing crime and lead to avoidable deaths of innocent people (https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/stand-your...)
Yeah those people who do that are bad and shouldn’t do that. Just like the thieves are bad and shouldn’t do that.
It’s not one extreme or the other. I have no idea why it’s “inevitable”. I own a gun and I haven’t mentally devolved into the Punisher yet.
Imagine you live in a rural area where things are far apart. Someone breaks your car, and now you can’t get to work. And if you don’t show up for work, now you’re fired. And now you don’t have income, so now you might lose your house or miss meals. Asking that person to have sympathy for the thief is asking for a lot.
No one here is arguing that it's OK for people to steal essential parts from cars, just that it's morally reprehensible to kill that person for doing it, if they aren't threatening your life.
Livelihood and life are separate things. In the situation someone gets fired for missing a day of work, you should be arguing against the ability for an employer to fire someone for something outside of their control, not for the ability to kill someone for a non-violent act.
The reason our justice system is structured the way it is precisely to take these emotions out of justice. Property theft isn’t a lifetime sentence or death sentence because our society tries to give people chances to make a mistake and recover. The aggrieved party can’t be trusted to maintain the level of impartiality and long term thinking required for metering out our form of justice, that’s why we have impartial judges and juries. Losing property isn’t worth a death sentence, and everyday people aren’t tasked with protecting their own property to the point where they are given the power to kill, you’re only “supposed” to use deadly force to save a life when no other option exists. Pulling the trigger and killing someone has lifelong consequences for everyone that touches these people, this isn’t a video game.
Also, your example of harm is nuts. Someone steals your catalytic converter you can still drive to work, the car still runs it’s just loud. So, see, you own a gun and you’ve already talked yourself into a situation where having a catalytic converters is some life threatening event, worthy of taking someone’s life for, or at least not having sympathy for. That’s callous. If I were you I’d rethink that position.
This seems contrived to me. Cars frequently break down, get flooded, hit deer or other cars, get hit by trees, etc without their owners suddenly becoming destitute.
More to the point, if some other driver isn't paying attention and damages your car to the point it's inoperable, are you justified in shooting them? In most cases, they won't face any criminal liability even (perhaps a minor ticket).
Intention matters in our framework of law. "If the driver isn't paying attention" is a key factor and it means that no, you aren't justified.
No one accidentally steals a catalytic converter. You have to plan it ahead of time and you need to acquire special tools to do so. This is not a crime of opportunity where maybe you find 100 bucks cash in a wallet on the street and you just grab it.
As for the first point... we I don't know how to convince you but those people exist. For us, the privileged software developers, you can dial in to work and submit code remotely. You probably get paid enough and get PTO to take a couple days off work if you can't make it. But there's ppl who are not so fortunate.
I don't have examples of ppl who became destitute, but look at this news story where the school faculty by this janitor a car: https://youtu.be/XqyvWqYVHcU
Look at 0:17 where he describes a 4 hour commute with 3 separate bus lines
Now if someone was trying to steal this man's catalytic converter, and he shot them. Well of course it would definitely depend on the exact circumstances, letter of the law, and charges pressed, but at a glance I'd say man, I understand it...
I agree intent matters. My point is that harm here is the catalytic converter being stolen, not the unfortunate chain of events that might befall someone as an indirect result (and other things that can cause that indirect result aren't even crimes). That unfortunate chain of events can't be used to justify murdering the thief of a relatively inexpensive car part. It's like saying a pickpocket should get murdered because they might steal your bus pass and that's how you get places.
For the record, I'm immune to catalytic converter theft because I don't own a car. I've had bike wheels stolen multiple times though, and that's no fun, but certainly no justification for murder.
I don't think you understand the precarious position many workers in the US are in. We have few labor protection laws and few social safety nets. Accordingly, may people are in desperate straits and stealing one's catalytic converter could indeed have very serious ramifications for the victims life, including losing one's job and subsequently their home.
I think we have largely done this to ourselves, and catalytic converter theft is the result of the unforgiving social and economic climate. That said, stand your ground laws and castle doctrines do not result in lots of murdered criminals. Despite people's theoretical support in this thread of shooting people who are robbing them, it does not happen much and most of these people value human life far more than their support indicates.
My point isn't that there aren't people who are in such a precarious situation, just that the existence of people in precarious situations does not justify murder of catalytic converter thieves any more than it would justify the murder of a lousy mechanic or bus driver who doesn't show up for their shift who could equally cause such serious ramifications to someone in such a precarious position. We don't punish crimes (or non-crimes) based on some theoretical indirect consequences.
The vast majority of people do not react to crimes based on theoretical indirect consequences either, despite the replies you see here on HN. While some who shoot people robbing them are indeed sociopathic outliers, the majority who do are responding to something that legitimately threatens the lives and livelihood of themselves and their family. It would be great if that was not the case like in other Western countries but it is.
IANAL, but it seems you can shoot someone in Texas for stealing your catalytic convertor if you "reasonably believe the deadly force is immediately necessary" and the catalytic convertor "cannot be protected or recovered by any other means."
It also requires that "the use of force other than deadly force to protect or recover the land or property would expose the actor or another to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury."
So not only must deadly force be the only option to keep the property, but you've got to believe that if you tried something other than deadly force you'd be seriously injured or killed.
A great American once said an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. The justification is that the person committing the crime has little to no value in civilized society and should be killed off, because the chances of the thief being caught are very low, so one only has a moment to carry out justice and create a deterrent to future thieves. In a country like America where people are very sensitive to property rights, theft is far more heinous than in other countries. If you’ve ever had anything stolen here and reported it to police, you’ll be frustrated when all you get is a shrug and a promise that they will “investigate”, which basically means do nothing. People get tired of that and take matters into their own hands.
>Huh only in America it might be considered OK to execute a person for a theft of an automative part.
I'm not american but I agree with his views. Being the victim of a break-in, I want nothing more than to cave in the fucker's skull with a metal rod to this day. These people will continue to get away with it ad infinitum unless someone teaches them a lesson. It makes me so irrationally angry that it's among the top 3 issues when I'm voting.
If the police won't do anything about this issue who will?
I did not read all responses, perhaps someone mentioned it already...
It is not about execution or killing someone. In fact, the very first thing I was taught in the CHL class - never think about shooting someone as killing someone, but rather as "stopping them". In the court, such a small detail of intent will matter.
The idea of letting shooting someone who is stealing at night is again - stopping them, because otherwise in nighttime it will be nearly impossible to find them (hence limitation of night time).
I don't hear many cases like that. It is certainly not widespread. People are given a right, but not a requirement to stop criminals stealing property.
The going theory is, I wouldn't be making that choice, the thief and the people of the state did by passing a law allowing me to use deadly force to stop thief. If I used deadly force without catching them in the act I would be subject to trial and criminal sanction.
These thefts mostly effect poorer people who are least able to absorb the loss, for someone of my income, it's an inconvenience, for a poor person, it may knock them back down the economic ladder.
Something to note, the US existed in a space for much of its existence particularly out here in the West, where the nearest law enforcement might be hours away, where I am in my county, the county seat is a half a days ride by horse - and our county is a PLSS county, so its not particularly large, they get larger - because of that, we have a permissive culture in allowing people to defend themselves and their property from others, because once its gone, you will likely never get it back again. This only changed with the invention of the automobile and the two way radio, but the culture was formed before that, and culture adapts to technology slowly.
As someone who grew up in Texas and is generally in favor of these sorts of "use of deadly force" prosecution defenses, I think I can at least articulate the motivations in a way that makes more sense, even if it's not convincing.
Many Texans conceptualize government and state uses of force (ie prosecution that can lead to imprisonment) as restrictions on their rights. This "negative rights" conceptualization is pretty common in the US, but especially common in Texas.
In the specific case of using deadly force to prevent somebody from stealing your property at night, the idea is something like the following. Absent any government intervention, you have a "property right" which allows you to prevent the thief from taking the property. In some cases, the balance of public policy concerns should lean in favor of government restrictions on this property right, to protect potentially innocent people or to prevent nonviolent criminals from dying, or to sustain an orderly justice system without vigilantes.
However, many Texans believe that the government should not intervene in this case because the restriction on an individual's right to protect his/her property is more important than the other policy goals.
Like I said, this is just my attempt to articulate the way I'd guess many Texans feel about this. I don't necessarily agree with all of the above.
To add: an urban and rural split. By geography, Texas is like 85%+ rural or semi-rural.
In $MAJOR_CITY suburbia, you can call 911 and expect police or fire response within 5-15min.
In $RURAL Texas, response times may be significantly longer which helps to explain a self-reliance culture.
Property theft deterrence, prevention, and enforcement being neatly bundled in the revolver at your hip (think 1850s “old west” town) is what was codified into law in Texas. Particularly theft of horses (eg: mobility or necessary farm labor) was severely punished.
Different challenges often call for different responses to be most effective, and it’s helpful to try and understand the situation and expectations before passing judgement.
I think this is an overlooked part of our daily lives: the impact of things as primordial to the human experience as space and time, and how they shape our socioeconomic, political, and even romantic facet of our lives.
> Many Texans conceptualize government and state uses of force (ie prosecution that can lead to imprisonment) as restrictions on their rights. This "negative rights" conceptualization is pretty common in the US, but especially common in Texas
So, the government/state has guaranteed a negative right to life, i.e. citizens are prohibited from actions that deprive someone's right to life, and in order to enforce this prohibition, citizens are deprived of their right to arbitrarily commit violence to each other, while the government/state has a monopoly.
Where does our right to arbitrarily commit violence come from? Is it just a "natural right"?
See that's why there's a big difference in conceptualization. Texans would certainly not say you have a "right" to arbitrarily commit violence. They conceptualize rights "negatively", as things the state shouldn't take away from you. In this case, the right is the freedom to not not go to prison after protecting your property.
In fact, a Texan may also believe that since you have no right to violence, it would be perfectly fine for a police officer to stop you from using deadly force, as long as that police officer doesn't use deadly force on you!
Thanks, but I guess I just don't understand how this concept - negative rights are things that the state shouldn't take away from you - fits the concept of a "negative" right given here [0]. Following that definition, negative rights require that some actions are not allowed - the government/state (i.e, society?) takes these actions away.
The basic principle is that your negative rights are a prohibition of what others can do to you. If someone violates the negative rights of others, they forfeit theirs.
for example, people have a "negative" right to be free of physical violence.
If someone uses physical violence an another, that person forfeits their rights, and the state can use violence against them. It can also take away their freedom of movement and incarcerate them.
In the property case, my understanding is that people cannot take your property, this you are permitted to defend your property.
In the positive rights case, the state extends property protection via the law and police, thereby implicitly granting you property rights. This is a grant, and you are not allowed to defend your own property?
> Where does our right to arbitrarily commit violence come from? Is it just a "natural right"?
If you down the rabbit hole far enough, rights do not come from anywhere other than the extent to which an opposing party is able to punish you. Aka, might makes right.
Minority rights are well-protected in America as a constitutional republic.
An actual direct democracy, like Switzerland, isn't as great as protecting minority rights. There's plenty of examples of democracies trampling minority rights, and there is a legitimate fear of tyrannical majority in most democracies.
America is quite unique in its system and how well it protects rights.
It's not about the amount, which I agree is both ridiculous and yet still ineffective once someone becomes homeless and addicted. It's about when intervention is effective, which is most certainly before they become homeless. How is every other Western country managing to not have nearly the amount of homeless people and drug addicts as we do? Maybe start by doing what they do?
In case anyone is curious, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_... appears to list 15 OECD countries as having a higher homeless rate than the United States: New Zealand, Germany, United Kingdom, Australia, France, Luxembourg, Greece, Sweden, Mexico, Latvia, Israel, Austria, Czechia, Netherlands, Slovenia.
Generalizing about "America" usually doesn't work. It's a huge country, both in terms of land area (about the size of Europe) and population (about half of Europe). Politically, it's much closer to Europe in terms of heterogeneity than most people assume.
It's like a spectrum: on the one hand we have countries like Singapore, where all the laws and the people they apply to are the same pretty much anywhere you go, and on the other hand we have loose multi-national confederations like the E.U. where laws change significantly, but there are some generalities.
A U.S. state is much more like a country in the E.U. than the U.S. is like a country in the E.U. Further, there are huge differences in the makeup of populations in different parts of the United States, in terms of economic stratification, ethnicity, race, education, and most importantly local culture.
First off, no one is getting executed. It's not a case of I capture you stealing from me and make you stand still while I shoot you in the head.
As for intruding into my house, you are going to be killed if I see you. I have a 13 year old daughter to protect and there is no debating why you are in my house uninvited.
How do you feel that your lack of action with an intruder may have emboldened the criminal to do it again? Maybe next time the home owner gets hurt, raped, killed, or has to watch a loved one get hurt, raped, or killed.
I respect that you see things differently than I do, but you come across as someone who does not respect other's views and would restrict those if possible.
Because it's an easy way to acquire resources. And a low-risk one, in your punishment free world too. Look at SF, where crime rings will happily walk straight into a store, scoop things off the shelves and walk out with nary a care.
People like to talk about desperation, and "they're just poor", but this is very much not the reality. SF again, the crime isn't from some down on their luck guy trying to get his next meal, it's organized crime.
There will always exist people who will happily and without remorse take from others for their own benefit. The motivation here is always the same. Getting shit without having to work for it. The disincentive is similarly the same. Risk-reward balance. The motivation? The risk is negligible and the reward is large. Either reduce the reward or increase the risk, or both.
In countries with good social safety nets, crime like this is relatively non-existent. Organized crime's recruits are the poor, who see it as a more reliable way of making a living wage, when alternatives for doing so don't exist.
Take the Japanese Yakuza as an example. Japan's still enforcement of laws against the Yakuza definitely helped reduce their membership, but if you look at why they're failing to recruit, it's not due to law enforcement, it's because people are looking at the risk/reward: the Yakuza doesn't have a retirement plan, health insurance, etc. Combined with the risk of jail, it keeps the recruitment lower. They're so desperate at this point that they're targeting the homeless for recruitment.
Without the financial side of the equation, law enforcement simply doesn't matter. If you can make a living wage through crime, but can't without crime, you'll have more people joining criminal organizations, regardless of the risk. Do we need laws to be enforced? Of course; I don't know why you think I want the world to be punishment-free. But we also need to fix our social issues for that to be at all effective.
I'll flip this on you: Without law enforcement, the financial side of the equation simply doesn't matter. There will always be people who want to get things for free, regardless of the societal cost. Remove this disincentive and they'll run rampant.
Besides. This is a non-sequitur anyway. You need both; Security nets reduce the desperation motive, and enforcement penalizes the "get shit for free" incentive. As you've said so yourself
>it's because people are looking at the risk/reward
Most countries with good social safety nets also come with good rule of law and enforcement. Removing enforcement in place of a good social security net isn't compensating, it's lunacy.
> Most countries with good social safety nets also come with good rule of law and enforcement.
The US has good rule of law and enforcement. Even SF, as much as people complain about it, has historically low crime rates. Police stats show crime hasn't drastically increased, but videos of crimes are being shared virally, increasing the perception of crime. The police haven't been defunded, the prosecution rates for most crimes are similar to before Chesa (some are higher, and others are lower, but none are drastically lower). The most visible issue is the crime rings that are wiping out stores, and those crime rings are profitable enough to pay much higher than a living wage, which is attractive for desperate people.
This isn't a non-sequitur. You're looking at countries that have good social nets and saying they also have good law enforcement, but if you look at countries with poor social safety nets and high crime rates, they also have tend to have tough crime enforcement. The common thing across countries with low crime rates, is good social safety nets.
>The US has good rule of law and enforcement. Even SF, as much as people complain about it, has historically low crime rates. Police stats show crime hasn't drastically increased, but videos of crimes are being shared virally, increasing the perception of crime.
I'm rather doubtful of this, especially with the spat between the police and boudin regarding the stats. However, comparing what I've seen and been told SF to multiple other cities I've seen, the US seems to be in a particularly bad situation, crime-wise. Car break-ins are rare in what I'd consider low-crime cities. Where I live right now? They're completely unheard of.
Furthermore, you get a lot from the type of crime. This isn't some desperate poor person trying to sneak essentials. It's blatant, bold shoplifting that clearly demonstrates that they have no expectation of retribution or arrest.
Security nets as the end-all:
My take on this is that it boils down fundamentally to incentives. Social security nets help on one end, reducing pressure on said desperation, reducing the desire to steal for some. Proper, consistent enforcement helps on the other, providing a countermeasure to the fundamental incentive of "free stuff". A common refrain here is about how incentive structures can result in dysfunctional results. The standard example is the company that breaks the law, earns a billion from that and gets fined a couple hundred million. Why is it that this no longer applies once you talk about property crime.
"Tough on crime" is a red herring here. It's not just about the penalty. It's also about the consistency of enforcement and likelihood of arrest/capture.
Driving without a converter is incredibly polluting and should be considered a crime against humanity, so stealing them should definitely be a serious crime and not just stealing an “autopart”
Regarding "moral calculus"... I would never condone killing someone for stealing.
From another perspective, why should you value the life of a person more than said person values his own, e.g. why would I value your life, as clearly you value it less than you do the parts on my car, or items in my house?
When society permits people to hold you hostage via your "superior morals", so they can take advantage of you, your work, your family etc, isn't this a major breakdown?
Consider the (stupid IMHO) duty to retreat laws in some places. You are locked inside your safe place, your home, or your car, likely with your family. A person decides they want your property, or possibly your life. And these laws require you to retreat, to possibly vacate your home or car, pulling your family out of harms way if you can. Because these bad people are what? Misguided?
12 states impose a duty to retreat when one can do so with absolute safety: Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. New York, however, does not require retreat when one is threatened with robbery, burglary, kidnapping, or sexual assault.
It may not say in that specific spot. The map, however, does indicate what I said. Looking specifically into, for example, Wisconsin:
> If an actor intentionally used force that was intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm, the court may not consider whether the actor had an opportunity to flee or retreat before he or she used force and shall presume that the actor reasonably believed that the force was necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself if the actor makes such a claim under sub. (1) and either of the following applies:
> 1. The person against whom the force was used was in the process of unlawfully and forcibly entering the actor's dwelling, motor vehicle, or place of business, the actor was present in the dwelling, motor vehicle, or place of business, and the actor knew or reasonably believed that an unlawful and forcible entry was occurring.
> 2. The person against whom the force was used was in the actor's dwelling, motor vehicle, or place of business after unlawfully and forcibly entering it, the actor was present in the dwelling, motor vehicle, or place of business, and the actor knew or reasonably believed that the person had unlawfully and forcibly entered the dwelling, motor vehicle, or place of business.
> (a) The actor reasonably believes that such other person is using or
about to use deadly physical force. Even in such case, however, the
actor may not use deadly physical force if he or she knows that with
complete personal safety, to oneself and others he or she may avoid the
necessity of so doing by retreating; except that the actor is under no
duty to retreat if he or she is:
> (i) in his or her dwelling and not the initial aggressor; or
> How does the moral calculous work for Americans? Genuinely curious. Is it “something bad is being done to me, I am therefore justified to use any means necessary” kind of thing, or there is something else/more?
In some sense, it’s implicit in the concept of self-defense. As others have pointed out, property crime is not automatically a victimless crime. You aren’t really obligated to execute criminals in the commission of a such crime. The purpose of the law is mainly to preclude an uninformed assessment (or malicious assumption by a prosecutor) of e.g. “she was just stealing a catalytic converter, she didn’t mean any harm” which implicitly excludes the exposure of harm to the property owner, whether immediate or consequent. The perpetrator is actually a predator, an outlaw who views others as prey and imagines an entitlement to theft.
We put up with outlaws to a certain degree for "minor crimes", but the specific law is founded on the the premise that the outlaw predator is significantly ill-intentioned and potentially violent. The assumption is the thief is committing a crime with potentially serious consequences to the victim or proximate others. It’s not always obvious in the moment that such a criminal attempting a disengagement is incapable of or has no intent of further harming the victim.
There are capital crimes where it is obviously clear that great harm is prevented by killing the perpetrator caught in the act, but predators are willing to push the boundaries to obscure the issue for other crimes. Thus the people of the State of Texas (from whom government authority flows) decided to clarify it.
With respect to the benefit to society, diminishing the class of people who prey upon others specifically when they’re caught in harmful acts is often viewed in Texas (and by many Americans) as a social good and moral responsibility. You are not obligated to participate if you think it repugnant, but obviously predators caught in the act can’t be relied upon to be bound by your concerns, or sense of morality, or by laws.
>Huh only in America it might be considered OK to execute a person for a theft of an automative part.
We used to hang horse thieves and for the same reason. Theft of someone's transportation is a serious matter. It's not about the theft itself, or the 'auto parts' it's about depriving someone of their ability to be employed. To feed their families and themselves. To maintain their residence.
These are not small things. Try to take these from another and there is a common law right to stop that theft by force if necessary. Choices have consequences.
> Huh only in America it might be considered OK to execute a person for a theft of an automative part.
This is a peculiarity of Texas property law. It would not be legal in the other 49 states. It's a relic of cattle rustling in the 19th century, when the population density of Texas was too low to properly police and its primary industry required more protection than could be afforded by local law enforcement.
I carry a gun everyday just as I carry my wallet. I would not shoot someone in this situation. If you shoot someone who is simply under your car, you will be arrested and most likely go to jail. It does depend on your state but generally you will have trouble if you do not have a legitimate fear for your life. You may have justification to hold him a gun point (again depending on the state).
How about people just don't steal? A thief deprives somebody else of opportunities. If somebody steals your catalytic converter and you need to be on time for a job you're going to be screwed at the job and you will have to replace that stolen property.
I don't understand how people can just handwave away this stuff. I would genuinely rather have my arm broken than my bike/phone stolen. My arm will heal in a few weeks, but my bike won't.
Thieves are not one big homogeneous population, consisting of lazy ne'er-do-well people that simply don't feel like working - it's incredibly complex.
Yes - there's organized crime, where theft is basically just part of their business, but on the other hand you've got junkies, desperate poor people, people that are marginalized and completely locked out of the workforce, etc.
I think the Opioid epidemic is a shining example of how companies can legally turn normal citizens into addicts, and down the road into full-blown junkies. Then you get all the problems with petty crime, that's related to this lifestyle.
One of many examples where profits trumps human life, and where the criminal justice system has to deal with the aftermath.
But you can buy a used bike for less than $50 and typically your homeowners/renters insurance will cover it (and a stolen phone) anyway (though typically with a deductible).
Yeah, I wonder where that used bike came from. Some other poor sod had his bike stolen.
>and typically your homeowners/renters insurance will cover it (and a stolen phone) anyway
If it does and if the insurance pays out. You're still out the deductible and anything you had on the phone. Even now I don't think I would hand over my phone to a thief.
Well if you walk to your car and someone is stealing the CC they often have an armed accomplice. Should you not have the right to get in your car because someone else is implying violence? And if you want to get in your car, and they’re going to potentially kill you for it, don’t you also have the right to defend yourself? Would someone (say, a lone woman in a dark parking lot) be unreasonable for assuming violence was imminent if she walked to her car and found people stealing the CC from her car? I’d have a hard time blaming her if she shot them both on sight, even if they were unarmed.
Most people don’t think like this in America or anywhere. It’s a vocal minority of fanatics and marginal personalities that has disproportionate influence due to political dysfunction.
After the civil rights era, southern democrats were politically isolated and ended up in a coalition with western resource people (oil, big agriculture, etc). This coalition ended up as this thing that focuses on a few key, hardened issues like “low taxes”, abortion and guns.
Nobody likes taxes, but the farmers and the resource people hate taxes as it is just an overhead. So you end up with these weird scenarios where small farmers passionately support a platform that puts them out of business.
Guns are another similar issue. Gun companies made a FUD business model in the 90s about the “government is taking your guns” that was very impactful on rural folk and eventually became a mainstream thing.
When you architect a political movement around fear and grievance, you create a culture of aggrieved people who thing “they” are coming to get them.
Catalytic converter theft is obnoxious, and I'm fine with it being a felony (in particular as the cost of repairs is substantial higher than the "raw cost" of the stolen converter itself).
That being said: It isn't a capital crime and shouldn't be. If people can legally justify deadly force without self-defense (e.g. finding someone under their vehicle and shooting them) then the law itself is a problem.
If the state wants to make things a capital crime they should just do so directly, because at least then you get your day in court, a jury who could nullify, and lawmakers have to suffer the political ramifications of killing a bunch of petty thieves.
Or, alternatively, thieves could decide to not try and steal catalytic converters knowing they could get shot for it at no legal repercussion for the owner.
If you gamble with your life, you're bound to lose eventually, and I just struggle to feel sympathy for those who knowingly ruin their own lives with full conscience of the consequences.
My the law prescribes what punishments are correct for property damage. Its not something that will give them a firing squad when convicted, so you shouldn't be acting as a firing squad yourself
Stopping a crime in progress is not a punishment. We have different measures to stop crime happening now and to punish a crime that happened in the past. E.g. a punishment for an assault is not death either but you are still entitled to defend yourself from one with deadly force. This is because we, as society, place higher importance on preventing the crime than on punishing the criminal post factum. You are free to disagree and not exercise deadly force or any force at all and submit to the criminals, it's your choice.
It doesn't worry you that people could misuse the law? For example, shooting someone to death first, then placing them under their car, and that way get away with murder?
You are wrong. In most EU countries self defense has to be proportional to attack, and to be used only when necessary. So if you exceeding limits of self-defense and you kill or damage someone using forces disproportionate to the danger you can go to jail.
No, there are many places where you want to think twice about responding to violence with violence, because if your violent response is deemed exaggerated, you end up being the one worse off on day of judgement.
Technically I suppose you could get away with killing if it can be shown that your life was in immediate danger, and not in the "old hobo waves a knife so cop shoots him in the back from thirty feet away" way like in the US. In practice that never happens, because it is very difficult to show that the only thing you could've done was to kill. Even if someone had you at gunpoint. Someone waving a rock or a knife? Lol no, unless you emerged out of a struggle with stab wounds or broken bones.
In many other parts of the world, someone having a weapon out is not sufficient evidence to show that they were going to murder you in 2 seconds unless you did it first. Even if they seemed angry and threatening. A threat of violence is not violence, a weapon is not violence, and an unstable person is not violence, and even violence doesn't justify killing unless that violence was life threatening.
That's the difference. The question here isn't about what they could in theory do. If you're going to kill someone in self defense, you'd better have very convincing evidence or other means to show that they were in fact about to kill you. Without signs of struggle, that evidence can be quite hard to procure.
So what do you do in this situation? If you can run, you run. If someone chases you with a knife and you can't outrun them, that's already much better for your self defense claim than if you just decided to shoot them the moment you got scared.. If you can fight or shoot back, you don't have to kill them, just respond enough to fend off the immediate threat. If you're not good enough with guns to make a non-lethal disarming shot, then I don't recommend bringing a gun (not that it'd be legal here anyway, guns are for sport and hunting). Your self defense can be regarded as exaggerated even if you didn't intend it that way. So if you accidentally make a lethal shot or accidentally punch someone to death, you're on the hook for it.
> If you're not good enough with guns to make a non-lethal disarming shot
This suggests to me that you don't know much about guns, gun safety, or gun laws. I'm not trying to be insulting, but saying something like that indicates that you really have no idea what you're talking about. No use-of-force experts recommend attempting a "non-lethal" shot with a gun. In fact, you'd almost certainly get in more trouble for doing that than for killing the person, at least in the US.
A gun is a lethal weapon, and there is no way to reliably perform a "non-lethal" shot. If you shoot someone in the leg, they can very easily bleed out. Aiming for the arm or hand makes it extremely likely that you will miss and hit someone/something downrange.
Oh I know what the gun nuts in the US say. I don't believe their view is universally shared.
I agree that there is no way to reliably perform a "non-lethal" shot which gets us back to my previous message: you'd better not bring a gun to a knife fight if you don't want to end up sitting in jail for killing. Use-of-force experts here would not recommend shooting at all if there's any chance a missed shot is going to hit someone downrange, unless again it can be shown that killing is absolutely the only choice left.
However, if you read the news here, you find that the police regularly manage to hit a leg and thus disable the assailant without killing them. Every time this happens, there's going to be an investigation into whether gun use was justified. And if the assailant ended up dying, it'd be much worse for the cop.
I don't know if they're specifically instructed to aim for legs, but maybe it's easier to stop bleeding than to revive someone with a bullet in the heart.
> Use-of-force experts here would not recommend shooting at all if there's any chance a missed shot is going to hit someone downrange, unless again it can be shown that killing is absolutely the only choice left.
Then it seems like we're on the same page? You shouldn't be shooting at all unless you're trying to kill the person. You shouldn't be trying to kill the person unless it's absolutely the only choice left. Given that it's the only choice left, potentially hitting someone downrange is a regrettable but possible outcome. Given that you're trying to kill someone, aiming somewhere other than center mass has an unacceptable risk of missing or not disabling the person.
> A threat of violence is not violence, a weapon is not violence, and an unstable person is not violence, and even violence doesn't justify killing unless that violence was life threatening.
> If you're going to kill someone in self defense, you'd better have very convincing evidence or other means to show that they were in fact about to kill you.
I don't understand this at all. A mentally unstable person shouting threats and approaching me with a deadly weapon is 150% enough evidence that my life is in danger. I can't see any other possible rationalization.
It is a complete failure of the state to make someone scared of defending themselves against legitimate threats.
For example, Soviet Union made self-defense illegal. This was part of a larger strategy to encourage crime against citizens, because the more the citizens are worrying about criminals, the less they think about the regime they are living in. They will even welcome more police oversight, because it is the only protection against crime they have. (Crimes against the state, on the other hand, were punished extremely.)
Do you have any sources for that story?
I would be interested in reading them because what you are describing sounds so idiotic that it seems like a parody of anti-communist talking points.
This seems super unlikely as the framer would need to have specialized saws to plant on the victim.
If someone wants to abuse a castle doctrine law there are already easier ways to do that.
I’m also not aware of any stories where the existing laws have been abused to kill people legally (eg, shooting someone, planting them in your house or as a carjacker). Although maybe they are just so successful they aren’t caught.
You're not joking, apparently it's legal to shot people to death if they've entered your home. Learned something new today. I don't understand it all, but certainly puts the new law into perspective and apparently what I was thinking about wouldn't be a problem.
People keep coming up with these fanciful scenarios because they don't like the idea of being able to shoot intruders, but think about that for a second. You're positing that a person wants to kill a random person they don't know, but also wants to do it in the loudest, messiest way that absolutely guarantees a police investigation. And the outcome, if their brilliant little scheme fails, is the death penalty.
There's no point in arguing about the facts of the Rittenhouse case, because everyone has seen all the video and decided where they stand on the issue. Arguing about it will only lead to a flamewar.
So let's posit that you are 100% correct - Rittenhouse went there with the explicit goal of shooting people, killed multiple people, and was not convicted of any crime. Do you think anyone looks at that scenario and thinks "and it was totally worth it, I want to do that too"? He's going to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. He's 18 and effectively has no chance of living a normal life unless he moves to another country and disappears. He very easily could have been killed by skateboard guy, or knocked out by jump kick guy and beaten to death, or shot by Grosskreutz.
Texas also has the death penalty for premeditated murder, which would probably be the case if you're prepared enough to frame the victim for catalytic converter theft.
So if you're going to use an affirmative defense ("Yes I did it, but it was justified") then that seems like a pretty big risk, especially if there's no real evidence the victim was a cat thief.
That's what investigations and courts of law are for. Your hypothetical of "what if you killed someone and then framed it as self-defense" is an argument as old as time. It is the basis of every justice system humanity has ever created. This idea goes beyond the Bible.
Ah yes Europe famously the only place on earth you can’t unload a clip and murder someone for stealing the catalytic converter out of your Ford truck lol. Absolutely embarrassing.
Think of all the failure that went into someone making this statement with a straight face. Federal, state, local, moral. Just wow. “Your anarchy is my justice” is the rallying cry of every criminal out there.
The state losing its monopoly on violence is the definition of a failed state. Other places you’re welcome to murder people for stealing from you are likely Somalia, parts of El Salvador, the Sudan, Western Sahara and uh, I want to say cartel controlled states in Mexico. Not exactly sterling examples of well run areas. Even there it’s due to absence of state control, not outright abdication.
So you come out of Walmart somewhere in Texas, having bought a black sports bag. As you pass by a car, you notice your shoelace is untied, so you get down and tie it. Coming up, you lose your balance a little and put your hand on the car. At that moment, the owner of that car comes, sees you coming up a little clumsily from underneath their car with a big black bag, thinks "damn, he's stealing my catalytic converter" and shoots you dead.
See the problem? You weren't stealing anything. They just thought you did. In most other places on earth, if you were really unlucky, you'd get arrested and put on trial, until it became clear that you really didn't do anything wrong. In Texas, apparently, instant game over is an acceptable outcome. Sure, the shooter would also get in trouble, but that's not going to help your spouse and children, is it?
I also agree that it shouldn't be a capital crime, but I don't think that automatically implies that deadly force cannot be allowed to prevent the theft in the first place. The distinction really comes down to your belief on public vs private use of force. On one extreme, you could believe that only the state should be allowed to use deadly force to enforce, on the other extreme you could believe the state should never use deadly force.
I would guess that many Texans who support the use of deadly force in this situation accept this difference. Personally I feel there should be no death penalty, but also believe individuals should generally be allowed to use deadly force to protect themselves and their property. I'm worried about cases or mistaken identity or collateral damage, but that should be an empirical question rather than one of justice.
>If the state wants to make things a capital crime they should just do so directly,
whoa, easy there fella! Don't go giving this guy any more zanny ideas. He'll call another special session just for it (no governor has called this many). The wackier the idea, the better he'll like it.
You should provide proof of actual law/bill, penal code and case law where what you claim was applied before posting bigoted comments on entire state.
Edit: Did you even bother to read the law before you commented?, the first fkin line, and (b), Line (1) burden of proof is on the defendant, not the prosecution, it will be judged by his peers. The (2) will fail if protestors are on allowed/blocked road ways and will only apply if protestors are illegally on non-permitted road ways.
(1) the person operating the motor vehicle was exercising due care; and
(2) the person injured was blocking traffic in a public right-of-way while participating in a protest or demonstration.
(b) This section does not affect a person's liability for an
injury caused by grossly negligent conduct.
what else can I google for you? While I agree the "whole state" is a really big brush to be painting with, it's not an inaccurate description of what the state legislature is doing.
I don't think asking for clarification was an unreasonable ask. Too many people today use emotional charged rewordings to describe things. It's honestly hard at times to know what people are referring to anymore.
I'm glad that the cat is no longer being killed by curiosity.
You can dismiss anything because no proof, or you can prove to yourself yay/nay. It took seconds to find the specific texas legislation. It's not like it was hidden. You can then come back and say, "hey i tried looking for this in a websearch, but it was too muddled. got something more definitive?" vs "i don't believe you so the onus on you."
The onus is inherently on the person making the claim to support it with evidence. That is just how burden of proof works.
That aside, people supporting their own claims with evidence provides a whole host of secondary benefits. It makes it more clear makes it more clear who is claiming what, it pushes back somewhat on the problem of "it takes an order of magnitude more effort to produce bullshit than to refute it", and it prevents some obnoxious debate tactics that reduce discussion quality.
To be honest it don't understand why anyone would advocate any other convention on a discussion board. It seems super short sighted to me.
Because the person doing the claiming is only going to provide links that support their claim. Only a bad debater would make the other person's argument for them. Do your own searching would allow exposure to both sides of an argument.
That someone is likely to provide biased sources when asked for them isn't a reason to just shrug and allow unsourced claims to go unchallenged. It doesn't matter whether or not djanogo could have found the bill on their own (from their edit, it looks like they did read it), the point is that it was irresponsible for the original poster to have made unsourced claims in such an inflamatory tone.
If the sources they provide are biased and therefore suspect, that is a separate concern that can then be addressed. But having some source for your claims is table stakes for an intelligent discussion.
If you're the one making the challenge to an unsubstantiated claim, you're the one that could do the posting of information to proves the claim false. Otherwise, you too are just making unsubstantiated claims. Otherwise, you get this kind of conversation debating who should offer the evidence rather than just offering the evidence one way or the other. It wasn't my thread, but I knew it to be one way, found the evidence and posted that as a counter to the argument. After that, it's kind of case closed unless someone posts a counter link, but nobody has done that. Instead we've gone back and forth on when to post a link.
The person making the claim needs to provide the proof, it's really not that complicated. I could claim an infinite number of complete bullshit claims the burden of proof should not be on anyone but me.
> (1) the person operating the motor vehicle was exercising due care; and
That law clearly states twice that "due care" needs to be taken otherwise it's not applicable. So compare and contrast this with the original claim by the parent commenter:
> legal for car drivers to mow down pedestrian protesters
It's still bullshit, mind you, and OP is probably deliberately misconstruing the law here. The law isn't "mow over protestors, we'll cover you". It's "If the driver was taking proper procedures and wasn't negligent and the person was blocking traffic, the driver will not be liable".
similarly:
>(b) This section does not affect a person's liability for an
injury caused by grossly negligent conduct.
That is to say, you're not allowed to just mow them over.
Sources are nice not because they magically add quality to a post, but because you can check them for yourself.
>> legal for car drivers to mow down pedestrian protesters
>I call bullshit on that. Thanks for the link.
Sometimes hyperbole just isn't the right thing, but I seriously doubt the original poster honestly believes laws were created that allowed for mowing down of citizens willy nilly. Pedantic people go nuts and throw out the rest of the conversation on a caveat rather than keeping focus on the discussion. Laws were written that allows for a defense after running people over with your car. There's plenty to be left to the interpretation of lawyers to argue and judges to decide.
That is backwards, because the second person has their own biases, so that person is going to give evidence that is biased against the original claim. The only way to get strong evidence on both sides of the argument is for both participants to supply evidence that supports their own arguments.
Out of curiosity were all the 60’s civil rights marches permitted or would this law have, if passed earlier, allowed segregationists to run the marchers down if an all white jury (keeping with the times) was “convinced” the driver was “exercising due care”
So in order to stop protesters, all the police would have to do is not provide a venue (not block off the road). "Go ahead and march without police support if you want, while people will legally slaughter the lot of you with their cars."
No, in order to stop protesters from blocking traffic, then that is all the police need to do. The protestors can always protest in a park or literally anywhere other than in the middle of roads.
In a just society, some group's right to protest does not take priority over everyone else's right to travel and use roads. Roads do not belong to activists, and no activist group has a right to shut down public roads without arranging this with police ahead of time so that appropriate detours can be made for normal traffic.
A society in which civil rights protesters unlawfully marched over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, interrupting traffic, and withstood the violent attempts at suppression by Alabama state troopers, forcing the nation to confront its fundamental injustice and pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, is _in every single way_ a more just society in which the 'right' of travelers to pass over that bridge on March 7, 1965 is kept sacrosanct.
It is precisely this type of self-righteous posturing that causes people to pass laws to block radical groups from blocking traffic and as well as driving the public into opposing whatever legislation you are advocating.
Sorry, but no civil rights gains were made as a result of people harassing pedestrians and motorists. They were made despite these selfish tactics, not because of them. These types of tactics significantly set back the civil rights movement in the U.S. just as the watts riots set back African American rights.
Always be suspicious when an angry mob tries to justify antisocial behavior with claims of "the greater good". It is never about the "greater good", but is always about theft, domination, and harassment, and it always ends up hurting your cause.
> protests “causing some degree of inconvenience are to be expected and, up to a point, tolerated” in a democratic society that recognised the right to freedom of assembly.
(but in this particular case, the protesters went too far by breaching earlier court orders.)
Whether it ends up hurting their cause in this case remains to be seen. They were trying to be jailed before the COP conference began, but despite continued illegal protest nothing much happened until afterwards.
I'm glad you agree that while protesters are allowed to cause some inconvenience, they are not allowed to disable critical infrastructure like access to roads.
This is why most areas in the U.S. which are concerned about rule of law (some areas have "progressive prosecutors" that put activism above the rule of law) do not allow protestors to do this, and they make sure that the legal code discourages things like blocking highways or shutting down traffic.
That was not the case in the situation in Britain. Some disruption to critical infrastructure was tolerated, but not repeated disruption, and especially not after an earlier court case had ordered the protests to stop blocking roads.
> I'm glad you agree
Please don't assume my opinion. I tried to keep my comment neutral.
Thank you, that is exactly the event I was recollecting the vague details of when I brought up the hypothetical. It’s sad that commenters are on the side of pre-civil rights segregationists. Blocking the road was against the law just like the diner sit ins. Guess these people would not tolerate diner sit ins either.
> It was introduced in response to a widely publicized incident in Tulsa last May when a pickup truck drove through a crowd that had gathered on an interstate to protest the police killing of George Floyd.
> The truck, which was pulling a horse trailer, hit and injured three people, including a 33-year-old man who was left paralyzed from the waist down after falling from an overpass.
> The Tulsa County District Attorney's Office announced in July it would not press charges against the driver, writing in a memo that he, his wife and two children were all "in a state of immediate fear for their safety" and had been the victims of a "violent and unprovoked attack by multiple individuals who unnecessarily escalated an already dangerous circumstance by obstructing an interstate highway."
Sure, whatever, thanks for the valuable and really well argumented input.
I, however, don't know much about the specifics of the case in order to have an opinion about what the DA did. My only opinion is that the new laws are risky, as anyone can claim they were scared for their lives, especially in places where black people are considered 'scary'. I'm not a law expert but I'd be willing to bet that if a black dude ran over a pack of armed proud boys would have resulted in a completely different law. And for anyone asking why I say that, look up the Mulford Act.
No one protests in a highway at night, alone, in a blind turn. When people protest on the highway, they do it in numbers large enough to stop the traffic.
Im not playing devils advocate, I was answering a question.
>How is it possible to kill someone with your car while exercising "due care"?
It is extremely easy to kill someone with a 2 ton piece of metal traveling 70+ miles an hour.
Surely, even if you don't believe a protestors has ever been on a low visibility road, you can understand that they could be. There are limitations to how fast cars can react to pedestrians being where they aren't supposed to be.
Pedestrian protestors have developed the tactic of gathering on high speed highways, surrounding cars, and trying to assault the drivers. If the driver is not permitted to "mow down" protestors (meaning trying to get away when the pedestrians are trying to prevent that), this means that drivers have no way of defending themselves against such attacks at all.
From the linked Wikipedia article about the Rodney King riots: "In another incident, the LAPD and Marines intervened in a domestic dispute in Compton, in which the suspect held his wife and children hostage. As the officers approached, the suspect fired two shotgun rounds through the door, injuring some of the officers. One of the officers yelled to the Marines, "Cover me," as per law enforcement training to be prepared to fire if necessary. However, per their military training, the Marines interpreted the wording as providing cover by establishing a base of firepower, resulting in a total of 200 rounds being sprayed into the house. Remarkably, neither the suspect nor the woman and children inside the house were harmed."
> What do you mean by "false"? Did you forget the LA riots?
that's not a tactic. that's an isolated incident in a riot which occurred 30 years ago.
the GP said protestors had developed a tactic, implying recency, frequency, and deliberate planning; not that rioters had done it one time, spontaneously, in one isolated incident, 30 years ago.
that's what I meant by "false." GP said something false, so I identified it as false.
Paying $10k to fix my car right now would be literally taking food off the table for my kids and making them have to do with less over the next year during their prime development. Please reconsider what is actually embarrassing and to whom.
you can get a catalytic converter for a Porsche 911 on eBay for $1K. what are you driving that you need $10K to replace the cat?
it wouldn't make a difference, because arguing that you can commit murder in response to theft is obviously completely ridiculous, and flies in the face of all relevant legal principles and precedents going back at least to the root of our legal system, the Magna Carta of 1215.
but I am nonetheless curious what on earth you are driving where the catalytic converter costs ten thousand dollars.
It doesn't matter. You aren't allowed to install after market converters on vehicles in california. Currently it takes 1-2 months to get one in the first place and then two weeks for installation. During that time the insurance company is paying for your rental and you are out a deductable. After 30 days you pay 1k per month for a rental at the insurance rate. During all this you are out time and money driving back and forth dealing with the problem. In all after work opportunity lost you are easily out 5-10k while the criminal barely nets a few hundred bucks. If it's a new Honda your car is depreciating in value while you can't even use it.
There's a reason why we give people the right to defend their life and property with violence. It keeps people civil.
Hell we let people get away with mowing down jaywalkers in LA. Why is it any different for a thief?
If you bought a car where it costs you $10k to replace a catalytic converter, you have no business having anything to do with deciding anything in the legal system, period.
Thirty years ago. And this wasn't on a "high speed highway" it was on Florence Ave.
And equating largely peaceful protests with the LA riots is really a mistake. The LA riots turned violent very quickly, while the BLM marches stayed peaceful by and large with the exception of right-wing agitators who started looting and fires under false flag operations.
I searched for "BLM rioters attacking vehicle". The first result was an article about a driver being attacked and pulled from their vehicle. The protestors accused the driver of assaulting them before entering the vehicle. The second article was about protestors attacking a driver who attempted to drive through the crowd. All of the rest of the links in the rest of the page were about drivers running over protestors. Perhaps you could provide a link or two to back up your assertion.
Here's a TL;DR of the links:
[0] Guy gets into an argument with protestors, then crashes his truck. Protestors fight guy.
[1] Guy exits vehicle and argues with protestors. Cop breaks it up before things get out of hand.
[2] Guy (accidentally) runs over a cyclist at a protest. Protestors get angry and trash car.
[3] Youtube takes down a video, puts it back up with age restrictions.
In the two cases where protestors attacked a vehicle or its occupants either the driver already had an altercation with protestors or the vehicle struck a protestor. The original comment I was replying to implied that there was lots of footage of protestors attacking people in cars. This doesn't show any evidence of that. I still haven't seen any evidence that there is a problem of protestors attacking random cars and their occupants.
>they were certainly far more violent than the Capitol riot since they very literally included orders of magnitude more violence, destruction, and death.
... And orders of magnitude more people. Per-capita, the capitol riot is obviously more violent, and that's the only way it makes sense to measure violence. Otherwise I could say that ISIS members are less violent than catholics.
Your perspective is correct (looking at it per capita), but as I recall only one person was murdered in the capitol riot, and that person was shot by police. One police officer was beaten. It's not clear to me off-the-cuff that BLM was more or less violent than the capitol riot.
Neither the driver or the protesters should have been acting like a-holes, but the driver has a higher standard of care given that they're operating a 3+ ton hunk of metal and plastic.
I think the point of such laws is to shift more of the standard of care to pedestrians illegally protesting on roads meant to transport 3 ton hunks of metal.
Texans are like this about everything. Bloodthirsty and armed to the teeth, even when they're going to a flower garden to drink herbal tea.
I live in a neighboring state and we get a lot of Texan tourists. You can't get them to honor a stop sign or even drive on the right side of the road with anything less than the threat of deadly force. It's utterly exhausting.
edit: in the interest of a having worthwhile discussion, let me acknowledge that there's an over-generalization here. Sorry about that. But, in the interest of valuing expertise, let's also keep in mind that Texas has to be experienced to be understood.
Flamewar comments in general, and regional flamewar in particular, are not allowed here. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not post like this again, we'd appreciate it.
In Texas, one is allowed to use deadly force against the perpetrator of theft, even if one is not threatened (say the perp is running away) with the proviso, for some reason, that this crime happens at night.
In 2013, a man hired an escort off of craigslist. She took $150 payment, then refused to have sex with him and left. She made it to her car, but he grabbed a gun, ran to her car, and shot her in the neck. A jury acquitted him.
The reason why at night, because it is not about killing/executing/etc, but about not letting the perpetrator to run away without consequences, which is very likely at night - hence the night provision.
DW, if you're a tech worker pretty much every silicon valley company is finding out they won't find talent in Texas, so I think you'll never have to go there as they pull out.
Great! This is exactly the kind of action we need up and down the West Coast, in LA, SF, Portland, and Seattle. In all these cities “restorative justice” policies have essentially legalized crime, while still subjecting law abiding taxpayers to every statute. As an example: if a vagrant using up public parking spaces as a home dumps sewage from their RV into the street, they’ll face no penalties. If a homeowner drops a thimble of anything into a drain, they’ll face significant fines. Without real consequences and deterrents, criminals and low lives will victimize others with impunity. The catch-and-release policies used by activist DAs like Chesa Boudin have massively backfired and turned livable, attractive cities into dangerous slums. It needs to be fixed now.
There might actually be things you have posted in this thread I agree with but why then do make other dumb wild claims.
"If a homeowner drops a thimble of anything into a drain, they’ll face significant fines."
Nobody knows what you dump down the drain.
"turned livable, attractive cities into dangerous slums."
Weird as I have not seen housing prices slump in value, they just keeping getting more costly.
I personally view it as the exact opposite. I feel that defense of- and autonomy over- my person and property are the most fundamental tiers of liberty. A society that does not uphold defense of property is effectively arguing for a lack of private property (a certain ideology starting with ‘C’ also has this trait). If we had enough surveillance, police officers, and so forth to catch criminals, hold them to consequences, and deter others, I would support avoiding a stricter law like this. But the reality is cities simply cannot afford the amount of staffing needed to stop these crimes from happening, and I don’t think hardworking taxpayers should have to shoulder that burden.
These criminals are also not helpless victims - they are most typically lazy bandits who are breaking down society when they could very easily go get one of the millions of jobs available today and make an honest living through hard work - like the rest of us. If these people want to operate outside what a just society requires, then we need real, harsh consequences so that we have an effective deterrent that will put an end to this. Citizens being able to defend their property without expensive or time-consuming legal complications seems like a great way to have a distributed policing force at no cost, to uphold the very laws that our society has already put on the books.
Unless something is done soon those areas are going to decline. The stores closing is a symptom of there being no safety. It screams "don't do business here". No businesses means no jobs, which means more poverty in the area.
Saying that you can't defend property means that you're tolerating this theft. The police don't do anything for property theft. This isn't a uniquely American problem - property theft is just too hard to prove, the legal teeth on it have been neutered in the world etc. The only one that can really stop property theft is yourself, but if you're not allowed to defend it then you can't even do that. Being able to defend your property doesn't stop the problem, but it gives you the ability to do something about it.
"Unless something is done soon those areas are going to decline."
I think the thing to do would be to not treat people as disposable so that they end up poor, homeless, addicted, and desperate in the first place. I am not opposed to Texas' laws about protecting one's home and property with deadly force but the prevention can come far sooner i the form of better workers' rights, better working conditions, and social safety nets that drastically reduce the number of people incentivized to do things like steal catalytic converters or form organized crime gangs of addicts to routinely rob the Walgreens and CVS. You don't see that kind of thing nearly as often in other wealthy Western countries.
>If we had enough surveillance, police officers, and so forth to catch criminals, hold them to consequences, and deter others, I would support avoiding a stricter law like this.
The fact that you don't, and that you think street executions are a substitute, is what makes it a failed state.
Due to the lack of police enforcement and prosecution by the courts, a segment of the populace has figured out that they can do things like this and get away with it, with no consequences.
There's a segment of the population that seems to believe this kind of looting and other theft/crime is largely a product of poverty; that if we would increase the minimum wage, have more affordable housing, and generally improve the conditions of the working poor, that these crimes would go away.
I believe that kind of thinking is dangerous and foolish.
Ah yes, desperate people that need designer handbags to survive. They’re so desperate, they pull up in their private vehicles to commit such an act of desperation. Their desperation has inspired them to dress in hoodies and a mask to prevent identification.
I strongly suspect they’re fencing them, and if you’re going to commit a crime a mask is a good idea. As is getting the most bang for your buck, committing crimes repeatedly is a good way to get caught.
The lack of workers rights, the high price of housing, and the lack of decent social safety nets has helped to create a lot of poor, desperate people and a high property crime rate, high enough that police do not have enough manpower to prevent them or even respond to them.
And the fact that we would rather spend the money on ineffective social programs like police and prisons rather than the equivalent on preventative measures that keep our communities from becoming shitty in the first place, like most Western countries do.
The state allowing lethal force in defense of property is not abdicating a monopoly on violence any more than allowing lethal force in defense of life. In both cases the state is allowing somebody else to use violence, therefore if one counts as abdicating its monopoly on violence then so does the other.
Texas passed the first version of section 9.42 in 1974, if it's such an effective deterrent, why is the crime still happening? You just hate that poor desperate people have the unmitigated gall to try and survive.
By that somebody do you mean someone that random vigilantes assume stole a cat in the past with little proof? And then grab shotguns and pick up trucks to chase the somebody if they ever see that somebody again and proceed to execute the person?
There is no law for shooting people with property. Self defense, even in Texas, requires an imminent threat of grevious bodily harm. Texas DA's on the other hand do not follow the law, and generally will not prosecute unless you're not the right kind of person.
Ironically, Texas would probably also have one of the highest percentage of vehicle owners who have removed and replaced their catalytic converters with a straight pipe. It's called a "cat delete" and common in the performance community, probably because there is no emissions testing.
Some people are not affected by the taking of someone else's life. Not everyone will be affected the way you might be, and hell, you might not be affected the way you think you might. It could be worse, it could be less. Hopefully, you never have to know, but to assume everyone does is not realistic
Ahmaud Arbery’s case is a reminder that a significant number of people dream of carrying out vigilante retribution/enforcements without cause and shoot people.
What you said is true of psychopaths and sociopaths, but rarer in the general population.
Generally speaking, PTSD is an extremely well-documented consequence of killing.
"killing or seriously injuring someone in the line of duty was significantly associated with PTSD symptoms (p< .01) and marginally associated with depression symptoms (p < .06). These results highlight the potential mental health impact of killing or seriously injuring someone in the line of duty."
If it caused 10% of individuals to have symptoms then they’d detect a p value like those, the other 90% could be pleased as pudding for all the p value would care. I doubt it’s that high, my comment is just that the quoted p value and association does not actually provide any support for the statement
And the first of your sources does say that 7-19% of officers get ptsd but also that 25% kill or seriously injured someone, which is a larger number than get ptsd. so that suggests 6-18% officers kill or seriously injure someone and don’t get ptsd. Assuming the ones that get ptsd are the same as the ones doing bodily harm, unrealistic but conservative, that means half of officers who do that could easily be just dandy.
The people that buy the catalytic converters and buy these metals on the secondary market really need to be more highly regulated and inspected. Someone showing up with a van full of catalytic converters needs to get bounced out of every metal scrapyard they show up to.
And here I actually thought that the thieves smelted their own block of palladium from catalytic converters. You're probably right that they offload them to some unscrupulous smelter. Kind of disappointing.
Still, regulated how? What you're talking about is criminal activity. Are regulations the antidote to that?
And would you really turn down a million dollars if someone showed up and offered it to you with no questions asked? I'd like to think I would, but that'd be a tough decision.
(One thief group got caught with $300k in cash. That means whoever they sold the converters to must've made way more, by definition.)
Thing is that it's a lot easier to regulate a small number of registered businesses, with known owners, in known locations, versus a potentially endless amount of (unregistered) customers that come and go.
Not easy, just easier.
Pinpointing those companies that see large growth in an old, competitive or low-margin industry, is a risk-indicator that allows you to filter out many companies and investigate only a few. Seeing that some are selling large fractions of palladium, is a risk-indicator.
Appearing at these companies with fake offers to sell palladium, can give insight.
Requiring source-of-scrap forms to be filled in, can give a paper-trail that either leads somewhere, or is obviously fake and leads nowhere. If that happens routinely, licenses could be revoked.
Don't get me wrong, none of this solves the issue and none of it is easy. It'll always be a cat and mouse game. AML regulations have shown to be quite ineffective at rooting out the problem, it's very much alive and kicking and perhaps even bigger than ever. Yet it seems also obvious that, much, much more money laundering would be happening in absence of any such regulations. Regulations can be helpful without solving the entire problem, if well designed (AML is very much a clusterfuck for example).
>Still, regulated how? What you're talking about is criminal activity. Are regulations the antidote to that?
Yes, the creation of a regulation with a civil (cash) and personal (imprisonment) penalty is required in order to create enforcement actions. Then you load up a van full of Catalytic converters and drive to metal places and offer to sell them, if they accept, they arrest who ever accepted and seize assets of the owning entity.
Isn't entrapment of this sort stupidly easy to avoid? If you don't know the person offloading goods to you, ask if it is legit. Let them make up a story about how they got them, or kick them out if they admit it is stolen.
Ask the people convicted of soliciting a prostitute?
Not a lawyer but had a brief introduction to the entrapment defense as a youngster. As explained to me, in the US, an entrapment defense requires the prevention of choice on the part of the criminal.
So if the LEO offers the converters and the guy says "Get out of here with those things!" then no arrest and no entrapment.
If the LEO says, "I work at a place that replaces catalytic converters and we need to convert these older non-working ones to cash." Then the person making the choice can reasonably say he believed that it was a legal transaction, so even if he is arrested the defense would be entrapment.
I will leave the other script (LEO is the buyer) as an exercise for the reader :-)
> Not a lawyer but had a brief introduction to the entrapment defense as a youngster. As explained to me, in the US, an entrapment defense requires the prevention of choice on the part of the criminal.
Not quite. It's more like that the LEO entices or coerces the alleged criminal into committing a criminal act they otherwise would not have done. A legit sting just offers the opportunity to commit an illegal act. Once law enforcement starts using persuasive or coercive tactics, then, you cross over into entrapment. That means that both of your scenarios are actually legit stings, absent any further interaction.
If we can have laws that bring strict liability for financial institutions who don't know their customers (KYC) for anti-money laundering (AML) purposes, we can bring in laws requiring scrapyards to know their customers for anti-trafficking in stolen property purposes.
Catalytic converters, like many auto parts, have serial numbers on them. Tracking these should be standard practice for scrapyards. Furthermore, scrapyards should be subject to random surprise inspections to enforce this.
Furthermore, the palladium in catalytic converters should be doped with traceable radioactive isotopes and an enforcement scheme put in place to catch unscrupulous smelters who melt down the catalytic converters and attempt to sell the metal on the open market.
> Still, regulated how? What you're talking about is criminal activity. Are regulations the antidote to that?
Eg. signed ownership document for every catalytic converter on premises (scrap yards,...), with a written 'source' - eg, removed from car with VIN 123...789, or replaced on care with VIN 123...789 with a proof of purchase of a new one (i'm guessing it's illegal to drive without one).
It's a pain in the ass to implement, but could work.
Often these kind of regulation cause more problems than they solve; not because they do not work but for reason of scale and Bayesian proportions.
Suppose that 10% of affected bussiness buy catalytic converter illegally and that an audit will determine di 90% accuracy whether a shop does buy catalytic converter illegally or not, then half* of fined business will end up being innocent (In practice including lax bookkeping and edge cases not considered in the law)
* I = innocent, F = fined, G = Guilty
P(I|F) = P(F|I)P(I)/P(F) = P(F|I)P(I)/(P(F|I)P(I) + P(F|G)P(G)) = (0.1 * 0.9)/(0.10.9 + 0.10.9) = 0.5
I am pro regulation in almost all cases, but it is not easy...
There needs to be something like KYC laws so that if agents show up with a van full of catalytic converters and get a no questions asked pile of cash for that scrap that people get arrested and assets get seized, making it highly risky to be on that side of the trade. Make it so that they cannot deal in cash and require ID and a bank account for payment. Move the goalposts so that the scrap dealer accepting the converters must be engaging in criminal conspiracy with the thieves, then if you bust thieves you can get them to easily roll on the scrap dealers.
Except that's how normal scrap often works. We save old cats at the shop and drop them off every six or twelve months to get that cash. Got a big pile of them now.
I'm highly skeptical of any solution that involves nothing but more paperwork.
What if car manufacturers just changed their designs so that catalytic converters weren't so easy to steal that a drug addled person could do it en masse with a battery powered tool?
Like maybe we can just nip this problem at the source so that everyone else doesn't have to change how they do business.
I don't think it's weird to point out with first-hand experience that the institutions which the regulations are being proposed for currently carry operational inertia that the regulations will need to work around. Can you explain why that is weird? It was quite a good contribution from my perspective
It seems kind of obvious that any regulation that requires changing workflows would ... cause workflows to change. And it in no way suggests why the changes would be a problem, or would be useless, which is what one would usually expect as reaction.
> seems kind of obvious that any regulation that requires changing workflows would
How was it obvious it would change workflows before his comment? I didn't see discussion of the relative frequency of this type of action, and instead I saw much suggestion that "shady smelters" were necessarily involved as scrupulous shops wouldn't do this. The commenter's added perspective helped inform mine
> it in no way suggests why the changes would be a problem, or would be useless
You have no sense of why suddenly complicating the lives of blue collar workers with some regulations punishing a separate action would be met with resistance? I am not sure why this person would have to explicitly write this all out for you, it was obvious to me in first reading.
I suggest you interpret other's comments with a bit more charity, you are the one who is not adding to this conversation much more than the one you criticize for such because you are somehow unable to consume context or subtext.
> Still, regulated how? What you're talking about is criminal activity. Are regulations the antidote to that?
Perhaps similar to pawn shops, which (I think) have to keep records of who sold you what. If you are a smelter, you should be able to account for where you get certain expensive metals that you are on-selling.
There have been a lot of states that have passed regulation requiring documentation for scrap transactions regarding catalytic converters, and other frequently stolen types of scrap. But I'm not sure that it's as easy as kicking people out for having a lot of them. The people who have legitimate scrap also tend to have a lot of it, because it is waste from their business.
It’s a more complex issue than you might think. There’s a lot of grey market business in auto repair and parts, and you’ll just push the shady stuff underground and support a new business for organized crime.
The only controls that work are with limited source scrap like railroad equipment. You’ll get banned from a scrapyard if you show up with rail ties or signal components.
When I built my house the town made me connect to the town sewer and put a manhole cover on the connection. So I go to the scrap yard to buy a manhole cover. Dude behind me had about 20 manhole covers in his truck and was obvious strung out. No questions asked from the scrap dude. He seemed like a regular.
Around here (NY, USA) the metal recycling places I've been to keep a copy of your drivers license on file, and check it every time you go to the office to cash out. They're rather good at picking up suspicious activity. I've only been to the large facilities though, so there might be some smaller less scrupulous facilities somewhere of course.
They're taking them to backwoods smelting places, according to the cop I spoke with. Who'd be buying meth-smelted blocks of metal? I'm assuming the quality would be poor.
Well if you are already in the purifying ores business it would be better than what they usually work with. It would serve as a laundering step - it isn't stolen catalytic converters with serial numbers or ones with their numbers filed off, it is generic low quality scrap metal now.
It’s an arms race. Regulation is a terrible option as governments are not known for their efficiency. It will likely hurt honest people and thieves will adapt and pivot, creating a “laundering” market.
Instead of more surveillance and regulation how about we as a society work to ensure prosperity for everyone so there's no reason for anyone to want to scavenge trace metals from car parts?
It isn't naive when practically every other Western country has far less homeless drug addicts and people in desperate poverty than the US. Unless I am naive and the incentives to commit crimes like this do not come from poverty and the lack of opportunity. Cars in other countries have catalytic converters. Is this kind of crime as rampant there?
Prosperity and insecure property ownership rights don't go together - see every third world shantytown where making something which could be a road out of pauperdom gets it seized or you extorted by local strongmen.
It’s not like people are stealing catalytic converters because they can’t afford food.
To a large extent this is organized crime. These are not thefts of desperation caused by poverty, and the thefts are not perpetrated by individuals stealing one or two catalytic converters at a time. There are crews of thieves stealing dozens of converters in a night and selling them in bulk to unscrupulous purchasers.
This would be easily solved if car manufacturers cared at all… simply cover the bottom of the car with panels. A side benefit would be the increased fuel economy from the cleaner airflow and reduction in drag (this is an inherit benefit of electric vehicles—-especially trucks). It’s not done because no one looks under their cars and it’s easier/cheaper to manufacture and design for cooling.
I should add that installing a simple piece of metal cut to fit over the bottom of your vehicle isn’t a great idea if it doesn’t properly account for the changes in ventilation and cooling that it causes.
We're starting to see changes in vehicle design to address this but typically it is only during a major model redesign rather than between model years.
The popular solution, that is almost free, is simply moving the catalytic converter from mid-tailpipe to directly connected to the engine block. Essentially the CC is surrounded by the engine block itself on all sides, and you have to disassemble the entire engine from above to get to it.
But you're talking about 4~ years between redesigns and that doesn't address any of the vehicles already sold/tens of years of old designs.
> You are aware a catalytic converter is a wear part that is a component of the exhaust system, right?
Not op but I didn't realize it was a wear part, and I would imagine that most people don't either given how long they last on modern vehicles.
Your explanation is helpful, but the tone of this comment is needlessly aggressive. The goal here should be to help each other learn, not shoot each other down.
Civil discourse is getting harder and harder to find online. HN generally isn't too bad, but the weekends seem to be the worst. I think the comments and moderation gets dominated by people with nothing better to do on a weekend.
I think it would be nice if HN periodically made you read a short click-through agreement to remind people of the tone we expect here.
I wouldn’t describe getting after my alternator as “disassemble the entire engine from above,” so perhaps we can clarify exactly what’s proposed here instead of explain basic mechanics to each other. And yeah, sure, but you’ve forgotten the compendium of ways a cat can fail on the way to 200k. It’s a top ten concern in my shop, so.
>You are aware a catalytic converter is a wear part that is a component of the exhaust system, right? You want a block disassembly to replace a part so understood to be a wear part it’s covered by US federal warranty to 80,000 miles? You just added at least eight hours of labor — which in major metros can reach $300/hr — and risk to a one hour job. There are absolutely zero reasons to open a block unless the engine itself is imperiled or under inspection. Blocks are notoriously difficult to reassemble to spec and the idea is to avoid opening them as long as possible.
I agree with you that it makes perfect sense to not put it directly on the engine block for the reasons you list, but if you've worked on cars in the last few decades you'd also agree planning for servicing is of approximately zero consideration in their design!
Most cars have a powertrain warranty that exceeds the bumper to bumper warranty, and the cat is considered to be part of the powertrain. Typically this is 10 years for unlimited mileage. If your car had its converter stolen and it’s less than 10 years old, it’s worth talking to the dealership. If the dealer won’t honor it, raise it to the automaker’s head office.
That’s part of the reason why this crime is popular. Between warranty and insurance claims, it’s largely victimless.
If your car had its converter stolen and it’s less than 10 years old, it’s worth talking to the dealership.
Your dealership is going to laugh their asses off every time they tell the story about the time glitchc came in and wanted their stolen catalytic converter covered under warranty. Hell, that’s the kind of story employees bring home to their spouse and kids for supper time merriment. Of course, no one believes the story, because who would do that?
And as pointed out by others, “emissions system” is the phrase you’re looking for, not “power train”. The reason this is important is because of Federal U. S. law that says emissions systems are required to be covered for X years or Y miles, whichever comes first. Feds don’t give a shit how long your tranny lasts before it blows up.
> Most cars have a powertrain warranty that exceeds the bumper to bumper warranty,
First, the catalytic convertor is not a part of the powertrain. Second, these warranties do not cover theft. No manufacturer warantee covers theft, it covers component failure.
No, it isn’t. The catalytic converter is part of the emissions system, which is not covered by powertrain warranty, full stop. The US federal emissions warranty exists precisely because manufacturers refused to cover it under their powertrain warranties. Any who do are an exception.
Here’s how you know the distinction: if the catalytic converter fails outright, your engine can’t breathe and loses performance. Your engine doesn’t stop (in most circumstances). Boom, not powertrain, and not covered under powertrain warranty.
If this is different elsewhere, it’s different elsewhere, but what you just said is plainly false in the United States. You really should understand that before escalating to an automaker because in this case, you would not have been grounded in facts and I can’t see that call going well at all.
That's approximately the same sort of operation as stealing the engine of a car. Not something you can do in a couple minutes with a battery powered angle grinder.
Since the batteries cost an order of magnitude more than a catalytic converter, this could justify criminals developing more sophisticated equipment to pull it off.
You know why I haven’t replaced the batteries on our 11 year old Nissan Leaf? Because I’m not quite ready to devote what will probably be multiple weekends to the job. So dispel any ideas you might have of someone snagging a battery pack in the middle of the night before I manage to release the hounds.
EV batteries are even more valuable than catalytic converters. Even at 200 or 300 lbs per battery pack, I bet we'll see EV battery thefts in the next couple of years.
I’m sure we’ll see some thefts but these are easily removed and small. Most EV batteries are the opposite on both counts — and if they were designed to be removable, they’d fit them with locks like on e-bikes.
It’s easy to run a sting operation jailing any business which will buy battery packs with the locks cut off.
I recently bought a new Prius. Toyota even has bolt holes to allow easy installation of a "cat shield", and could install a nice steel plate there with minimal additional cost, but instead it was on me to buy and install an aftermarket product. Maybe it's a question of liability?
The engine dumps heat to the radiator and the exhaust. I think the catalyst does enable exothermic reactions, but it’s not using power, so it can’t get hotter than the outgoing exhaust (although that is pretty toasty). A computer adjusts the fuel/air ratio and timing to keep the incoming temperature and oxygen level in the catalyst’s effective range.
Some models even have a heater to get the catalyst working quickly after a cold start.
Automakers resisted putting backup cameras in cars and they provide the driver utility. A panel under the car adds no immediate utility to the buyer and therefore the extra $200 or whatever it would cost would detract buyers.
Manufacturers have been slowly adding plastic panels for aerodynamics under cars over the past couple of decades. Many new cars have just about everything covered other than areas that get too hot, like the exhaust.
Be fascinating to hear more about how that actually works; or is it a fabrication by police or drug manufacturers? What mechanism of action would a bunch of metal and exhaust particulate possibly have to produce drug-like effects?
I'm with you; it does kind of sound like a drug-panic story.
The article does suggest that bombé is made from conventional drugs and basically cut with converter residue, so perhaps the residue slightly modifies its chemistry. Or it might do nothing at all; I'd be surprised if there's been a blind study comparing the effects of bombé made with cat residue to the same made with, say, clay.
I bet they just found a bunch of catalytic converter materials at the drug "lab" and jumped to conclusions. They are just having addicts steal the cats to pay for the drugs.
In case it's not a fabrication/not a lacing with conventional drugs , my very uneducated guess: the crushed catalysators contain nanoparticles which cross the blood-brain barrier easily
After reading news about such unusual substance abuse being increasingly popular in Congo recently, I have actually thought that this is the main reason behind catalytic converters' thefts all over.
But it's still rare metals thieves are after so I assume the substance abuse popularity may grow outside Congo.
There's been a rash of this all over SoCal. It's very professional. They hit a fixed number of cars of a given make/model in just a specific year range (presumably so they can do it quickly), then move on to a different city. By the time they swing back around they are hitting a different make/model (though as TFA mentions, it seems to always be Priuses and Ford trucks).
I’ve heard stories of people being advised not to install cat protector shields on their car, as often the thief will smash the windows and slash the tyres as payback for inconveniencing them. The leaps in mental logic that must take is astonishing.
People committing catalytic converter theft want to be in and out fast and quiet. They want to hit X vehicles a night. Including multiple in the same street. They often run across vehicles that aren't theft compatible (e.g. parked on a hill, already missing cat/not installed, etc), if they took the time to commit loud and pointless damage that is time they're not using stealing more catalytic converters elsewhere (and increase the chance of being spotted).
Likely someone just had criminal damage committed against them and because they had a cat-shield device installed arbitrarily decided A+B=C.
Here are security camera videos showing how quick and almost professional cat theft is:
There was a video a while back on reddit of an old man who got knocked out trying to stop a bunch of street racers doing donuts in an intersection. The camera then shows the guy unconscious on the ground, and some kid in a hat comes up and quickly steals his wallet. When he finds that the mans pockets were empty he kicks and punches the guy then runs off.
Sure, there are some smart crews out there, but by and large, most criminals are dumb. Never underestimate the rationale of a criminal who may or may not be sober during the "heist".
Would be interesting to find some stats on how much excess vandalism there is of cars with cat shields. Sometimes these stories people tell aren't born out by the data.
Slashing tires is hard and smashing windshields is loud.
Our car was broken into a couple years ago. We were sitting in the backyard while a criminal broke a side window and stole a laptop bag. Apparently, smashing is loud, but if you take a screwdriver and pry, the window will pop instead which draws less attention.
They sell these (with seat-belt cutters) for $5-10. Billed as a way to get out of a car that is sinking into a body of water (does this happen to more than a couple of people a year?). Alternatively, if you are in a cab/uber that locks the doors and traps you inside. Or if you just want to break into some cars.
-I used to visit inmates at a prison nearby (I've since moved too far away for it to be feasible to go on a regular basis)
During my first visit, the guy I spent a couple of hours chatting with suggested I never, ever remove the visitor's parking pass from my car - as 'even speed freaks' (in his words) would be reluctant to break into the car of someone on the visitor's service.
While one data point is hardly evidence, there was a number of smash-and-grabs from curb parked cars on my street - my car was indeed untouched. (Which, of course, might as well be because I never ever leave any visible valuables inside...)
Your comment ("visitor's service") seemed to indicate something more formal/organized than a simple one-off visit, leading me to find the National Association of Prison Visitors website.
-Yes, it was basically my country's equivalent of this - you're being vetted (basically no convictions; no associating), are being briefed on what not to discuss with whoever you end up visiting, then you get scheduled visits at regular intervals.
Once the inmate is released, you're not supposed to stay in touch - though in the small town I lived in at the time, you were bound to bump into each other on the street every now and then; when we did, the rule was that the former inmate initiated contact if he'd like to have a coffee or just say hi - after all, it could quickly become awkward if I greeted someone and their company asked where we'd met, for instance.
Most interesting, if nothing else I came to realise that just about anyone could end up doing something which landed them in prison.
(Plus, inmates make for excellent conversation partners - after all, they have all the time in the world to ponder all sorts of things.)
It should be noted, though, that the Norwegian system is focused heavily on rehabilitation - and that anything which may ease the convict's transition back into civil society is widely seen as a good thing.
Well, I guess it's time to up the game and add a new layer of social engineering: "people who install cat protector shields have flash-bangs installed inside in case of glass break, and tires filled with some toxic gas, for the inconvenience of the thieves being inconveniently upset".
Slap this in some social media groups, have some loud guy say it on TikTok video and some fake video of it happening.
It's illegal to booby trap your property in a way that could cause harm to a vandal. Even if you don't agree with this, there's the chance that such mechanisms could misfire and hurt someone innocent.
A better solution would be to add more surveillance sensors. Unfortunately this drives up the cost for people looking to protect their property.
I had my catalytic converter stolen as a college student, and it was a huge pain in the ass. Not to mention costly at the time to replace.
OP is not suggesting actually booby trapping cars. Having the sentence in quotes is the giveaway. He is saying to spread the myth that this is happening so thieves aren't sure if it is real or not and might be put off stealing them.
I know you’re saying put out misinformation but not really do the boobytrapping just make them think it’s a thing.
People from ZA tell me people there actually boobytrap their vehicles[1] and some carry flame throwers when they go on the road. That was a few yeasts ago and not sure if it’s still a thing.
That smells like the same kind of urban myth as the "guys driving without headlights are gangsters who will shoot you for flashing your highbeams at them"
There was a news story [0] recently about 2 teenagers that died in the back of the car due to carbon monoxide poisoning - I thought it was very unusual and had wondered if the cat was faulty. I now wonder if it was damaged due to attempted theft.
Between that story and this one[0] wherein Ford modified a bunch of vehicles for police usage and carbon monoxide was leaking into them (potentially causing crashes and sickness). Almost makes me think I should have a cheap battery CO monitor in any gas vehicle.
Thank you for the comment - just had a lightbulb moment - that’s what’s going to socks stockings for Christmas. Keychain version is perfect & portable.
These really aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. How often are you going to look at this? How often are you going to replace this? (They go bad 30 days after opening) These are basically a joke in the aviation community, I’ve rented planes with year-old stickers in them. In all likelihood even if they work you’ll be dead before you notice them.
Try it out. You might find it going off all the time. Even at the tailpipe, CO emissions can be 1000ppm and your car's air intake is well-located to suck that in from the car ahead of you.
> The amount of precious metals in a catalytic converter varies widely, but a standard part might contain: At current market value, that’s an average of $595 to $1,420 worth of precious metals.
> Victims often have to shell out $500 to $3k+ to fix the damage.
Their estimates for the value of the precious metals seems high. It also doesn’t make sense that their floor for the value of the precious metals is $595 but the floor for the replacement cost of an entire catalytic converter is $500.
Catalytic converters can use many combinations of platinum, palladium, and rhodium. Many older cats have right much rhodium which used to be less than $1000 an oz, but now is closer to $10,000/oz. If someone steals your high rhodium cat, and you replace it with a rhodium free cat, it can be the case that the scrapped cat is worth more than the replacement.
Used converters are not legal for sale for installation unless they’ve been individually tested for function.
There are numerous catalytic converters for sale on Amazon around the $100 price point. If there’s $500 of rare metals inside, I think I’ll supplement my tech job and do a bunch of drop shipping from Amazon to a scrap metal place someplace.
The amount of precious metals in catalytic converters vary. OEMs make high quality units that actually do a very good job of lowering emissions, because regulators are closely looking at their vehicles.
The aftermarket units you see on Amazon skimp out on materials so they have lower purchase prices. They may have significantly less or sometimes zero catalytic material. While these wouldn't fool EPA inspectors hooking test equipment up to a vehicle coming right off of Ford's production line, they'll likely pass a visual inspection by your local Jiffy Lube.
I've heard from a mechanic that the aftermarket cats don't work particularly well, and they're basically just for fulfilling the legal requirement to repair an emissions system as designed. Presumably they skimp on the expensive catalyst. Does the CA smog test for newer cars still include an actual sensor stuck into your tailpipe, or is it all ODB2? And does the typical emissions system have any sensors past the catalytic converter?
The last time I took my car in for a (California) smog check, they definitely stuck a sensor up the tailpipe. Also run the engine for fixed duration at several set speeds to get a variety of readings, on a dynomometer (a treadmill, basically) to simulate actual driving speeds.
Apparently Californians get a double whammy on cat thefts - a generic replacement
cat converter for most states costs about $500, but the exact same replacement cat that is certified by CARB (California Air Resources Board) runs about $2k.
This explains why older CA cars are more likely to be totaled out by a cat theft.
Anything made after ‘96 has an o2 sensor downstream of the cat to verify the cat is working. If it stops working the ecu will toss a p0420 code and turn on the check engine light.
Those downstream checks are easily defeated in most cars. They work fine as a signal that the converter isn’t working iff you’re like most people and not trying to defeat them.
If you’re trying to defeat them, a simple RC or other timer circuit on the signal pins and enough current flow on the other pins to stand in for the heater (if equipped) will result in the ECU concluding everything is fine. Presumably someone trying to work around a catalytic converter issue would be more likely than average to fall into this category.
That’s true for many early OBD-2 cars, but anything reasonably modern (e.g. 2006) correlates signals between upstream and downstream O2 sensors.
Most workarounds you see on the market are patched ECU firmware to fib a scaled second O2 sensor value based on the first, so all of the diagnostic tests keep running.
You’re seeing cars fail smog with these workarounds because states like California have started checking calibration IDs against the manufacturer’s listed values at the time of production.
Oh sure. But if you’re trying to defeat them, just take a broom handle to the cat and smash the matrix out. Put it back in, and put the o2sims in (or turn off the p0420 code with some tuning software, which is what I did with my race car when I pulled the cats).
Texas is 2nd highest in US for this crime, somebody is gonna pay with their life for this crime.
https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB4110/id/2408113 https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/SOTWDocs/PE/htm/PE.9.htm