Was It Self Defense or Murder?

So we’re not supposed to look out for our neighbor’s well being now?

To call it murder is idiotic. To rely on the police to protect you is idiotic as well. This isn’t their job. Their job is to prevent crime when possible and investigate it afterward. It is our job to defend ourselves.

I wouldn’t call Horn the sharpest stick in the barrel, but he certainly isn’t a murderer.

Only in Texas. Catle doctrine means “your” own property, not someone elses. It also requires he be in real fear of his life. If he was in fear of his life he put himself in it.
Most states you have to defend yourself inside your home. I.E. Castle doctrine. Once the offender flees you are no longer in danger and it is murder.

Of course he’s a murderer. He wanted to kill those guys, and he went out and did it. He didn’t have to, since he was in no danger, but he went out and did it anyway.

He will be the next Batman or whatever, shooting all criminals in town because the whole town is his neighbor.

I would have done the same given the circumstances.

And a belated Happy Canada Day to you, Craig!

I agree with those who said that he’s a murderer. I would have wanted to do the same but as others said it wasn’t his property and his life wasn’t in danger. He took things too far. Granted this world needs less criminals though.

To all of you that think this man is a murderer:

Where do you draw the line? How many times do you let you and your neighbors get robbed? How much robbery, murder and rape do you allow before you say “no more”? When do you say “No! I will not be victimized. I will not be forced to live in terror. I will not let the slime bags of the world to take away my right to live in peace”

I think it is very easy for you to say “oh he is a murderer”, but if you found out your daughter was in that house, I bet you would change your tune.

This is America, people. We should be allowed to protect ourselves. And who cares if it was his neighbors house? If you don’t make a stand, than your house could be next! He very well might have been in fear of his life… maybe not immediate, but he may have feared that his house could be next… after all if one house is an easy target, than maybe the next house will be too.

I would be proud to have this man as a neighbor… because i know one thing: It will be a long time before another house in that area is robbed.

If someone is robbing my neighbor’s house, then my neighbor could very well be in danger of losing his life… and the same robbers could easily be coming to my house next to rob, rape, kill, or whatever. I have to question Horne’s judgment in shooting to kill at someone who was apparently running away from him, but in the same position I would definitely pick up my gun and go over to the neighbor’s place to stop what was going on and hopefully detain the perpetrators for the police.

Depending on the police to protect us is foolish, as witness the Virginia Tech shootings recently. How many people would have been killed that day if citizens were encouraged to defend themselves, and allowed to carry the weapons necessary to do so?

The demonization of guns is ridiculous and goes counter to all statistics on the subject, which show time after time after time that violent crime goes UP when you take guns away from law-abiding citizens. Hand-wringing, “thinking of the children” and other forms of decision-making that rely on emotions rather than intellect are erosive of freedom. Today’s anti-gun movement is a perfect example of what Benjamin Franklin was talking about when he said that those who would sacrifice liberty for security don’t deserve either and will get neither.

However, what’s also ridiculous is the pigheadedness of organizations like the NRA, who insist on rights without responsibilities. I’m all for virtually eliminating gun control, as long as buying a gun means you are obligated to (1) get some training to go with it; and (2) use a trigger lock or a gun safe.

Both sides of the gun control debate in America have their heads up their asses, but if I have to take sides I’ll side with the pro-gun lobby. Their position is incomplete, since it ignores personal responsibility for gun owners, but at least in supporting their position they aren’t just MAKING SHIT UP out of pure overwrought emotion.

definitely self-defense.

have any of the ‘he’s a murderer’ set actually been burglarized? do you know the pain, frustration and anguish of coming home to a house that has been ransacked? the disgust at your most valuable possessions taken by lazy, shiftless, or desperate scum? indifferent police officers who wearily, dutifully ask for figures and serial numbers, promise to follow up and never do? children growing who will never receive that heirloom ruby ring or fifth-generation gold pocketwatch?

well, i have, and if i’d had a clear shot at the backsides of my robbers, i would have delighted in taking it. thank God i live in alaska, where you have the right to protect your life and property and that of your neighbors whenever it, not you, is threatened.

and i have not heard of a single case of children, friends, or spouses being mistaken for burglars and shot. plenty of actualy, nasty burglers taken down, though

No life is worth an item of property no matter how much petty value you assign in sarah.

And you obviously don’t read. Loved ones are killed all the time mistaken as intruders by over reacting other loved ones.

In the social network and culture I belong to, we have a saying “All property is theft”. I’m fairly confident most Americans wouldn’t be able to fathom such a concept. Also, what an ugly looking man. He’s photo radiates psycho-christian-redneck culture. YUK!

Sure, once you’re in the house though i do start shooting.

He shot them in the back. That sounds like murder to me, even if they’re petty thieves. At the end of the day, I’d rather be a thief than a murderer.

Wow.

Oh, sure, those dudes stole some cash and jewelery, OF COURSE they deserved to die!

Sorry, this feels completely wrong to me, killing is killing. It was nowhere near to be self defense, the guy saw some UNARMED dudes who stole stuff and took on his own to make justice. In my opinion he should go to jail, he had no business doing what he did.

I guess it’s “cultural differences” but people saying “I would’ve done the same thing” sounds insane to me. Why would you shoot unarmed burglars in the back, especially if they did nothing to you AND after you already called the cops on them? It’s not like you know for a fact that they’re murderers/rapists/child molesters and they actually deserve to die, all you know is that they stole cash and jewelery. you’d shoot them in the back, just in case? Scary.

Terry, “all property is theft” isn’t some trendy catchphrase made up by someone in your social circle, and in fact it was from something written by Ralph Waldo Emerson (”In the final analysis, all property is theft”), who was — surprise! — an American.

(Note that Emerson may have come up with this on his own, and may have been paraphrasing from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who simply said “Property is theft.”)

It’s all very nice to have ideals and take the high moral ground on such issues, but it’s also a mark of immaturity and naivety. Someday you’ll be older and wiser, and you’ll realize that Communist and Anarchist ideals are exactly that and nothing more: ideals. Unfortunately, such ideals do not work well in the real world with real humans and their very real failure to adhere to the assumptions made by people like Karl Marx. Give us an Anarchist or Communist revolution today, and we will have a strongman as dictator tomorrow. Anarchy fails because human nature abhors a power vacuum… Communism fails because people who have power do not simply give it up for the greater good, no matter what Marx had to say about it.

Obviously you CARE, or you wouldn’t even be interested in ideas like “all property is theft.” The thing is, your efforts are needed — everyone’s efforts are needed — in fighting the good fight realistically and effectively. You’re not going to bring about Communism or Anarchism any more than Christianity is ever going to make its adherents behave in a Christ-like way. Give it up. Grow up. Put your effort into fighting a fight you can win. Fight within the limits of the system we have; forget your childish 2-dimensional pipe dreams about everyone sharing everything equally, and get busy doing what you can to defend the Constitution against the Fascist neocon pigs who are so busy dismantling it. For an American citizen, anything less is dereliction of duty.

Terry, I forgot to say: your comment about the man’s looks is really out of line. I’m referring to this:

“Also, what an ugly looking man. He’s photo radiates psycho-christian-redneck culture. YUK!”

I fail to see the difference between your statement and some psycho-Christian redneck looking at a photo of a black guy and saying “Look how ugly he is! His photo radiates nigger-rapist-looter-gangster culture. YUK!”

Judging people by their skin color is just one form of judging people by the way they look.

For those who advocate unfettered vigilantism: fear of reprisal is a deterrance to crime, but not the only one. The most effective deterrent is empathy: the ability to identify with another human being.

This form of deterrence does not start with the criminal, but must be imbedded in the fabric of society. Where there are too many walls - black|white, rich|poor, red state|blue state, us|them - a siege mentality is the default mindset. How can you love your neighbour when you don’t even know them? How can you know them when you reduce them to an abstract distillate of their observable behaviours?

Protect your loved ones by all means. Protect your property, at any cost? What would Jesus do? I don’t expect any of us can realistically measure up to that standard, but we can at least be mindful of it.

Ak:

First of all, gun rights in America aren’t just a matter of culture, they’re a matter of our most fundamental laws, which are spelled out in the Constitution.

As for what good it does to kill someone, it certainly acts as a deterrent to them as individuals. If you kill the guy who broke into your house, he definitely won’t be breaking into your (or anyone’s) house ever again. Hopefully other like-minded individuals will hear about his death, and will think twice before breaking into ANYONE’S house.

No, criminals don’t have a database of houses that are safe or unsafe to rob… but the more freedom we have to defend ourselves from robbery, the more criminals will be shot while committing their crimes. This both reduces the sheer number of robbers, and makes robbery in general a less attractive career choice. Your hypothetical database-checking robbers would be more likely to simply decide to do something less risky than breaking into a home if they lived in a world where the shooting of robbers by homeowners was more common.

Note that I still don’t support shooting people in the back as they run away from you, but I personally would have no problem shooting to disable rather than kill in the same situation. Letting the robbers go means someone else may get robbed tomorrow, and the robbers might take more than property next time. Like your database of gun owners, the database of houses where nobody is home is also mythical. Burglars break into houses prepared to do SOMETHING if someone turns out to be home, so burglary is quite a bit scarier than a simple matter of someone running off with your stuff.

Sorry, I just can’t look at murder and not see murder.

Woo! Guns for everybody!

Why, EXACTLY, did they deserve to live (and leave unaharmed)?

Give me ONE good reason.

“Murder is murder” is not a reason - scum is scum, overpopulation is overpopulation.

Ak wrote:

“I can’t wait for the time when all robbers will be killed so there are only robber-killers left, life will be so much better.”

I can’t wait for the time when all homes will be burgled by robbers who have no fear of anything but the police. Life will be so much better when only criminals have any property, and the rest of us live in empty houses.

Kew:

The question can never be “why did they deserve to live?”. A person does not need to justify their existence in order to avoid being legally killed. The question under rule of law must always be “why did they deserve to die?”.

For many people, there are ample reasons why these two deserved to die. Not everyone agrees with those reasons, however. Generally speaking, in the eyes of the law, they did not deserve to die, as they were running away and no longer an imminent physical threat to any person. For some reason, the judge in this case found some extenuating circumstances that prompted him to excuse that fact and judge it justifiable homicide. Maybe the judge just doesn’t want to see an otherwise law-abiding citizen punished for being tired of his neighborhood being victimized, or maybe there are facts about this case that we are not privy to.

Very well put rocket. That makes it very understandable.
Each state has different laws on this due to just that.
What the rate of those type crimes are (breaking and entering, robbery). How many innocents die in these crimes… etc….
None of us know what that area is like or how many times the people were preyed upon.

Again, in the house is ok with me. Take a life for threatening mine.

I do not believe that this is “murder” in Texas since that is “their” state law. It probably would be some level of murder / manslaughter in some other state
with different laws. If folks object to him shooting these burglars, then the law should be changed. America is (or was at one time) a nation of laws.

Well then, that makes me an old long haired hippy italian bigot.

Thanks for pointing that out. Fact of the matter is this topic is about why he shot 2 men in the back while running away. Not weather you agree with my understanding of people. As if you lived here, visiting is not living here so you know shit about the color of rednecks or rednecks at all.
Just 2 days ago a dear friend of mines house was broken into while at work. They didn’t break or take anything. They sold crack out of her house all day.
If she were a redneck and home at the time they would be dead, but she isn’t so she got video security and alarms.
Gee, wonder why rednecks don’t think of that alternative?

YEEE HAWWWW This is why we should have better gun control in this country. Big Texan with a gun - a big hero in his neighborhood now. I wouldn’t call him a murderer, but I would call him a hot headed dumb ass!!

He was cleared, so in the eyes of that grand jury it’s not illegal. Personally I’m not going to lose any sleep of the guys who got capped.

But seriously. WHAT. THE. FUCK.
Murder is murder. You all can argue “blah.. blah.. blah.. they were criminals! they deserved to die!”
This man still killed two living, breathing human beings. For what? They took a few trinkets and a few pieces of green paper from his NEIGHBOR. Not him.
Hell. The dispatcher even told him not to shoot, and then he was like FUCK YOU COP. I KILL WHO I WANT TO KILL.
*Blam* *Blam* Two dead kids coming up!

“Property isn’t worth someone’s life” is an overly-simplistic argument against killing burglars. The lack of some forms of property will kill you, for one thing… and there’s more to the issue than just property. Criminals who break into a home don’t know if you’re home or not, and they wouldn’t break in if they didn’t have some kind of contingency plan in case you’re there. Some of the sicker ones are hoping you are!

“It wasn’t his stuff he was protecting” is just a selfish argument. Where people don’t look out for each other to some extent, there is no community… and where there is no community, there is only raw competition for resources. I don’t want to live in that world, and too many of us already do.

Note once again that I still don’t advocate shooting to kill when someone is running away from you… but in the case of a criminal fleeing with stolen goods I’m OK with shooting to disable.

Ted: A tip, don’t take my stereo. It’s nice, and I am willing to kill any thug that attempts to take it. You are right, my stereo is equal to a robber’s life…. my stereo is worth more.

If a person is willing to break into my neighbor’s house, they are willing to break into mine. If we don’t stop them, they will continue to break into break into peoples house.

And did he know the these guys were not going to go back into the house? Did he know that no-one was inside? did he know that they were unarmed? No-one here knows for sure what was going through this guy’s head, but you are all willing to call him a murderer.

Do not forget, that these were illegal aliens with long criminal records. And now these worthless scumbags will not ruin anymore lives.

Absolutely not.

Rocket, you seem to be the most vocal here. My answer to you calling me a bigot will post soon, just waiting moderation.
Just keep in mind, Opinions are like ass holes, everybody has one. You being the most opinionated is making you the biggest ass hole.
What a waste of your fathers money for that degree.

Sad, really.

My own thought is: I see no harm in him shooting to disable the two burglars. He deliberately shot to kill them. And glib comments about “my stereo is worth their lives” are pointless.

Plain and simple is a matter of fact. He killed those two men. He didn’t have to. You can’t debate that. He shot them dead. He ended their lives. He wanted to. He didn’t know if they were your or old, if they were career criminals, if they were illegal immigrants, or if their lives meant anything to anyone else.

He just decided to kill them. I didn’t call him a murderer, but what else could you possibly label it?

In a way, it is justice. Criminals don’t care about how you feel violated when they steal your stuff. And in Texas, they probably knew the dangers. As I said, I don’t feel any loss for them, but vigilante justice is a dangerous thing.

I have noticed though, the ones who won’t use their real names are the biggest wimps when it comes to “being” a person in a situation like this. Be a man Rocket, use your real name so we can ridicule you of the internet as well.
Something to hide?

Seriously Rocket. Give it a break, we could give a shit about what you believe. Move on!

There goes Rocket again insisting his view is the only view. Go republicans!
What a joke.

Just cut to the chase rocket, make all of us measure pee pees with you and get it over with. Damn you’re a sorry human being.

Tim,

You’re clearly some kind of angry dullard and I’m not going to bother to respond to your laughably childish attempts to make me angry… but why on Earth do you think I’m a Republican?

(sorry if this is a double post) I don’t feel bad for the robbers. Of course I guess I really wouldn’t feel bad for Joe Horn if the robbers’ relatives were to come and blast him in the back as he was walking into his house. Neither party in this incident demonstrated a modicum of respect or compassion for fellow humanity so f@#k ‘em all I guess.

We have all tried civil recourse with you boy. And you just won’t shut up. That’s why I called you a republican on a danged filibuster. Shut up and move on for crying out loud.
You rattle on like you’re a slimey politician with a plan to change the world when you haven’t even managed to change one persons view here. That is just pathetic.

Hey, Rockets hero died today.
Sen. Jesse Helms finally kicked the bucket.
He shared many of your views that you have stated here tonight.
So similar it makes me want to shoot you just to shut you the feck up.

hey tim giachetti, if you are so exhausted why are you still here? quit trying to shut people up and move on yourself. Troll.

http://www.imeem.com/people/O6_njaO/friends/

why doesnt this surprise me

Who cares if they were illegal immigrants or not, they were theives. A thief is not tollerated by any culture, they are despised. These men did not simply steal things, they stole time. Time spent away from the family, house, and things that made the owner of said property happy in life, in order to legitamately earn the money that was used to buy those things.

If we are going to ban things that kill people, then let us ban cars. Cars afterall, kill more Americans every year than guns do. (41,000 a year on average)

Lives of people who die of car accidents are not morned like others are, we simply say oh well. Maybe Stalin had a point when he said that a single death is a tragedy and a million is a statistic.

We as humans have insticts to survive, we have insticts that make us feel bad when a member of our species is lost. These emotions have kept us alive, but they are not always reasonable.

How long was it before we learned how to prevent common diseases via sanitation? How many people had to die before we learned that? How many people need to die before we learn how to drive safely? How many criminals will have to die before they learn that they should not Rape, Kill, or Steal?

Almost every culture in the world regaurds theft as an offense. Most people are in favor of the death penalty in one way or another. Some people want it fast and others want it to come naturally via life in prison. Not too many people are willing to parole a known murderer. We should also give the death penalty to thieves either life in prison or instant death their choice.

Ok, so maybe that does go too far. But these people stole time from the property owners, they stole things that the owner had to spend a large amount of time earning, maintaining, and finding those items that gave him or her satisfaction, comfort, and peace.

To me, it is sick to live in a Capitalist society where there are plenty of legitamate jobs availiable that will allow you to trade your time formoney in order to buy things that make you feel good, these men were too lazy to do that and wanted to steal someonelse’s time. These were Sick Sick men.

Do I think that they desrve to die? Yeah they deserve to die and I hope that they burn in Hell!

It is too bad that I am an atheist and that I don’t believe in Hell. If only it was true.

From Tim’s 11th comment, “You have a problem with having to be right.” Also from that comment, “I am absolutely right about you…” Pot. Kettle. Black.

Shprocket
Thanks, I haven’t had a good belly laugh like that for a while. My culture is 60 thousand years + old. We share! Your assumptions about me are just plain wrong.
But jeez, aren’t you going off like a frog in a sock on this thread. LOL!!!

It seems to me there are two less thieves in the world, and it seems to me that he gave them the chance to give it up. There were steeling property he had been asked to watch out for. It might seem harsh in these days of coddling real criminals, but I don’t find Mr. Horn to have done anything worthy of imprisonment.

I don’t know all the laws of Texas, but here in New Mexico one can do what is necessary to defend one’s property or to apprehend a criminal who has committed a felony in one’s presence. I suppose what is necessary depends on the circumstances, but pointing a gun at a burglar and telling them to freeze…. well, that criminal needs to freeze or they might get shot.

Hi Terry,

Sorry if I made some assumptions about you that were off… we don’t see many Yanamamo, Australian aborigines, or New Guinean hobbit-people on the Internet, so I naturally assumed you were part of a culture much younger than 60,000 years.

Unfortunately, whatever cultural mores regarding property your 60,000-year-old tribe subscribes to, they’re apparently not workable in even a newly industrialized civilization like China.

I still stand by what I said about your comments being bigoted. The way the man’s face looks to you has nothing to do with anything.

Terry:

Try telling a judge and jury that you’re good at reading faces, and see how far you get with that as evidence of anything.

Maybe Joe Horn was good at reading faces too. Maybe what he saw was a couple of dangerous career criminals who were a threat to him and his neighbors, and who needed killing in his estimation. If you can judge people by their faces, shouldn’t he be able to as well? You saw a “psycho-christian-redneck” when you looked at Horn’s photograph… maybe he saw psycho killer Colombians.

I’m being facetious, of course. I don’t care how good you think you are at reading faces, it’s no proper basis for judging a person.

It could set an interesting precedent for the future.

If that was my stuff getting stolen, and the men stealing it got shot in the back and died, I would never be able to live with myself - even if it was my neighbor that killed them. No possession is worth taking a life. And how far do you think they would have gotten? Shouldn’t we really be wondering why we are putting material before life (Any life)? I’m sure Jesus is real proud of Mr. Horn. As, apparently, some of my fellow Texans and Americans are. Happy 4th guys, I’m sure this is what the founding fathers meant by the second amendment. Along with all the other shit we and our government do, I’m sure they are just pleased as punch.

Violet, anyone who breaks into a stranger’s home knows that someone might be inside, and that the encounter could lead to violence. By the very fact that they broke into a house, we have to assume that they are prepared to hurt or kill anyone who happens to be there. Burglary is not to be equated with stealing bread from the supermarket. The only question is: how far do our rights go in defending our (and each other’s) homes?

Along with the rights and privileges of citizenship comes the responsibility of good citizenship. Good citizenship is simply behaving in such a manner, and arranging ones priorities in a way that promotes and protects the ideals of our society and that set an example for others.

Promoting the security of self and of one’s neighbors would fall under this definition. So would resisting attempts to violate the general security of one’s own home and community.

The only problem I have with Horn’s action is that he didn’t get the attention of the thieves first. He could have given them a chance to yield to force of arms, to put down their loot and surrender like the gutless little bastards they were. They could have had the privilege of going to jail with wet pants and their lives. For Horn to have hailed them and given them the opportunity to fully appreciate their situation would have been a boon, a ticket to tomorrow. But the thieves, by choosing their course of action, which was precisely to violate the peace and security of their fellow citizen’s lives, have put their own peace and security in jeopardy, as their actions were clearly against the law. They narrowed their own chances. Had the run into someone else, someone who would hesitate to shoot, they might be alive. But the ran into Mr. Horn. And he shot them dead.

Thieves should therefore be advised. Just as there are crooks and fools who think nothing of stealing and assaulting the law abiding and gentle, there exists among the law abiding and gentle those who would think nothing of stopping a crook or a fool cold, suddenly and terminally. And it’s always been so. A sharp claw sheathed in the notions of personal responsibility and power vested in the common population.

E Pluribus Unum

Shprocket
I had a pretty interesting rave with our State Ombudsman (family friend) about Jungian Typology or MBTI and it’s use in organisational structures (team building). Indeed, reading faces (also posture, gait etc) is a crucial component of identifying type. The State Ombudsman’s office Human Resource Manager (as many organisations do) used MBTI to structure their departmental teams. I admit that the use of MBTI is fairly controversial, but when our Governments watch dog uses it, I think it has a bit more merit than you propose. Some people can read faces accurately others cant.