I saw a rather comical sign posted in the first-floor window of a Philadelphia apartment. It had a silhouette of a German shepherd and text beneath, which read:
>I can get from the second-story floor to the front door in 1.2 seconds. Can you?
There are many variations, near my place there is a sign with a picture of dog saying: "I don't bite, I amputate." I also saw a sign with a picture of a Gun: "Forget about the dog, I rule here."
Specifically, because firearms are one of the highest value-for-portability, easy to move items burglars can steal, and America's gun culture is such that gun owners tend to have multiple guns, not take them all with them when they leave the home, and very often not have them effectively secured.
Is this actually true? It makes some kind of sense, but it is hard to guess at what percentage of thieves will be deterred, versus what percentage of thieves will be encouraged.
A buddy got pulled over by a cop who gave him a warning and then told him he recommended for him to remove his sigsauer sticker because people will walk through a parking lot looking for trucks typically with weapons manufacturer names and break in looking for a weapon to steal.
This might vary from location to location. Everyone in my state is armed and about 2/3 of people are concealed carrying. Everyone here will look out for each other. Everyone in my area knows who lives where and what vehicles they drive. There is property crime but that also carries with it the added risk of justifiable homicide which sadly is not broken down in the homicide statistics as far as I know.
It is a messed up world. Sadly people that have bad things going on in their lives get depressed and look for an escape. Here as in many places that escape is typically alcohol and/or meth. When people become addicted and overuse drugs their rational mind is overpowered by emotions and desperation. When in that state of mind one can not presume their intentions or how they will react when confronted. My own theory of which I have zero data to back it up is that on some level they want to leave this world but want someone else to do it for them.
As a pragmatic realist all I can do is work with the cards I am dealt. That is one of the many reasons I moved to a place I am allowed, encouraged and expected to defend myself, my family and my property. I do not consider myself or family to be replaceable. The best I can do otherwise is to mitigate getting into that situation in the first place by hardening my home but people will always find a way around it.
The problem is that when someone breaks into your house, you have no idea what they are capable of. Are you willing to give someone performing a home invasion the benefit of the doubt? I'm not advocating for blindly firing away at anyone in your house, but I'm also not judging someone who has firearms in the house to protect their family.
This is an oversimplification. If someone is in your house and especially if you have kids you are going to do whatever you can to protect your kids not have a conversation with the burglar or warm him off with aiming a weapon. You don’t know if he’s armed and what he’s capable of, just that he’s in your house and potentially everyone’s life is in danger. I agree with you when someone steals a car from the front yard and the homeowner has legal basis to shoot that person over their car but in my home? It’s life or death.
Sounds pretty reasonable to me. In what world do you live in where someone can violate the sanctity of your home with impunity and you find that to be an acceptable outcome? Boundaries in society are ultimately always enforced with death as the final arbiter. You can put as many layers of abstraction as you want between that type of enforcement and the action that leads to it as you want, but it's always there.
When someone breaks into your house while you are home you have no way of knowing what they plan to do. It is reasonable to assume the worst, burglars want to reduce risk and only break in when the house is vacant.
The job of big dogs is to bark, growl, run around and be so intimidating that no sane person would dare enter. If the burgler does choose to come inside, the dogs have failed.
> I don't like burglars, but a death penalty without trial is a bit much. And what about accidents and misunderstandings?
I'm tired of this trope, repeated several times in this, that is used to excuse people breaking into houses.
Anyone breaking into a house while people are in it are not burglars, they're attackers.
It's perfectly okay to defend your family with lethal force.
Criminals breaking into the car in the driveway? No point in lethal force. Collect from the insurance.
Criminals breaking into the house your kids are sleeping in? No amount of insurance is going to replace them, so it is stupid to wait and see if the criminals will direct lethal force towards your kids before defending yourself.
I repeat, it is stupid to rely on the goodwill of attackers in your home to not harm your children!.
But you could say the same thing about random people in the street that you don't like the look of: it's stupid to wait and see if they're going to murder your kids, so the best thing to do is murder them first.
And no, someone who breaks into a house with the intention of burgling is not an attacker, they're a burglar, regardless of whether other people are in the house. Someone who breaks into a house with the intention of attacking people is an attacker.
> But you could say the same thing about random people in the street that you don't like the look of: it's stupid to wait and see if they're going to murder your kids, so the best thing to do is murder them first.
No, you couldn't, because they did not use force to get into the space of your children.
> And no, someone who breaks into a house with the intention of burgling is not an attacker, they're a burglar, regardless of whether other people are in the house.
If they wanted to burgle they'd come when there was no one home. The fact that they came specifically when people are there is because they don't care about doing damage to the people (in which case, yes, they are attackers), or they came specifically for the people.
Really, if a burglar wants something, there's tons of opportunities when the house is empty.
> Someone who breaks into a house with the intention of attacking people is an attacker.
You only find out about their intention after they have done the damage (or lack thereof).
The only clear indication you have of their intent is that they deliberately waited until the people were home.
I am saying it is stupid to wait until after someone has killed your child to defend that child, especially when that person intentionally waits for people to be home.
It's hard to feel sympathy for attackers who wait for children to be home before they break in. If they didn't want to be dealt with as attackers, they should break in when no one is home.
> I am saying it is stupid to wait until after someone has killed your child to defend that child, especially when that person intentionally waits for people to be home.
But if you just preemptively murder anyone you want, you'll never know whether they were going to kill your child or not, and you'll think you're always right.
> But if you just preemptively murder anyone you want, you'll never know whether they were going to kill your child or not, and you'll think you're always right.
Who said that I want to preemptively murder random people?
I'm only preemptively hurting attackers. If people don't want to be dealt with as attackers, they should not attack.
After all, if they're only there to take your stuff, they can do so when you're not home.
Your logic that people who attack you should be left alone is, quite frankly, weird.
Let me introduce you to my mom's former landlord when I was a kid. Former rodeo cowboy who got into drugs. He broke into a house to steal shit to sell and when the homeowner came downstairs to investigate and the former landlord proceeded to smash in the homeowner's face with a ball-pin hammer to the point dental records could not be used to id the body. This guy had no history of violence. I'm sure the victim's wife would have preferred the cowboy being shot dead and keeping her loved one.
Those are obviously bad and efforts should be made to reduce them.
However, it's important to recognize the small proportion of events that started as a burglary and evolved into something much worse. With this in mind, it stands to reason that burglaries are no ordinary encounters, and that the criteria for lethal force in that situation ought to be relaxed relative to e.g. walking down a crowded street at high-noon.
Even in America, I don't know anyone who honestly thinks that shooting a burglar is prima facie proportionate. The claim is usually more sophisticated, and has two parts:
1. Pointing a gun at someone who has unlawfully entered one's home is a proportionate response.
2. One cannot rightly expect the home-owner to prioritize the trespasser's safety over his own, even in ambiguous situations.
It's a tough line to draw. Personally, if someone has already demonstrated that they're willing to commit a felony (burglary), then I'm in fear for my life and the lives of my family. I get why some states don't consider that a justification for use of deadly force, but I also get why some states do.
Having the right to defend yourself from home invaders with deadly force is a right that has existed long before the laws of man were codified. Hell, it’s a right even animals recognize.
I would assume people are tired of seeing this qualifier in every other HN thread? "It might be bad in the U.S., but in the rest of the world...." Especially when it is verifiably false. [0]
Of the ten most populous countries in the world, only China (2.114) and Indonesia (1.783) have lower peace indexes than the United States (2.337). Of the next ten, only four have lower indexes. In other words, two thirds of the twenty most populous countries in the world (of which the U.S. is third) are more violent than the United STates. Unless by the "rest of the world" we're going to ignore most of the people?
My interpretation was that "the rest of the world" is meant to refer to "the rest of the countries in the world" not "the rest of the people in the world".
To say that the US has a worse peace index than the rest of the countries in the world is still hyperbole, but it's not so far off the truth.
The US has the 129th best peace index of 163 countries, right after Egypt, Zimbabwe, and Azerbaijan.
> My interpretation was that "the rest of the world" is meant to refer to "the rest of the countries in the world" not "the rest of the people in the world".
Even by that measure it is false. The only continents less violent than the one the United States resides are Europe, Oceania and Antarctica. The United States isn't even the most violent country in its own continent, that would be Mexico.
So really the unnecessary qualifier should be: "Well it might be bad in the U.S., but in Europe, Oceania and Antarctica..."
I wrote "countries", not "continents". I also have not claimed that the US is the most violent country.
By the metric you've presented as a yard stick for violence (Peace Index), there are only 33 countries which are worse off than the US.
Sure, those 33 countries mean the US has a worse peace index than ~80% of countries, not 100%. I concur that (based on this metric alone) the US is not the #1 most violent country.
Having said that: being worse than 80% of countries on any metric, in my opinion, is easily enough to be able to say "worse than the rest of the world" and have a reasonable expectation for that to be understood as hyperbole.
I say this tongue-in-cheek, here but I feel like you're being "breedist”, here.
I have a <1 year old male golden retriever and I was surprised to learn that he has a very strong guard instinct and will not STFU with his loud, deep barking any time he hears a strange noise, or some stranger is walking by.
That said, this is a feature, not a bug. "Early warning system" was in the top two features I was looking for in a dog.
Your dog may behave uncommonly for its breed but dog breeds exist precisely because of common and predictable physical and behavioural traits.
Great Danes are famously couch potatoes but mine could not stay still and demanded a ton of exercise - still it was the exception rather than the rule for that breed.
Have owned four litters of labs and some goldens. They behave the way you train them, with one or two personalities being more "out there" than others. Ours were incredibly loving to new people, but barked at anyone that approached our house, attacked people who entered without us. One golden was so well trained we loaned him out as a therapy dog for people who were scared of dogs. He nearly attacked a mailman running towards us (sorry mailman!). One black lab in particular, Princess, she was a... well, a bitch, and kind of a bully. Animals have personalities too.
The myth of breed behavior is not good. It's the reason so many pitbulls are put down. They are absolute sweethearts until you abuse them and train them to fight.
You're not wrong, but there are definitely breed dispositions to be aware of.
For example, you're going to need to train a Belgian Malinois or Pitbull much differently than a Golden Retriever.
And yeah, dogs have their own personalities (so do practically all other animals), and it confuses me that more people aren't aware of this. The world can be much richer once one realizes this.
Good dog trainers train all breeds the same way. You may need to modify if one dog has a personality quirk, but not for anything breed-specific. It's all about the four quadrants.
A Labrador is more likely to have been trained to be a sociable, a Rottweiler to be aggressive. It’s reasonable to assume the breeds will behave in a particular way because they’ve probably been trained that way. Even when we don’t think we’re training them, our expectations cause them to behave in a certain way.
Can confirm. My 1 year old Golden got extremely protective of my wife when she was pregnant and is now protective of my son to the same degree. Large loud barking, defensive stance until we either greet the person or tell him its ok. Otherwise a normal dopey and chill golden.
I grew up with 2 labradors that were huge attention seekers. One worked out how to open the back gate and if he escaped he knew we'd find him in a certain retired neighbours garden getting strokes and biscuits. That said, one time someone did break in to our house and the labs kept them pinned by the front door until the police arrived.
It should be mentioned here that posting these kinds of macho signs are not a good idea. They may open you up to criminal and/or civil penalties, depending on your local laws and the whims of the judicial system.
“He was just looking to waste somebody!”
I cringe any time I read my local neighborhood watch Facebook group and some internet tough guy comments with “They (criminal) better not show up at my house!”
Also if you have a Dangerous Dog signand your dog does then injure someone it's clear you knew the dog could cause damage. There was the case recently, Jacqueline Durand, who went to dog sit, opened the door and got attacked by 2 pitbulls. The owners tried to argue their dogs weren't violent despite the attack but the fact they had a sign up was one of the major points against them and was included specifically in the lawsuit.
>I can get from the second-story floor to the front door in 1.2 seconds. Can you?