And I guess if you're able to bypass laws in this little path of land you call your own, surely society shouldn't mind if you beat your wife in it, rape children or produce drugs in it. It's "your own castle", right?

I think being put in a situation should give one less punishment for commiting crimes like this, given the transgression of the burglars and the situation where you "have no where to run to". But in no way it should allow the owner to impose any level of violence as he or she see fit.



"Teaching not to burglar", really? What kind of an ignorant stand is that? The burglar is a fluffing human beeing as well. Did it ever occur to you that the person doing this may be in a situation where you yourself would also turn to burglaring? No, you just rather comfortably but him in some bad guy generalization removing all those human rights you would normally give people.

And what about the owner? He stabbed a guy, right? We can't have people doing that. Someone ought to shoot him to teach him not to stab people. Perhaps you think that the guy that stabbed mrford should also get an award, since he taught mrford to not give people a beating resulting in a hospital visit?



Being pepper sprayed probably invoced a lot of stress yes. As I wrote above, the situation should give lower punishment than it normally would. But by pepper spraying it would seem to me that the burglars wanted not to hurt the owner, but to incapacitate, which clearly failed. The burglars at least prepared to try and lessen the violence involved in their crime. They wanted valuables, not blood on the hand. That can't be said for the owner. Would be interesting to know if the burglars retaliated, since it's not mentioned I would guess they did not, and if so I'd say the owner deserves harsher punishment, because stabbing someone is worse than commiting burglary in my book.



So you're either implying that you think that you have the right to pass death sentences on the fly, or that one double murder is somehow less serious than whatever those guys tried to do to you (rob you?).



From your point of view, yes. Most people not having any reasons to take sides would surely disagree though. It wasn't really "for nothing", since you were giving the guy his friend enough of a pounding to go to the hospital. In the same way that you escalated violence towards his friend, which I'm not blaming you for, he did to you. You hit the nail so well with your story for this debate. But not towards the stance that you argue. Violence can easily escalate. Higher restrictions is one way of lessen this. It's just too bad we can't restrict knifes and indeed fists and legs as well.



Yep, and we pay for our ignorance with a far less risk of being killed or losing loved ones. Or wait...