[M. Dodge Thomas]

Actually, most Americans are very reluctant to employ deadly force in such circumstances; there are hundreds of thousands to millions - depending on how you count - of incidents yearly where people report the use of use a firearm to prevent a crime, but only a few hundred justifiable homicides… most people will shoot to kill only as a last resort.

And IMO, that’s a healthy thing; a culture where large numbers of people a truly feel they are justified in killing someone for committing a property crime – a opposed to just fantasying about how good it would feel to do it when they walk out in the morning and find the driver’s side window in shards on the ground - is a culture in real trouble.

This is something most people understand quite well when they see members of other cultures in homicidal rages over fetishes about whether you should wear a beard or cover you hair, or drive a car if you are female, or charge interest on a loan – that it’s just nuts to kill people over the righteousness of your appearance, or the sacred nature of human sexuality, or the blasphemous nature of money-lending for interest.

It’s just that some of the same people see it as perfectly rational to shoot someone if they are trying to steal a burger off your backyard grill, because that’s not a fetish, that’s about the sacred nature of Property, so it’s perfectly rational and even righteous to kill someone in defense of the principle, no matter how small the crime.

[no-to-illegals]

Being this nation was founded on a principle of rights, including Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, and almost slipped in was ‘the Pursuit of Property’ one can only wonder, why so many laws protect property, if the right of property is to be trashed. I realize the Supreme Court said eminent domain, and property can be taken, but is this what the Founders of this Nation intended? Mr. Horn protected his neighbors from the pursuit of those who chose stealing property of his neighbors. Why would anyone want to condemn him, unless that one cares not for Life, Liberty, or the Pursuit of Happiness? For in this case there was a Pursuit of Happiness for one's neighbors by resistance to thugs.

Someone will be angry with me, if I do not leave this forum for tonight. Carry on the Good Fight, even if a shot or twelve is necessary, my Fellow Americans (with Liberty and Justice for All) Dear Fellow FReepers.

[El Gato]

It’s just that some of the same people see it as perfectly rational to shoot someone if they are trying to steal a burger off your backyard grill, because that’s not a fetish, that’s about the sacred nature of Property,

Stealing a hamburger off the grill would be simple theft, and because this was during the daytime, Texas law would not justify use of deadly force. But this was a break in, witnessed by Mr. Horn. That makes it a burglary, which is justification for use of deadly force under Texas law.

Even so, he shot to defend himself, not the property. At least one other witness confirms that the departed were on his property and advanced towards him, when he shot them.