Lay Down and Take it
The UK has lost its moral bearings when it comes to criminal activity, which I just recently blogged about. The Belmont Club has an excellent post on the same subject and discusses this column by a British counseler. His advice if somebody breaks into your home? Use "active passivity" whatever the hell that is. One of the remarkable things about it is that he admits what a traumatic experience intrusion into the home can be, he admits that there's a significant danger to your life, seems to admit some sort of moral justification for self-defense even if there's no legal one, and yet he still describes self-defense that is up to and including killing the intruder as "over-retaliation." If somebody threatens me in my own home with a weapon, I don't think I'd demonstrate an excessive amount of retaliation if I shoot him. That's just the right amount of retaliation that the situation deserves.
The entire paragraph with that term is this:
This, of course, does not excuse their actions, but it is certainly worth taking on-board when you consider confronting an intruder. While saying this, in my own experience counselling victims of crime in recent years, there has also recently been a marked increase in the use or the threatened use of dangerous weapons in burglaries and common assaults. This, in itself, is a deeply worrying trend and, although not entirely excusing over-retaliation from homeowners, creates an understandable degree of sympathy for members of the public who lash out at intruders in their home. In truth it is an incredibly difficult situation to assess.
What's so incredibly difficult about it? The fact that he thinks it's difficult indicates part of the problem right there.
(link via Pete the Elder)
