Forums of the Libertarian Left

[JoeB]

I wanted to get the left-libertarian perspective on this question that was posted at a gun forum that I frequent: Do you think that the law should allow the use of deadly force to protect property?

I have been answering that in situations where you feel threatened for your life, where your self is in danger, then deadly force is reasonable in self-defense. But a lot of these folks will argue that it's okay to shoot someone who is stealing your TV set or some other property. There is even one guy who sees no problem shooting folks who come onto his property (the guy clearly has issues).

I was just wondering what others think about this. Here is the link if interested: http://northeastshooters.com/vbulletin/ ... hp?t=81109

[neverfox]

That would seem pretty disproportionate to me.

[JoeB]

That would seem pretty disproportionate to me.

My argument or their argument?

[neverfox]

Sorry, I mean the use of deadly force to defend property in the absence of any threat to one's person. But I would like to elaborate. I don't think it's a simple formula (e.g. IF property is alienable and not part of the body THEN deadly force is not morally justified). For example, if the property in question is one's last skin of water in the desert, then it is essentially your life at stake. But if it's just your flag pole, your fear of the unknown isn't enough IMO. However, if someone comes onto my property in the middle of the night, doesn't respond to my warnings, and a quick flash from a flashlight tells me it's not someone I know etc., shooting starts to become a pretty reasonable option without further question. But the reasoning here can be explained in terms of self-defense (since threats are enough) and so don't really fulfill the spirit of your question.

I also want to say that proportionality doesn't imply that the defensive force can't be greater than the aggressive force it is acting against. That is because aggression in and of itself already carries an extra moral weight above and beyond the intensity or seriousness of the action. So, for example, it would be in keeping with the general intuition that killing someone to stop them from raping you is morally justified proportionate response, even though there may have been no chance that they planned to kill you.

So a more general way to say what I meant is that 'it depends' on a consideration of the seriousness of the "boundary violation" and not on a strict person/property line. A system that allowed people to starve someone to death by taking their food with no justified deadly force would seem to stretch the concept of aggression beyond reason. But generally speaking most property violations absent a personal violation of the body would probably need a high burden of proof around the seriousness of the violation and the necessity of killing someone to stop the aggression.

Since a good deal of property theory is about treating property as an extension of the body in various ways, I would see the choice between using or not using deadly force in response to aggression involving external property to require a similar type of thought process as that between someone pointing a gun at my head and kicking my shin. Most people see the latter somehow "further" away on the moral seriousness scale and I would say that property is (generally) similarly "distant".

[lordmetroid]

In my opinion you are only morally entitled to defend yourself with the amount of force proportional to the threat, so if you are facing a life threatening where you know you going to be killed unless you kill, then I think it is acceptable, you would still be a murderer after the event though.

[neverfox]

In my opinion you are only morally entitled to defend yourself with the amount of force proportional to the threat, so if you are facing a life threatening where you know you going to be killed unless you kill, then I think it is acceptable, you would still be a murderer after the event though.

Can you clarify this? Are you saying that only if death is the goal of your aggressor is death justified? So you would disagree that if killing someone to stop them from raping you is your only option that it wouldn't be morally justified?

Also, I'm not sure about that last part ("you would still be a murderer after the event though"). You would still be a killer (which is just a matter of fact) but, to me, murder implies having a nature of aggression.

[lordmetroid]

I would feel like I would have murdered if I killed a human no matter what the circumstances was.

For a rape I don't think you have the moral justification to kill someone until everything else has been tried. While it is your intimate personal sphere that is being violated it is not your very life that is being threatend, a killing is justified as a last resort but should at least try to bonk his head with the colt or shoot his arm or leg before you decide to splatter his brains all over.

I think proportionate defence is an intricate part of egalitarianism for instance a rape and theft are quite different, I don't think a killing can be justified under any circumstance of theft as it is only stuff and not yourself that is in danger.

[RoyceChristian]

I think when you talk about justifiably killing someone, you step into dangerous territory. Speaking with a sort of pragmatism, I know that if someone attempted a home invasion, rape or even attempt to take my life, I'd fight tooth and nail until there was no longer any threat. I'd even fight tooth and nail to defend someone else if I happened to stumble upon them being attacked in some manner. The same applies as to whether someone is looking to take away my last portions of food or last litre of water; I see that as a direct threat to my own existence, particularly if they have access to all that they need. Where it gets eve more interesting is where both people have no resources and may be fighting over the last scraps of food. Is it even possible to add any sort of moral or ethical standard to the situation?

However, killing someone in any of these circumstances is a slippery slope because at some point it may become murder or manslaughter. And you need to be careful because once you justify murder, you recognise that there is no value in existence and you justify everything.

[neverfox]

I would feel like I would have murdered if I killed a human no matter what the circumstances was.

There is no doubt that killing someone will seriously affect you and the depth of it is unfathomable from what I've heard from those who have experienced it, even in self-defense. But I can't endorse a society where we would treat people that defended themselves honorably as fugitives or criminals in return.

For a rape I don't think you have the moral justification to kill someone until everything else has been tried. While it is your intimate personal sphere that is being violated it is not your very life that is being threatend, a killing is justified as a last resort but should at least try to bonk his head with the colt or shoot his arm or leg before you decide to splatter his brains all over.

While I agree that only what is necessary to stop it is permitted, I don't think that concepts like "shoot them in the leg first" really make pragmatic sense in the middle of a violent attack. It could actually represent the potential for increased danger to you and others. I say this as someone with firearms experience that shooting to stop the assailant is a much lower probability endeavor when you are trying to hit the CNS (central nervous system) that you would think. Shooting for the CNS is the only reasonably reliable method of stopping someone within a few yards of you and closing and even then people often fight through it and kill the person trying to defend themselves before they collapse. Taking low probability shots like the leg is more likely to result in missing your target and sending the bullet into the backstop (which is usually a thin wall with innocent people on the other side). You often have a split second before showing the assailant that you are willing to defend yourself (by drawing a weapon or whatever) and them either surrendering or being flat out willing to kill you for trying. If the former, that is the best outcome imaginable; if the latter, I would never advise anyone to do anything but shoot to kill simply because anything else is too unlikely to work. Anything less seems to me simply asking too much of the victim. I would rather increase their chances of survival than talk about how they could have hit them on the head (no matter how big they might be or weak you may be) if they were really moral. In other words, I think morality and probability have a intimate relationship.

I think proportionate defence is an intricate part of egalitarianism for instance a rape and theft are quite different, I don't think a killing can be justified under any circumstance of theft as it is only stuff and not yourself that is in danger.

I very much agree.

[neverfox]

Where it gets eve more interesting is where both people have no resources and may be fighting over the last scraps of food. Is it even possible to add any sort of moral or ethical standard to the situation?

I'm reminded of a passage from Guyau that I think about a lot:

From the naturalistic point of view at which we place ourselves, even the act of merely watching over the interests of others is superior to the act of watching our own interests only in so far as it indicates a greater moral capacity, a surplus of inward life. In any other sense it would only be a kind of monstrosity, as in those plants which have hardly any leaves or roots — nothing but a flower. To be at all able to command self-sacrifice, something more precious than life must be found. Now, empirically speaking, there is nothing more precious ; nothing else has the same value as life ; everything else acknowledges this, and borrows its value from it. It is impossible to convince the English utilitarian that morality, maintained by the sacrifice of life, is not analogous to a miser dying to save his treasure. Nothing more natural than to ask a person to die for you, or for an idea, when he has entire faith in immortality, and already feels the growing of his angel's wings ; but what if he does not believe this ? If we had faith, there would be no difficulty ; it is so easy to be blindfolded ! A man exclaims : "I see, I know, I believe." He sees nothing — he knows still less ; but he has the faith which takes the place of it all. He does what faith commands; he goes to the sacrifice, looking up to heaven. Cheerfully he lets oneself be crushed by the wheels of the big social machine — and sometimes even without distinct aim — for a dream, for an error, as the Hindus did, who threw themselves at full length under the bloody wheels of the sacred chariot, happy to die under the weight of their gigantic and empty idols. But how, not having faith, can we demand from the individual a definite sacrifice, without basing this demand on some principle other than the development of this very life which is to be wholly or partly sacrificed?

Let us begin by recognising that in some extreme cases — moreover, very rare ones — this problem has no rational and scientific solution. In those cases in which morality is impotent, morality must leave it wholly to the spontaneity of the individual. The fault of the Jesuits is not so much their having wanted to enlarge morality as their having brought in the detestable element of hypocrisy. Before all, one has to be frank with one's self, and with others ; a paradox is not dangerous if it presents itself boldly to all eyes. Every action may be considered as an equation to be solved. Now, there are always, in a practical decision, known terms and unknown terms, which have to be found ; but scientific morality cannot always find these. Some equations, therefore, are insoluble — or, at least, do not allow of an undeniable and categorical solution. The mistake of moralists is to pretend to solve in a definite and universal way problems which may have a great many peculiar solutions. Let us add that the fundamental unknown something, the X to be sought in a certain number of problems is death. The solution of the equation presented depends, therefore, on the variable value attached to the other terms, which are — (i) physical life to be sacrificed ; (2) some moral act to be accomplished.

Let us examine these two terms.

The solution depends chiefly, let us say, on the value attached to life. Undoubtedly life is for everyone the most precious of all blessings, because it is the condition of all others ; nevertheless, if the others are reduced almost to naught, life itself loses its value — it then becomes a contemptible thing. If there are two individuals, the one having lost those he loved, the other having a large family whose welfare depends on him, these two are not equal before death.

To fairly present this great problem of contempt of life, it must be compared with another important consideration. Self-sacrifice presents, in more than one point, an analogy with suicide, smce in both cases death is consented to, and even desired, by the will of an individual who knows what life means. To explain suicide, we must admit that the duration of the average enjoyments of life is of little value compared to the intensity of certain sufferings ; and the converse will be equally true — viz., that the intensity of certain enjoyments
seems preferable to the whole duration of life. Berlioz represents an artist who kills himself after having known the highest aesthetic joy which he thinks it possible to feel once in his life. This is not so mad an action as one might think. Suppose it were granted to you to be for an instant a Newton discovering his law, or a Jesus preaching love on the mountain — the rest of your life will then seem colourless and empty ; you would purchase this instant at the price of all the rest. Give anyone the choice between living over again the monotonous round of his whole life, or living over again the small number of hours which he remembers as having been perfectly happy ; few people will hesitate. Let us extend the question to the present and the future. There are hours in which the intensity of life is so great that, placed in balance with the whole possible series of years, these hours will turn the scale. One passes three days in climbing to a high summit of the Alps ; one finds that the short moment passed on the white summit, in the great calm of the sky, is worth these three days of fatigue. There are also moments in life when we seem to be on a mountain-top — when we soar; compared with these moments, everything else becomes indifferent.

Life, therefore, even from the positive point of view at which we now place ourselves, has not that measureless value which at first it seemed to have. Sometimes, without being irrational, the totality of existence may be sacrificed for one of its moments, as one single verse may be preferred to the whole poem.

I guess I would like to think that I would value the legacy of my life more than an extra moment on survival alone after having taking someone's last bit of water. And I would also like to think that even if we both thought this way and both died for it, that we would not have failed some test of utilitarian sum or been blamed for being Pareto sub-optimal in not maximizing the number of humans that survived or something. I would hope that I would be resigned to the utter sadness of the situation but pleased with the happiest moments of my life.

I think this can have some bearing on self-defense too. I think we all agree that killing is a reality that until it is experience is probably nothing but shallow, self-important talk. For a theory of ethics that centers on expanded intensive and extensive energy or eudaimonia or any of the theories that talk about expanding life (not survival but character of it), killing may simply be out of the picture...permissible perhaps but not part of the wisdom or spontaneity that you have cultivated.

I would recommend this pretty powerful and blunt article by self-defense teacher Marc MacYoung about the cost of using deadly force. I'd recommend reading around his site for some good reality checks about what often passes as self-defense.

[Brainpolice]

My view on this issue is partially influenced by Roy Halliday, except I'm not really a pacifist. By the very least, I would say that an explicit threat to one's person or in conditions of extreme escalation is the criteria for self-defense, and there is a distinct difference between self-defense and "punishment", and between self-defense in terms of personhood and violence "in defense" of property. Much of what seems to pass as "violence in defense of property" seems to cross well over the line of actual self-defense as far as I see it. At best, violence seems like something to use only when there really are no alternatives, and a significant portion of the question shifts to a matter of incentives.

The doctrine of proportionality definitely seems like a better alternative to "the maximalist position" (I.E. what, in effect, is an unqualified "right to initiate force" in the name of defending property). However, I think that even proportionality doesn't quit get it right or go far enough, at least in terms of punishment. I simply don't believe in violent punishment or any form of retribution, and this is why I so strongly disagree with Stephan Kinsella's "estoppel argument" - since it is basically an argumentation ethics fallacy used to justify violent punishment, which I think can easily collapse into initiations of force. I think it essentially translates to "since you aggressed against property, you cannot coherantly object to people aggressing against your person", which hinges on a somewhat strange and broad use of the term "aggression" with respect to property or a conflation of personhood and external property (or the details of their moral status). Is "aggression against property" really identical to "aggression against persons"? I don't think so.

While adherants of such a notion might not necessarily favor an outright "maximalist position", I still think that they often end up (at least implicitly) justifying initiations of force by treating property in a rigid and axoimatic way. It also runs into the serious objections that Roy Halliday brought up in his work on "Enforcable Rights", which basically revolves around the dubious notion of "the right to punishment" from multiple angles (the victim's right to punish, a 3rd party's right to punish, whether the right of punishment can be considered a commons or an exclusive right, and so on; Halliday brings up what I think are fairly strong objections to all of the above). Reference: http://royhalliday.home.mindspring.com/a2.htm#a2

[jeremy6d]

In my experience, willingness to use deadly force in defense of property is usually the result of people who tend to have extreme views on the sanctity of a universally valid, strict propertarian system (either as an ideological necessity, like ancaps and conservatives, or implicitly by virtue of the circumstances, like police and beneficiaries of large estates). This belief in absolute propertarianism with which they identify precedes the facts of the situation, and so it's difficult to justify escalating a property dispute unless one holds property as less inviolable than - or even equally inviolable as - human life itself. I can't agree with that principle.

The legitimate question enclosed in this argument is how staunch one should be in defending a legitimate property claim. Should one snipe at anybody who crosses an imaginary line? Let property be stolen without resisting until hands are laid on a person? Somewhere in between? The problems with ethical rules for unique situations raises its ugly and omnipresent head.

If property is at its root a social convention, then it seems that quite often people who wish to purposely violate that convention are already willing to use force, even deadly force, since they are acting outside social means in the first place. So it must be understood that the right to defend oneself often ends up defending one's property, even though the ethics are probably not exactly the same in each case - at least for libertarian who rejects hardline propertarianism. Moreover, the boundaries of identity that property concepts exercise, in which one's home is in some sense the self*, must be understood as a psychologically potent construct and a socially valid phenomenon. I'm even favorable to extending this rule of when force is appropriate quite liberally, so long as we recognize that - as police and lawyers always advise claiming in castle doctrine cases - one "genuinely feared for one's life". I am sympathetic to people who see a home invasion as a life-threatening event on its face and warranting deadly force to bring the threat to a conclusion speedily. Not so sympathetic to those who see a theft of an idle, unoccupied car in front of one's house as life threatening (my dad's car was stolen from in front of my house recently, and life did go on).

Very little, if any, property is worth a life being lost over, if you can help it. The old adage that "you can always replace things" seems the best rule in my opinion. I can think of situations where the rules might change (emergencies and extreme confrontations) but generally I cannot imagine somebody taking another's life under normal circumstances just because of a property crime without it being more about emotions and retribution than justice. Unless it's life threatening, it doesn't seem wise to escalate. But I acknowledge infinite exceptions based on circumstances.

* While many propertarians speak of self-ownership as a property right, I tend to see it the other way around, metaphysically. I tend to think the self isn't owned, but rather the self is the self and therefore ownership isn't a useful construct. Property rights via homesteading / social convention / title all amount to a kind of metaphysical extension of one's identity outside the self to external entities.

[Darian]

If you believe that you will be significantly physically harmed by an action, it is okay to use whatever level of violence is necessary to eliminate the threat.

I think it's okay to use some violence if it is necessary for restitution or restraint, but this will always depend on the circumstances.

People who boast of their willingness to shoot someone stealing a TV are stupidly opening themselves to prosecution if they ever do shoot someone for any reason.

[jeremy6d]

People who boast of their willingness to shoot someone stealing a TV are stupidly opening themselves to prosecution if they ever do shoot someone for any reason.

Good point.

[RoyceChristian]

I'm reminded of a passage from Guyau that I think about a lot... I guess I would like to think that I would value the legacy of my life more than an extra moment on survival alone after having taking someone's last bit of water.

Yes, this has been my conclusion. If there is a moment in life where you come to fighting over the last bit of water needed to survive with someone else in the same dire situation, then it makes more sense to simply share or even give up the water as odds are you're done for anyway. So why sacrifice an otherwise principled existence by killing another and allowing yourself to descend into what you hate? This resonates with me where I have recognised that a key thread in my political philosophy as well as general philosophy on life is to oppose nihilism.

In regards to my earlier comments, particularly those involving home invasion, my reasons for saying such a thing involve me knowing that (for reasons I won't go into) I need space which offers me a place to which I can retreat if necessary. I know that if the unlikely event of a home invasion were to take place, it would trigger a deep emotional and psychological response in myself because they would be invading something more than four walls and a roof. This is the only time I could imagine deadly force being used in defence of property, because that thing is not 'property' but identified with something more, something internal to my Self. Though, this may change in the future if I become more mobile and less likely to stay in one place.

I would recommend this pretty powerful and blunt article by self-defense teacher Marc MacYoung about the cost of using deadly force. I'd recommend reading around his site for some good reality checks about what often passes as self-defense.

This is nothing new to me. It's the same thing that any authentic martial arts instructor or self defence teacher will say to students, and is something that has informed me for years now -- over the course of my training and even as I've worked as an instructor myself. In fact what he says here applies just as easily to all the pro-war political commentators and right-wing keyboard cowboys howling for blood.

[JoeB]

Thanks for the thoughts everyone. I am pretty much in line with a number of you. During the conversation on that forum the discussion definitely split into what was ethical and whether or not someone would agree with a law to make defense of your property illegal. I would answer no to the latter, but would have to look at different situations before deciding whether violence was necessary to defend myself. In a lot of the cases presented, I couldn't agree with the poster's point of view because it just seemed like they wanted to shoot their gun at someone without really thinking about the ethics of the situation.

Thanks for all of your insight.