I disagree Ron. It is not vigilante justice. Once someone commits a crime directly against you, you cannot afford to sit there and consider the consequences. What if he had a gun or a knife? You better protect your own life.

and that is still proportional.

is turning somebody's face into pulp the only way to feel safe in a mugging situation?! there is no easy answer. it is very fact dependent.

i think that ya'll are missing my point. this thread is glorifying a ex-marine who beat the snot out of a criminal. my point is that sometime before he he finished the guy off for good and the store manager or whatever had to stop the kill shot, the threat was neutralized. and after the threat is neutralized and the "defending" continues, the victim has become the criminal himself because vigilantiism is not the law.

Fine, so now the defender becomes the criminal, so he should be afforded all of the bullsh&*t protections now afforded the real criminal. Give that marine his get out of jail free card.

Pickpocket knew he was breaking the law, he should not be afforded any protections under the law. In fact, he should have to wear a sign saying he got the snot beat out of him by a 72 year old man cause he tried to steal from him.

I like the sign idea Max.


Interestingly, this issue is somewhat taken up int he article I posted about Casting Terrorists as Defenders of the Constitution. The article goes into the judicial trends that have ensued from mid-century forward, but alas, the BOL attorneys are not up to reading it.

Regardess of my getting punished or not you will be missing a right hand.

Think you will be remembering ther rest of your life why that happened?

yes, vigilante justice served! that darn constitution would never allow such a just punishment. if only we could live by sharia law...

Now that I think about this, I guess I do believe in vigilante justice, to an extent. See, I was camping last year and a cooler was stolen from my site while I was boating. The neighbors saw who did it, but there was nothing security could do without hard evidence. So, I know who did it but can do nothing about it. It was three punk teenagers who wanted my beer. Fine, steal my beer. But, the fact that they took the whole cooler, including all of our water for the week and all of our juice for the kids, that's what burned me. It took me the rest of the summer to track down the kids, but now I know. Perhaps by the end of this summer, I will have my revenge. My hope is that they leave a cooler out. I don't care if it's empty or not. I just want to take the cooler and leave them a note that says simply "I know". Time will tell. Maybe I'll leave the note without taking the cooler. I just really want to mess with them, mentally.

Ok, Hijack over.

That darn constitution as you put it, which I have defended, gives me the right to protect my property myself and family. No where in the constitution does it say there are limits of force to be used in specific criminal circumstances.

Those are laws made up by others of a different character than founding fathers.

Well, Huge Ron - sometime one gets pumped up and it's hard to stop - for example, if I started to beat you up, it would be hard to stop.

Don, I just have to tell you that its good to see you back in the threads! Your no-nonsense posts are very refreshing. I hope all is well with you, and keep up the good fight! (No matter who, or what, it is against )

Well thank goodness I live in the great state of Texas where the judicial and legislative branches have recognized that the homeowner is not legally required to quiz the intruder as to their intentions?

"Hello, thank you for illegally entering my home at 2 am. May I inquire as to your purpose here and your current state of mind so that I may choose the appropriate level of countermeasure that I should use against your trespass? Should you be a gentle person, would you mind standing there quietly and make no sudden movements whilst I phone the law enforcement authorities - please make no effort to harm myself, my children or my spouse. Do you understand these requests?" As opposed to the Miranda warning, I call this the Ron warning...

The state has said any force, up to and including deadly, is appropriate to defend your homestead against illegal entry? What pray tell is wrong with that? I would think if a crook knew he could potentially die by breaking in to a house that would be a deterrent, if it's not, doesn't that tell you about the level of desperation the crook may have - at which point, I'd definitely be shooting!

Sorry Ron - I find the lives of my dear family much more precious than the liberal concepts put forth - I don't have time to determine the intent, mind-frame, etc of the bad guy - You, however, are welcome to do so - that's what makes our country great!

And having re-read the article (to make sure I didn't miss your point, Ron), I'm having a hard time seeing where the article glorified the actions of this gentleman. I don't know that the reporting was completely dispassionate - but I don't really see a glorification bias there either?

Amen to living in Texas. If somebody I have not invited into my house shows up at 3 in the morning, the ONLY way he is leaving is in a body bag.

don't worry max, nobody's after your pie - sheesh!

All they would have to do is ask sometime during the day...

don, with all due respect, i have no idea what you mean. of course you may protect your family and property. but there are limits to what you may do to this end; once the protection is achieved, doing more to the perp is vigilantiism.

as far as the limits of force used in criminal circumstances, there is a constitutional limitation. it is called "cruel and unusual punishment." but that is for government actions. for private actions, people are entitled to use proportionate force (see paragraph above).

2 things: 1) like it or not, if you go too far, it is vigilantiism and, as such, is criminal on its own . 2) i don't think that you'd get very far with "the cagemaster".

What he means is in Texas, if there is an intruder in our house, we are well within our right to shoot to kill to protect our family and property.

thankfully "shoot first ask questions later" is also not the law.


can you provide a citation so that i can see exactly what it says?

sorry, tex, but having a society of laws is not some "liberal concept". vigilantiism is certainly not a hallmark of american justice. it is a hallmark of sharia law though.


i haven't read the article either. i am referring to the "atta boy"s in this thread. i purposely didn't read the article because i wanted to approach this issue objectively.

One thing.... I don't think Vigilantism means what you think it means.....

This guy was not, in any way, acting outside the law, or trying to summarily punish the perpetrator for his crimes without recourse to the legal system. What he was doing was protecting himself from a man who was in the act of robbing him. He took the guy down before the much younger man had a chance to pull a weapon or use his more youthful body to fight back.

He was not avenging a crime, he was stopping it from happening to him.

Yep, thank you BF.

That makes no sense. (Regardless of the atta boy's). If this thread was based on the idea of a 72 year old ex-marine protecting himself by beating someone up, OK. But it's not. Looking at something objectively means that you are looking at an issue from both sides. Obviously that is not the case if you haven't even taken two minutes to read the article to which this thread is referring.

Perhaps you should have said: i purposely didn't read the article because i wanted to make all of my own points without getting all of the facts because then I feel like I'm always right and then I can like myself more than I already do

proportional force is the law everywhere to the best of my knowledge. at least in the states where i am admitted to practice.

well, if the threat didn't exist after the first couple of punches to render the perp defenseless, i don't know what purpose the additional ones served.

protecting oneself ended after he was able to stop the threat.

the argument is not defense. when have i ever said that someone cannot defend themselves or their property? the issue is going past defense and exacting some sort of revenge/punishment on the perp. i really don't care for the semantics of whether it is technically vigilantiism or not. i thing i have pointed out the essence of him going past defense and entering the realm of 'taking justice into one's own hands.'