Here in Texas, the law does give the right to defend property with deadly force[1]. And lots of people have guns. We are the #1 state on the list of gun ownership[2].
And catalytic converter theft is still very common. We are the #2 state on the list of catalytic converter thefts per 100k automobiles[3].
> I wonder if that's related in any way to it also relatively common to straight-pipe in Texas.
No emissions, low state taxes, low fuel price, and abysmally little to no self awareness about climate change is a better explanation.
FL is still the best way to get around smog stuff in the US because of inherit corruption, you an register anything if you have the money: see Motorex sandal And tis is despite Hawaii being closer to Japan and also not having emissions and regular departures to Long Beach.
Growing up, we used to take the car for a run up/down the highway for a bit to "burn things off" before getting an inspection. There were also places you could go "outside of town" that did not do emissions testings. That was 30 years ago though. I thought all inspections required emissions testing now. Is it still not enforced outside of town? Of course, finding the guy to pay off is always going to be available for skirting the reqs.
A couple of decades ago, there was one gas station in Tianjin you had to go to fill your tank (from empty) before doing your emission exam. Turns out the other gas stations were selling gas that didn’t allow them to pass, and it was an open secret in how to get your car to pass the exam by using proper gas.
I sold a truck that I couldn't get inspected in Travis county (because of a sensor code that indicated misfires on start) to a buddy up in Lubbock, and it inspected just fine up there.
As in most of the US that have them barring California, which is Universal and why the BAR and OEMS has a 49 +1 system specifically for California, hence why the Prius was made for the California market yet suffering the most from this is ironic.
This what I found on emission on TX by county [0], and it looks a lot like Organ in that most don't do it except major metro areas.
Property is not worth a life. Not even the life of the person damaging it. Property can be replaced, a life can not.
Besides, there’s way too much margin for error in vigilante justice. That’s why we have trials, imperfect as even they may be. They’re certainly better than empowering everyone to be judge, jury, and executioner because they thought you might be committing a property crime.
Yeah, it definitely depends on the context. If someone stole my bag from my car they'd get a few ml of insulin which is practically worthless to them, but is absolutely necessary for me.
If you don't mind my asking, what medication do you take?
Totally understandable. It's also the biggest reason I have a pretty pseudo-random username here even though all my other usernames on social media are almost the same.
Generally speaking, no, of course not. But, if someone's breaking into your home in the middle of the night, you don't know what their intentions are to just steal some stuff or to rape and murder your family. There's a reason so many states have castle doctrine and such, and it's because there really are bad people out there.
Nonsense. Thievery will be greatly reduced when the consequences are doubt about your continued existence. Besides, if you continue to steal from people you are hurting them and their family. That has a price and that price should be up to your life.
How do you explain Texas then? Lots of catalytic converter theft and lots of gun ownership. Now you have two problems. You have to worry about somebody stealing from you, and you have to worry about somebody shooting you.
Property is not worth a life. Not even the life of the person damaging it.
Have you seen the film "Bicycle Thieves"? If someone's property is his livelihood one can have sympathies for those defending it with extreme measures.
My opinion would be at the point when a reasonable person would fear for their life.
For instance, if I own a vehicle and it is my primary method of escape, and someone starts fucking with critical systems like say the exhaust with a sawzall, I woud definitely start fearing for my life and the life of my family. Particularly when automobile is absolutely critical for survival, access to grocery/medical care etc, escape from say criminals in your yard operating sawzalls in commission of felonies, in much of America. If someone is in my yard fucking with my way to get away in danger, and they're physically tearing it apart with a sawzall, then I think it would be reasonable to allow defense of my family.
If someone is just stealing a hood ornament with their hands, then no maybe it's unreasonable to fear for your life.
With a phone I think it would depend more on context. Intentionally and without consent stealing / disabling someone's method of calling for help and emergency could make a reasonable person fear for their life if that person was also in the process of commission of felonies in your immediate proximity with a dangerous sawzall.
Then perhaps the punishment for every crime and infraction should be summary execution. Blow a stop sign? Execution. Over the speed limit? Execution. Stole an apple from the grocery store? Execution. Sounds like a perfect society?
Don't be ridiculous, there's nothing perfect about a society like that.
When you infringe on the rights of another human being, you put yourself at their mercy. Some people are not very reasonable. Legal or illegal, you just might find yourself attacked by that person, possibly killed. Even if you make laws against it, there's always that danger. Every time you violate the rights of another person you're risking your life, and it doesn't matter what the law says.
Uninvited fucking with critical systems of someone's primary method of transit/escape/transportation to medical care/grocery etc, especially with a sawzall under the body of the vehicle, causes a reasonable person to fear for their life.
I'm not killing anyone for screwing with my car, and I hope most folks feel the same way. Yes, it sucks. Yes, I'd be more than pissed. But I'm not going to murder another human for a property crime.
Self defense and defense of property is not murder. So many street trash shit on regular families just trying to get by precisely because of sympathy for dirtbags who shouldn't be drawing the same breath as normal people.
A lot of people seem to use "killing" and "murder" interchangably, though they are different in more than legal ways. A building collapsing can kill a person, as can a landslide, and an uncontrollably skidding car. A lion attacking a human and eating his organs is no murderer, and neither is that human for defending themselves by killing that lion before he can finish his attack. One human killing another does not necessarily have to be murdering them. Initiation of violence, and intent, determine the difference between killing and murder. Even self-killing and self-murder have their own words (suicide is one). Also crows; They gather in murders all the time.
Please consider applying the correct word to the context you wish to discuss.
You are not responding to the previous comment. If you want to say that you think killing someone because they took or damaged your things is justified, say that. GGP was clearly saying that doing so is murder (in my reading: normatively if not in the eyes of the law), so respond to that.
I think parent was referring to the definition of murder being "the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another." Killing someone under lawful circumstances (such as self defense) is not murder, under this definition.
Getting pretty deep in the semantic weeds here though, and I feel obliged to say I have no horse in this race either way. Don't kill or murder me :)
It’s not murder if it’s legal. Just like killing in war isn’t murder. The guy stealing your catalytic converters defiantly deserves it more than the random dude in Iraq.
“Murder” is the name of specific crimes in many legal jurisdictions, but it’s also an English word that is commonly used in ways that overlap significantly but not perfectly with specific legal jurisdictions.
Don't kill anyone who is not trying to murder you. If you catch someone stealing your catalyst, you use your weapon to deter a violent action of his part, not to stop the theft by murdering him. The fact that he is willing to disregard societal property norms, already flags him as potentially dangerous, s he might enforce his criminal difference of opinion by using violence. That is why security is armed; Not to shoot the sucker in the back as he is absconding with your stuff. Unless your stuff could be used to harm others, then you might be justified in using reasonable force. Always try to de-escalate, but respond in kind.
> The fact that he is willing to disregard societal property norms, already flags him as potentially dangerous, s he might enforce his criminal difference of opinion by using violence.
The fact that people keep talking about gun ownership in Texas like it's a deterrent is odd. It's not like the criminals don't have weapons too.
Running a stoplight and making an illegal left turn into a kid running across the street, is unlwaful. Still counts as killing (legal term: manslaughter), not murder.
True, but that isn't relevant. I am saying it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it to be murder. By definition, it must be unlawful, but it also must be premeditated.
>True, but that isn't relevant. I am saying it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it to be murder. By definition, it must be unlawful, but it also must be premeditated.
IANAL, but I don't believe murder can only be if it's premeditated. In fact, IIUC, most murders are not premeditated.
I’m a gun-owning full pro-2A believer and I absolutely disagree with killing someone over stealing a catalytic converter. For fuck’s sake, prison or murder cannot be the only two options here.
Heard a story of a man who was under a car, cutting out a converter when the owner snuck up on him and smashed the butt end of a rifle right into the thieves balls. The man ended up losing both his testicles. No charges were filed. I like it. Perhaps another price should be your balls cutt off with a sawzall.
What's being discussed here is not a revenge killing, you catch someone doing it you're probably not going to gun them down, you're more likely to detain, call police and press charges, or chase them off. But if they come at you with their hacksaw...
I think the proper solution to this is that car manufacturers should be required to better secure these things. Putting a thousand dollars or more in such an easy to access place, requiring people to have some of their money sitting there like that, might as well tie a bow around it and set it on the hood.
There's a penalty for being stolen from though in those areas that do emissions testing, since you can't pass without a working converter, and the state won't replace it for you.
> Why is catalytic converter theft seemingly worse in the US/UK than in Europe/AU/NZ?
Many reasons, but chief among them are that EU is oddly really relaxed on emissions (hence diesel gate not being as big of an issue in it's own Country) and don't use the same equipment on their cars also because AU/NZ are big markets for used Japanese export vehicles that have exceeded its Shakin/Km limits in Japan and there isn't the local demand for these components as the laws don't reflect such strict standards.
By contrast those cars are not legal in the US due to emissions, until they fall out of the testing period: see used the massive headache created with the post Motorex Nissan Skyline market by-laws. The UK is odd because MOT and carbon tax things play a part, but it's way easier to register a RHD car from Japan if you're outside of London, and even within it if you know where to go. But both the US and UK also have lots of poverty based crime (theft) underlying their society.
Europe, but especially Germany, has many auto-manufactures writing their laws for them; and the higher ubiquity of diesel cars on the road in those markets as opposed to benzene (gasoline) means they cannot just make them all vanish without having immense backlash. So, they greese the right wheels, and things carry on: business as usual.
I won't touch the other reasons, but if you really want the nitty-gritty of how relaxed EU standards are read: Faster, Higher, Farther.
There is a reason it was some college kids in CA with a home-brew emission tester in a rented Tdi that butsted VW, and not the EU's climate Nazis/Green party in Baden-Wuttenburg. (I lived there and was subject to their stupid vanity based green washing laws as an environmental activist, so I can say that!)
My country has neither of those and the stealing of catalytic converters is very uncommon.
Please go right ahead though, seeing the failures of the punitive system in the US provides an exemplar of why my country should not go down that path.
You know how if you punish a dog, it doesn't really learn and get better? Humans are like that too.
Theft is heavily correlated with the economy. Arguably it's a canary in the mine - you can very usually tell what's going to happen in the macroeconomics of an area by just following crime statistics.
"Deterrence" has generally been found to be a pretty well-rooted myth. Majority of theft also happens by people who _don't actually know what the consequences are_. So just increasing them doesn't actually help.
If you can show strong evidence that prison is one of the best ways of reducing crime, then sure you've convinced me (and probably plenty others).
If you give a dog timely and consistent corrections, it really does learn. That's literally half the battle in house-training a dog. (Yes, you try to control and arrange success and praise when the dog does the right thing, but you also correct when it does the wrong thing.)
Positive-punishment reinforcement has shown to be less effective and more time consuming than positive-reinforcement training time and time again in dogs.
Humans might learn from positive punishment and deterrence, dogs are less good at it.
Great differences of wealth in the same area, coupled with a culture of "keeping up with the Joneses", and policies disabling/disincentivizing stable relationships, are good predictors for violence and theft.
Many areas of the country there is no consequences.