Circumstances

I read about stuff like this and tend to keep my mouth shut at first, because the first reports tend to have some inaccuracies, some serious, that may cause one to change their mind later:

Hours earlier, someone had broken into John Pontolillo's house and taken two laptops and a video-game console. Now it was past midnight, and he heard noises coming from the garage out back.

The Johns Hopkins University undergraduate didn't run. He didn't call the police. He grabbed his samurai sword.

With the 3- to 5-foot-long, razor-sharp weapon in hand, police say, Pontolillo crept toward the noise. He noticed a side door in the garage had been pried open. When a man inside lunged at him, police say, the confrontation was fatal.

Read the whole thing. From a legal standpoint, I would be inclined to give Pontolillo a pass. I'm a strong believer in property rights and the rights of individuals to personally defend themselves and their property. From a moral standpoint though, I'm not so sure in this case.

I tore my detached garage down a few years ago and circumstances since then have made me hold off on a new one. Back when I did have one though, I had long since figured out what I would or would not do under certain burglary situations.

Under normal circumstances where I live, if you call 911 about a garage break-in in progress there will likely be one or more cops at your house in just a few minutes, maybe three or four minutes at most. Another option is to arm oneself and confront the intruder. Now, a wise man once told me that before you draw a weapon, you better be prepared to use it. And that means you better be prepared to kill. "Don't give me any crap about shooting or stabbing someone in the shoulder or leg," he said, "It don't work like that."

What he meant was that things move fast in those situations, blindingly fast, and don't kid yourself about how much control you will have over the situation or yourself. DON'T seek such situations out unless you are in a combat zone. Ever.

So here's what I worked out long ago. If I saw that someone was breaking into my detached garage, I would call the police and let them handle it. It was just property, and a hand tool or some other property was not worth a human life, however much of a scumbag the burglar was. Breaking into my house itself though? If I was lucky enough to be able to grab a shotgun and rack a shell, I'd shoot unless they fled. And I would shoot to kill. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I would feel no remorse beyond some mourning for a human being who somehow went wrong. If that's cold, so be it.

There's a difference in my mind between using deadly force to defend person and home, and using deadly force to defend property. In some cases, when livelihoods are at stake and help might be some time away, using deadly force to defend property is morally and legally justified. For someone like me, living close to help, I couldn't morally justify walking out and confronting a garage burglar like Pontolillo did. I just don't think I could.

We'll see how this plays out. I'm inclined to be sympathetic to Pontolillo, but I'm not sure he did the right thing here, and in any event, I think it should not be encouraged.

He ended up killing a man over property in his garage. We'll see how that weighs.