Texas A&M Study Says Castle-Doctrine Laws Increase Homicides, Don't Deter Crime

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

17. SYG & CD are not designed to deter crime. And it follows logically that homicides increase. So what?

At least I can't imagine why they would be expected to deter crime. They are in place to protect a victim AFTER he defends herself/himself. Nothing in SYG or CD enables victims to be able to shoot an attacker - people who carry guns were already allowed to carry and/or use the gun in self defense. SYG/CD are not enablers of an behavior. Nothing in SYG or CD changes the attacker's likelihood of success or defeat - so it logically follows that the presence of SYG or CD is not a determining factor in the decision to assault someone else. Therefore it can have no deterrent effect nor be expected to have a deterrent effect.

To address the other point about increased homicides, murder is homicide but not all homicides are murders. Homicide is merely the killing of another human being - as evidenced by the etymology of the word. Murder is wrongful unjustified homicide. Not all assaults and/or robberies will end with the victim being murdered. However, given such an assault/robbery event where no one would have been murdered, if the victim kills the attacker in self defense... you now have a homicide that would have otherwise been avoided. However it is important to note that these instances are justified homicide and the people killed are criminals being purged from society. These new self defense instances, combined with the already steady statistic of truly life threatening events where either the victim and/or attacker will be killed, will of course increase the overall homicide metric. Again, the important thing to remember here is that most of the increase in general homicides is merely criminals being purged from society. So what?