Please post reasons why it is OK to kill people in defense of property.

[rrneck]

116. Well, I might be insane but I'm not a thief

and that will be the thief's position in the matter. Just like you say that if you don't want to get shot, don't steal, the thief is saying if you don't want it stolen, don't have it around. Someone who steals for a living has a, shall we say, flexible concept of private property.

When the thief goes to work and you defend your property, you guys are just going to have to work it out between you in about three seconds. The issue that you will be settling is who is most willing to die for the stuff - or who is more willing to kill for it. And that metric will depend on the level of desperation each of you has about the need for the stuff and the resulting amount of force each is willing to bring to bear to secure it.

If a thief is willing to kill for the stuff, and the homeowner is willing to kill to keep it, who has the moral high ground here? It's easy to say the homeowner since he or she obviously worked for the money to pay for it. But it's not that simple. Ask yourself these questions: Would I steal to secure medication to keep my wife alive? Would I kill for it? Who would I kill? Those questions are a variation of the Heinz Dilemma(1) based on Kohlbergs stages of moral development(2).

All of these scenarios regarding whether or not to shoot the thief assume the thief is a loser lowlife crook moral deficient. The terms get flung around a lot: thug, goblin, etc. But as current events would show, there is a growing level of serious income disparity in this country, and many who were once upstanding homeowners have been transformed into deadbeats who walk away from mortgages through no fault of their own because the richest 1% turned the housing market into a casino with a rigged roulette wheel. The greatest number of bankruptcies in this country are caused by medical expenses. The cases of big pharma charging exorbitant prices for medications and manipulating patent regulations to maintain profit margins are no secret. Given the rising social and political turmoil in this country, the Heinz dilemma is much less of an abstraction than it might at first seem to be.

It's all well and good to declare what's yours is yours and you are willing to kill to defend it. But what you have may not always be yours, and you may find yourself in the position of having to steal from others who have more than you to survive. Even a cursory glance at American history will tell you that. A morality based on wealth is a poorly founded morality and an unwise way to deal with others around you. Wealth changes hands, lives do not.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_dilemma

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development