Would you rat out a friend who killed a bad guy?

[jimmifett]

While we don't have a constitutionally protected right to defend one's own property, I will unload a full clip on someone trying to steal from me. It's how I was raised. You make your own way in the world.

For Kzach's situation, I have some sympathy, as we too grew up poor. Not to that point, but we had to rely several times from what I can remember on help from the local church. That being said, while I wouldn't shoot a kid for stealing from my car, they'd certainly have learned a lesson if I caught them.

 

[Janx]

My main problem with this scenario is this:
Did the guy who got killed actually commit the rape? How can you be sure of it?

It could just as well have been the daughter who was lying.

Walking around shooting guys 'you just know' deserve it, is illegal for a reason.

The TV said it, so it must be true....

I don't know yet if the incident really happened. It's a TV show. They may just yet yank the rug out to make more drama.

I would have wondered why the wife, son and maybe daughter hid it from the VIP. Traditionally, VIPs get better justice than regular people. After the rape, you report it and hit the press and the bad guy gets railroaded into prison faster than you can get an insurance quote with Geicko.

At this point, the show's current bad guys plan is hitting bumps. It was odd how they could set up so much complicated stuff just to whack the VIP and frame the Fed.

 

[Janx]

While we don't have a constitutionally protected right to defend one's own property, I will unload a full clip on someone trying to steal from me. It's how I was raised. You make your own way in the world.

Someone in the NRA could probably argue that the 2nd Ammendment specifically gives you that right, given circumstantial need and certain limits. I'm pretty sure the right wasn't granted for Collectors or Hipsters to look cool with an iGun on their belt. It's a practical law.

 

[Rackhir]

Someone in the NRA could probably argue that the 2nd Ammendment specifically gives you that right, given circumstantial need and certain limits. I'm pretty sure the right wasn't granted for Collectors or Hipsters to look cool with an iGun on their belt. It's a practical law.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

While I wouldn't be surprised if the NRA has made such claims, no scholar of the Constitution, who's not an ideologue with an axe to grind would say that. The 2nd amendment doesn't give you a right to shoot anyone. It's about the right to own guns and to restrict the governments ability to "infringe" that.

The "castle" doctrine, IE. you have a right to defend (shoot someone) yourself in your home, comes out of English common law and is generally defined at the state level.

 

[Gronin]

Would you answer this question on a publicly accessible website where it may be used against you in the future???

Exactly --- there is only one way to be sure a secret is kept --- tell no one. Speaking hypothetically on a forum of any kind is going to come back to bite you in the butt should such a situation arise.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I'd press my friend to come clean. If he consistently refused, I'd rat him out. Or rather, the son.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Remember also what Twain said: truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense.

If we say, "Gah! That would never happen. Nobody would really do that," it's almost certain that it HAS happened or that somebody IS doing that. Here, let's play Law&Order and rip one from the headlines: Arguably the most well-known pop singer in the world, even in history, dies. His personal physician is arrested and tried for having killed him by using a surgical anaesthetic to treat him for insomnia. You write that in a book or as a TV show and you're going to get a lot of reaction like, "Aw, gimme a break..."

 

[Fast Learner]

Indeed, as with any of the (truthful) "Darwin award winners"; if you included such ridiculous deaths in a book readers would assume you'd intentionally gone way over the top and it would pull them out of the book's constructed reality, regardless of how real it actually was.

 

[Dire Bare]

My attachment to the human race is tenuous at best.

No offense, but glad you're not in charge!

 

[Dire Bare]

And again, ok in the eyes of the law doesn't necessarily mean appropriate or moral.

No, but it's often a good place to start.