There have been cases in the US where homeowners shot cops dead who were in the process of unexpectedly raiding their home, because the homeowner had no idea they were cops and not home invasion robbers; and in some cases have been acquitted of murder charges by juries for this.
I'd personally like to see the laws protecting this strengthened, to make sure that cops aren't charging unannounced into peoples' homes and then charging the homeowner with murder when they react with reasonable gun violence in self-defense.
My thought on this is that it's basically not legal to protect your home/family with force because of this. It's impossible to know if someone breaking in is a cop or not, and at 3AM with glass breaking and a group of people claiming to be cops, but aren't, how are you supposed to know? You basically never can. So either you risk going to prison for the rest of your life when it's actually a cop, or you do absolutely nothing and let your family get harmed/your home burgled.
Some people want world peace and denuclearization. Each country is currently as it finds itself and takes a great deal of leadership and buy-in to change.
That’s not the real world. Criminals will always find a way to get guns no matter the amount of gun control you impose, so I’d rather have law abiding citizens be armed as well
It is the real world in many places. "Criminals" are not a homogenous group. Petty criminals will not usually be making the effort to get a gun if getting a gun is inconvenient. Some high level criminals will find ways to get guns but the number of criminals with guns will be much lower with gun controls.
It’s not your real world, lots of other countries have so little gun violence that a shooting makes the national news when it happens and thats maybe once or twice a year.
There are countries in the EU which have pretty lax gun laws and firefighters are fairly accessible they still have fairly low levels of gun crime. Just having access to weapons doesn’t mean that people will start killing each other for no reason, there are many other more important factors.
Really? 'Oh, someone I don't know! stab'? What if the person is plain-clothes law enforcement? Or a special needs person who somehow managed to wander into the wrong house? Or your sibling's new partner they want to introduce to you?
Anyway, unless you actually have stabbed someone before you don't know whether you got what it takes until you're actually in a situation where you find out.
>Anyway, unless you actually have stabbed someone before you don't know whether you got what it takes until you're actually in a situation where you find out.
A guy tried to rob me, I fractured his skull with my iphone before I even realized what was going on. You don't just freeze when someone suddenly attacks you, you'll try to swing at them with whatever you have at hand.
At home? I might just have been cooking, or carving a sunday roast. Who knows? But if someone suddenly smashed through my door, I'm pretty sure that whatever object happens to be in my hand would be heading towards the intruder long before I've had time to think about what's going on.
A German police officer was fatally shot in 2010 after failing to identify himself when his manipulation on the door had alerted the known-armed subject of a planned search. The shooter was (eventually) acquitted. Though the circumstances were rather unusual, the court noted that in that specific case, the inability to ascertain the nature & extent of the threat within available time made acting this way based on his assumptions excusable.
In the EU the answer is always "it's unclear". Yes you can, but you also can't.
ECHR necessarily guarantees the right to shoot some intruders in some situations, but it's kind of impossible to know which situations those are except after the fact.
I'd say it is. Yes there are people that own guns or hunting rifles. Most still don't think about guns or shooting first. Guns are supposed to be locked in a safe etc.
All that does obviously not apply to a criminal who does not follow the law.
> Most still don't think about guns or shooting first.
You base this on what? I know plenty of gun owners where I live, and most would pull open their safe the moment they hear something during the night. I'm willing to bet most gun safes are located in the bedroom.
We don't have precedent in the way that common law countries do, and the judgements in actual cases point in slightly different directions-- in one case a court felt that the failure to fire a warning shot made it not self-defence, in another fighting people trying to get into an apartment with a knife was deemed acceptable.
Generally though, if someone is breaking into your apartment while you're there, possibly trying to get at you, there's no limit, as long as you're actually trying to defend yourself (so no executing someone who you've clearly disabled, etc.).
If people are breaking into your apartment and you fire a warning shot, then proceed to shoot the attackers, no one will complain.
I am Swedish, and it’s very true that ”it depends”.
This guy for example was convicted of murder because he got his gun out without even trying to contact the police directly or indirectly. So even if he pulled the trigger under reasonable circumstances (a know violent offender was trying to take his rifle) he was found guilty because he should not have gone for the gun without considering alternatives like locking the door or fleeing.
I can’t see him being anywhere near guaranteed to claim self defense even if he had fired a warning shot first.
> They’d basically have to attack you first for lethal force to be legal.
They just violently entered his home in an effort to attack him, dressed in a way designed to intimidate. These cops were deliberately cosplaying as some sort of a hit squad, they obviously wanted him to believe that they were going to kill him.
It's not like the cops just accidentally went out dressed like that.
This is Denmark, not some Brasilian favela. That type of violent crime extremely rare in Scandinavia. But cops wearing civilian clothes while conducting a raid is fairly normal. Especially when they want to preserve evidence which might be quickly destroyed if the suspect sees them coming.
If a masked person, that doesn't first identify themselves clearly as the police (which is difficult since, well, they are masked) breaks into my house, that's a lethal attack for sure.
What are you going to do after they enter the house (if they aren't indeed the police and you trust they won't kill or rape your family)?
While this is still bad, If you watch the video, the officers announce themselves and enter with empty hands... it's very different from videos of "raids" by US police that I've seen.
You can. But ammunition and the guns have to be stored in separate safes. And it's essentially impossible to get off with a self defense claim if you have time to gather your legal guns
The activist is well known. They likely knew he would answer the door, yet they still broke it down. In the U.S., you'd probably shoot some dog in that situation, if one was available.
The entire scene is probably not meant as effective policing, but as punitive theater. This also explains why they disabled the cameras, as the theater was not intended for content reuse.
Given that, I'd assume they knew he wouldn't shoot them or do anything even remotely like that.
Just because Denmark doesn't have the same gun laws, culture around using guns for self-defense, or prevalence of guns as the US does, it doesn't mean that Danish police face no risk when they raid someone's home. Anytime the cops raid someone's home, regardless of whether or not is it a legitimate raid of a legitimate criminal, it's a violent act and there's risk that the cops will be hurt or killed.
Since 1945 12 cops have been killed in the line of duty (excluding traffic accidents), mostly when responding to a violent crime (trying to stop bank robberies lead to 6 of those fatalities).
That’s such an American mentality. Here’s a short clip which might broaden your mind on possible ways to view how and when police should be using violence.