College Student Kills Intruder With Samuari Sword

You must be a burglar or robber or rapist or something right! Why should he be careful. Maybe you dirtbags should start to fight with the Brady idiots to get rid of anything sharp in a homeowners domain. Be careful you be careful!

no i meant be careful about making statements like that outside your head. it was an ignorant statement. what does robbing people have to do with having common sense?

bark wrote:

what does robbing people have to do with having common sense?

Robbery is a felony. Getting caught and convicted results in imprisonment. Robbery gone wrong can result in severe injuries or loss of life to the perpetrator (as in the case of the samuri sword), police, and/or victims. Commiting violent crimes like burglary and robbery also have great social costs (e.g., people living in fear, a more violent society, children forced to stay indoors), and economic costs (e.g., tax dollars to fund police forces, residential and commercial security systems, private security guards). So why would a rational person commit such crimes? How can commiting a crime such as robbery be a demonstration of using one's common sense? I'm puzzled. If you can defend your statement, please enlighten us all.

Enlisting (voluntarily joining the military) and getting sent overseas could result in severe injury or loss of life. The emotional toll on families of soldiers, is a great social cost.

I don't think anyone would say everyone in our voluntary military service has no commone sense. Common sense is relative based on your specific situation and beliefs. If you believe warlords in Afghanistan are putting your family at risk, signing up to fight them makes perfect sense.

If you had no education, no skills and no family for support and knew society had a disdain for your type (as is obvious from this thread) and you needed money to eat or support a drug habit, committing burglaries sounds like a pretty rational decision (common sense). Especially when you know that if you are caught, you will serve little or no jail time. You would argue, that if death was an expected outcome, then burglarly would not display common sense. I am nearly certain that it you looked at the percentage of deaths due to automobile crashes, compared to the number of deaths commiting burglarly (I am not talking about armed robbery, only burglarly which general is not classified as a violent crime, since it is intended to be passive if it works correctly), you would find that the risk of death due to burglarly is not great and common sense would dictate it is not a deterent. Likewise the fear of a death penalty has not been shown to lead to decrease in capital crimes.

I am not defending the perp, but as an early poster stated, this supposedly positive outcome (perp killed) may encourage others to confront purglars (who are not acutally in their home) rather than call the police first and only use force themselves if needed. The burglar could easily have had a gun in which case the samuraii sworsdman might be dead and not look like the genius you are making him out to be.

The fact that the burglar was killed will not deter a single burglar and if anything will encourage them to be better armed. This is a race to the bottom, so if you want to claim a victory in this case, it is a pyrhic one.

I bet he... cut classes the next day.

tri_yoda wrote:

The fact that the burglar was killed will not deter a single burglar and if anything will encourage them to be better armed. This is a race to the bottom, so if you want to claim a victory in this case, it is a pyrhic one.

who cares? this guy committed many crimes before this, and would have continued to do so for many years. now he can't. end of story.

go on with your philosophical crap here. but when someone comes into your house uninvited, all bets are off.

my dad had a similar thing happen while he was growing up. there were some tough guys in the neighborhood that started breaking into garages, etc... My grandpa caught one of them in his garage, and he beat the guy within an inch of his life (with a bat). No more problems after that. end of story.

tri_yoda wrote:

Enlisting (voluntarily joining the military) and getting sent overseas could result in severe injury or loss of life. The emotional toll on families of soldiers, is a great social cost.

I don't think anyone would say everyone in our voluntary military service has no commone sense.

First, analogizing engaging in criminal acts like robbery or burglary to legally serving one's country in the military (something many people consider an honorable or even laudable endeavor) simply because physical harm can result from both activities is absurd. In a civilized society, we have laws against rape, robbery and murder because it preserves social order and prevents people like the burglar in the samurai sword incident from depriving others of their rights to life, liberty and property.

Second, even the most desperate members of society (your example: "no education, no skills and no family for support") don't get a free pass to commit felonies. They don't even get a reduced sentence if convicted. In Baltimore there are non-criminal options to getting food clothing and shelter (e.g., soup kitchens, homeless shelters). Choosing to engage in criminal behavior as risky as burglary (defined as breaking into the dwelling of another for the purpose of committing a felony therein) rather than attempting to avail yourself of non-criminal means to secure life's necessities does not show much comon sense. Lunging at someone armed with a samurai sword makes even less sense.

Third, burglary is considered a violent crime because it involves, as stated above, breaking into the dwelling of another person, and therefore entails a high risk of confronting an occupant of that dwelling -- as occurred in this case. Whether a crime is considered violent or not is not defined by the luck and/or skill of the felon (i.e., that it is possible to break into a dwelling without a confrontation).

Fourth, as to the "drug habit to support," the rational decision is attempting to quit the addiction that may compel one to commit a felony, and not to commit a felony to sustain the addiction.

Fifth, I don't consider this a "positive outcome" for many reasons, including some of the ones you mentioned: (1) loss of the perpetrator's life; (2) potential criminal charges facing the college student or other legal entanglements; (3) mental anguish for the student -- killing someone, even in self defense, isn't an experience easily forgotten; (4) publicity about this incident will no doubt encourage people to arm themselves and lead to further confrontations and violence that potentially could be avoided. I agree with the poster who said the first thing one should do in a situation like this is try to escape and summon law enforcement, not physicaly confront the intruder; and (5) I agree that stories like this will also encourage criminals to arm themselves before commiting crimes for fear of ending up like the perpetrator in this case, which will lead inevitably to more violence.

Finally, what does this thread have to do with running?

chucklz wrote:

I bet he... cut classes the next day.

cut that out

I have a custom made wooden bat with nails coming out of it. Its under my bed for times like these...

But now Im thinking a sword would be more appropriate.

bat and balls wrote:

I have a custom made wooden bat with nails coming out of it. Its under my bed for times like these...

But now Im thinking a sword would be more appropriate.

I've gotta gun between the mattress and one in a hollowed out Bible next to my bed. If someone breaks in to my place at night, they are going to get a lesson from the "Good Book".

POD

The student should have stayed in his room and called the cops. He took matters into his own hands and now he has to face consequences to his unnecessary actions.

There was no immediate threat to the student. He went looking for trouble, and he found it, along with the burglar.

mind your own business wrote:

The student should have stayed in his room and called the cops. He took matters into his own hands and now he has to face consequences to his unnecessary actions.

There was no immediate threat to the student. He went looking for trouble, and he found it, along with the burglar.

agree 100 percent

He was pissed over the prior breakin.

I bet he ambushed the poor sob.

Also bet he gets off.

Nope.

You break into someone's house, be prepared to face the consequences.

Seriously, there is no excuse for being in someone's home stealing things. You should and will be viewed as a direct threat.

I hate that he died, but I say he got what was coming to him.

chucklz wrote:

I bet he... cut classes the next day.

I doubt it, he's pretty sharp.

mind your own business wrote:

The student should have stayed in his room and called the cops. He took matters into his own hands and now he has to face consequences to his unnecessary actions.

There was no immediate threat to the student. He went looking for trouble, and he found it, along with the burglar.

Oh yeah, just let the guy get out of your house and hope the police catch him and you get all your stuff back! SOMEONE WAS IN HIS HOUSE! That is an immediate threat.

Easy Tigers wrote:

Nope.

You break into someone's house, be prepared to face the consequences.

Seriously, there is no excuse for being in someone's home stealing things. You should and will be viewed as a direct threat.

I hate that he died, but I say he got what was coming to him.

+1 Amen brother!

mind your own business wrote:

The student should have stayed in his room and called the cops. He took matters into his own hands and now he has to face consequences to his unnecessary actions.

There was no immediate threat to the student. He went looking for trouble, and he found it, along with the burglar.

You should have a right to protect your home and or belongings. In many states you do. Anyone know if this state had such a law?

Burglars should NOT have free access to your belongings to take whenever or wherever they please. The police cannot and will not always be there. The police are mostly for 'after the fact'. If a burglar gets killed while breaking into someone's house, OH WELL.

With that said, the student was pretty dumb to investigate with a sword. I would not have investigated with anything less than a gun. You just have to assume that someone brazen enough to break into your house is carrying a gun. The kid got lucky and I hope he does not face any legal action.

You're not too far off on the law. To clarify, when someone breaks into your home with the intent to commit a felony therein (otherwise known as burglary) in most states you have the right to use deadly force to protect yourself and other occupants of the dwelling. However, you don't have the right to use deadly force to protect property (real or personal). The confrontation in this case appears to have occurred in a completely detached garage -- not the dwelling where the student was resting comfortably with a samurai sword at his side. If the student sought out the burglar in a detached garage, when he could have called the cops and reported someone in the garage and locked himself in the house, then he may have a serious legal problem for pursuing the guy with a deadly weapon. Playing devil's advocate, one could argue that he entered the garage to protect property, not life. If that were the case, he could be charged with manslaughter.