New Proposed Burglary Laws

marcsignal

Ammendments to the Law regarding how far you can go to protect yourself, your Family and Property against a Burglar are currently being discussed, with a view to tipping the balance in favour of the Victim, as opposed to the Burglar. (to loosely quote M Mc Dowell)

TV3 carried out a poll tonight on the 17:30 news which asked

"Should you be allowed to kill a burglar who is on your property ?"

The first result came in at 18:00

Result YES - 96% to NO - 4%

I wasn't surprised the YES vote was in the majority (at this point)
But was very surprised at the difference.

Any thoughts on this one people ?

flogen

This is funny; McDowell shot down FG's proposal to change the law in favour of the property owner (on the basis of it allowing people to use any force necissary to remove an uninvited guest on their property, which McD said could include a gatecrasher at a party).
He leaves it a few months, and then expresses his will to make the same changes, or even more extreme ones.

This is why people get turned off of politics; parties and people trying to score points rather than do their job as servants of the public.

As for the poll, not surprised. You can't get a real answer from such a vague question (which is akin to asking 'should you be allowed to kill someone who attacks you?'), and you're going to get this kind of reaction from people who watch TV3 news anyway.

SparkyLarks

the admendment proposed isn't so you can kill a burgler or even to tip the scales in the favour of the victim.

The current situaion is you can use action to defend yourself that are appropiate in the circumstances that you belive you are in, paraphrasing.

this raises a lot of questions,
If you have the option to flee but decide to fight should you be acountable?
If a small slight burgler breakes in and your a 15 stone green berret and can easily detain him can you beat the crap out of him.

The proposal is to give more giduance on proportionality , when you have to stop fighting back, i.e when he's running away, do you have to be atacked or can you take preventative action

Of course at the end of the day whether self defense is a valid argument for killing or assulting another person is a decision for a jury.

marcsignal

SparkyLarks wrote:

Of course at the end of the day whether self defense is a valid argument for killing or assulting another person is a decision for a jury.

True, I was just gobsmacked at how the first poll went.
I mean 96 to 4 is seriously extreme, does that not say something about how much fear is out there ? which is hardly surprising considering the amount of violent crime going on, and how it's being reported by the media.
That poll is going on all night so will be interesting to see how it pans out as the evening goes on.

Manic Moran

Works for me.

Then again, that's the law as it stands around these parts, so you'd just be catching up to California.

We've a fairly low hot burglary rate around here, for some reason.

NTM

flogen

SparkyLarks wrote:

the admendment proposed isn't so you can kill a burgler or even to tip the scales in the favour of the victim.

The current situaion is you can use action to defend yourself that are appropiate in the circumstances that you belive you are in, paraphrasing.

If I'm not mistaken you can use "reasonable force" (which is supposed to be subjective) and only when the individual is trying to gain entry to your property... I think the laws of general self defense (using minimum force to restrain your attacker) apply after that.