Boys Attack Cyclist Who Fights Back, Kills 1

[TPaine7]

47. Some of your points are good, others not so much...

People who use force in self-defence are not to be second-guessed from the perspective of a detached observer, and especially not based on facts not known to the person in question.

Perfectly correct.

That does not mean that any particular use of force claimed to be in self-defence is wise or good or even necessary, "justified" though it may be.

In legitimate self-defense, the use of force is always necessary from the point of view of the intended victim. It may not be necessary from the viewpoint of a detached observer. However, detached observers have no right to deprive innocent people under potentially deadly threats of the means of self-defense.

Force is not used in self-defence in order to rid the world of vermin, or cleanse the gene pool. It is used to protect the person using it against injury or death.

Absolutely. If someone has such thoughts on their mind while shooting defensively, they are almost certainly unjustified. Ridding the world of vermin, or cleansing the gene pool are not appropriate goals for defensive shooters. That does not mean, however, that ridding the world of vermin is not a positive side effect in some cases.

As a detached observer with the benefit of hindsight, I wish that someone had rid the word of the vermin known as the BTK (Bind, Torture Kill) serial killer. Ridding the world of vermin wouldn't have been an appropriate goal for the intended victim--but it certainly would have been a great side effect as far as I'm concerned. Had his first intended victim killed him, it would have saved 10 people. Preventing the horrific deaths of 10 ordinary people by killing 1 monstrous predator--while he is in the very act of attempted kidnapping in the service of murder--is, IMNSHO, an unqualified good. YMMV.

What the gun didn't do in this case, in any event, was prevent him from being attacked and hurt, eh? Had the punch or kick been intended to kill, or had worse effect than they did, it wouldn't have saved him from death, either.

Nonsense. A punch or kick that is intended to kill can easily fail to meet its goal. And as far as we know, the boys may have intended to kill him and only been stopped by bullets. Saying that had "the punch or kick been intended to kill, ... {the gun} wouldn't have saved him from death, either" is totally unjustified and one-sided speculation.

Even if this was intended as a simple robbery they could have accidentally killed the man, and as your post correctly implies, he had no obligation to bet his life or health on the goodwill and competence of two younger males who would knock him off a bicycle and assault him as they did. I would take your implied point further--society has no right to deprive him of the means of self-defense in order to protect people who physically assault him with potentially deadly force.

One more thing your analysis fails to recognize is that though the victim has no business evaluating the effects on society at large of killing an attacker, there are at least two ways that killing attacking felons can benefit society.

First, in a significant number of defensive killings the defensive killing actually is necessary to prevent the death of the intended victim. In such cases, there are only two possible options. Society can lose an intended victim or society can lose an intended murderer. Losing an intended murder is the better option in the vast majority of cases.

Second, people start out with smaller crimes and graduate to larger crimes. Murder is very rarely a first crime. Not all who violently assault go on to murder, but almost all who murder start with violent assault. It is quite possible, even probable, that the dead boy would have gone on to more severe criminal behavior, if not murder. Many people would have probably suffered from his crimes. And it is also quite possible that the simple self-defense of this gentleman saved the world from the next Jack the Ripper, BTK killer or garden variety murderer. (Though of course, that was none of the defender's business at the time of his legitimate self-defense.)