Friday quiz – late edition

Written By: - Date published: 1:34 pm, March 21st, 2009 - 27 comments
Categories: law and "order" - Tags: ,

Imagine two incidents when a person is at home and they hear someone outside their house. In the first incident, they grab a knife and head outside. In the second incident, they grab an air rifle and go outside. In the first incident, they see two taggers running away and chase them. In the second incident, they see two men dressed in black running away and chase them. Both incidents see the weapon used and one of the people who were attempting to escape killed.

Which do you agree with?

a) The property owner has every right to defend their property. Anyone sneaking around on someone else’s property is asking for trouble. The property owner should not be punished – it’s the intruder’s fault they’re dead, the property owner was only expressing “his frustration over the issue“.

b) In the first example to killing is OK but not in the second one. The ‘McVicar defence’ only applies to cases when it’s a Pakeha business owner killing a kid who can be dismissed as ‘underclass’. Not when a suspected drug dealer kills someone who turns out to be a cop.

c) Any killing is a terrible act. Killing can only be justified in exceptional circumstances. Using a potentially deadly weapon against someone merely for infringing on your property is illegal and immoral, and deserves to be punished.

If you answered a you should consider voting for ACT (“the Liberal Party”). If you answered b) you’re a racist bigot, you should join the Sensible Sentencing Trust, maybe you can find out who their major backers really are. If you answered c) congratulations, you’re a decent human being.

27 comments on “Friday quiz – late edition ”

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  1. Killinginthenameof 1
    21 March 2009 at 1:51 pm

    This has been bugging me also. I really can’t see the difference here, late at night, property being interfered with, property owner shoots \ stabs before asking questions. I guess we all know what the outcome is going to be though.

    • Linda Axford 1.1
      21 March 2009 at 10:10 pm

      Defending one’s property on one’s property is one thing, but chasing someone down the road and then stabbing/shooting them with an air rifle is another. I would argue both are cases of manslaughter. Even so, I could speculate the guy with the air rifle might not have intended to kill the guy messing with his car, but just wanted to scare him. The man with the knife, however, I believe definitely intended to inflict serious harm on the ‘tagger’.
      Both should get a sentence of manslaughter, whatever that might be.

      aladin

  2. DS 2
    21 March 2009 at 1:52 pm

    How is ACT implicated with option a? Surely the fact they have an MP connected with SST doesn’t mean the party supports each and every statement made by McVicar? If I had to bet I doubt ACT supporters would be any more likely to agree with the McVicar statement you reference than supporters of any other party. It’s one thing to disagree with the positions ACT does have, but even the ones it doesn’t? This seems a bit unfair.

    It is also not clear how McVicar’s comments were racially motivated as your linked post insinuates. How did you draw that conclusion?

    • Felix 2.1
      21 March 2009 at 2:47 pm

      Is it reasonable to take the statements of the party’s Law and Order Spokesperson as being representative of the party’s position on Law and Order?

      If so then you don’t have a case.
      If not then the ACT party has some very serious troubles.

  3. Snail 3
    21 March 2009 at 2:20 pm

    John A,

    Re: ACT (‘the Liberal Party’)

    Your single quotes infer the enclosed words are an ACT (or a third party’s) claim.

    In the interests of saying what they really are for the benefit of others would you not consider replacing that description with a more accurate one of the Contrarian Party.

    In this they are standout from all the other parties.

  4. Quoth the Raven 4
    21 March 2009 at 2:26 pm

    Everyone has a right to life. To kill someone simply because they are on your property is absurd and is an act of aggression not defense. You cannot take away someone’s right to life merely because they have infringed on your property rights.

  5. Felix 5
    21 March 2009 at 2:37 pm

    ‘the Liberal Party’

    As I/S noted the other day they seem to have stopped using this monumentally misleading slogan.

  6. Bill 6
    21 March 2009 at 2:47 pm

    In both examples the people ran away. Having run away they are no longer trespassing, threatening your property or whatever the perceived offense was.

    If they are thieves and taggers then the offense has already been committed and reasonable force is surely all you are authorised to use in making a citizens arrest.

    Seeing it otherwise would mean exulting in the summary execution of supermarket market shoplifters and skip jumpers (analogous with the second example).

    And illegal fly posters, pavement artists and so on (following example one) should be subjected to roving vigilante death squads. Funded by the local council perhaps….or maybe under the auspices of some ppp arrangement?

  7. the sprout 7
    21 March 2009 at 2:56 pm

    glad you raised this John A, I’d be thinking the same myself.

  8. Schwule 8
    21 March 2009 at 2:57 pm

    In my neighbourhood they tag the police station that much the police have given up painting over the mess. Guess crime is winning.

    • Bill 8.1
      21 March 2009 at 3:17 pm

      The police have given up on whitewash?

    • Joseph 8.2
      21 March 2009 at 5:20 pm

      Something is only really a crime when it hurts people. In this case, the police seem to have adopted the proper response of not caring about some paint, and actually going after the people that harm others.

      Good on them.

  9. greenfly 9
    21 March 2009 at 3:38 pm

    Had to Bill, the writing was on the wall.

  10. Ianmac 10
    21 March 2009 at 5:50 pm

    greenfly. Haha
    John a well said. You remember that there is another one where the shopkeeper ran after some alleged youthful shoplifters, had a row with some then hit a kid with a hockey stick. (Case pending I think?) The man was charged with assault but some public expressed sympathy for the shopkeeper.
    Bill said:”In both (all 3 ) examples the people ran away. Having run away they are no longer trespassing, threatening your property or whatever the perceived offense was.”
    Not selfdefense?

    • Killinginthenameof 10.1
      21 March 2009 at 11:08 pm

      The problem here is that all too often these things come in front of a justice of the peace, who all to often apply their all too white version of common sense too the situation and these things never get punished as they should. I’m surprised the Emery case went as far as it did.

  11. toad 11
    21 March 2009 at 6:26 pm

    Three strikes and you’re Garrotted!

    Problem with David Garrett is that he is in both the ACT Party and the SST – and it shows big-time!

  12. QoT 12
    21 March 2009 at 9:34 pm

    Can I have an option (d) “As someone who’s not very fit, entirely unexperienced in physical conflict and thoroughly unkeen to confront superior numbers of unknown opponents, I lock my door, stay inside my house and call the cops”?

  13. Ianmac 13
    21 March 2009 at 10:53 pm

    QoT: Or option (e) Send your wife out to deal with the intruder, then lock the door because no sense in both of you getting hurt!

  14. Brett Dale 14
    22 March 2009 at 2:11 pm

    There is no straight answer to that question, most people would answer C, I dont think how you can tell who someone must vote for, by a carefully worded multi choice question like that.

    • Felix 14.1
      22 March 2009 at 2:54 pm

      Most people would pick (c), yes. And most people don’t vote for ACT or join the SST.

      The vast majority of us are decent people, Brett. ACT and the SST are just a handful of very noisy extremists. It’s about time the decent people stopped paying so much attention to them and let them crawl back into the filthy little caves they came out of..

      • gingercrush 14.1.1
        22 March 2009 at 3:04 pm

        That is nice and all Felix. Yet the sentiment expressed here is generally that its a travesty that the Jury found Bruce Emery guilty of only manslaughter. And if one assumes the jury is made up of normal New Zealanders how does that then resolve with your thinking?

        • Felix 14.1.1.1
          22 March 2009 at 4:46 pm

          a) I don’t claim to speak on behalf of “the sentiment here”.

          b) The Emery verdict is irrelevant to the point which Brett made and which I expanded on.

          c) It’s a lovely day for a vodka in the sun.

  15. Quoth the Raven 15
    22 March 2009 at 3:14 pm

    There is no straight answer to that question, most people would answer C, I dont think how you can tell who someone must vote for, by a carefully worded multi choice question like that.

    I thought my answer was fairly straight. Do you disagree Brett?