A quick question for those of you who favor gun control and say that a person who is attacked should have no right to kill the attacker in self-defense:
Do you expect for innocent people just to submit to death or torture or rape at the hands of their attacker? What would be allowable in such a scenario? If a person defended themselves and ended up having to use lethal force against their attacker, and their attacker died, do you believe the person who defended themselves should be charged with a crime?
I mean this question in all sincerity, because after reading the responses to Annie’s query, I am very confused about the gun control perspective. I am neutral on this. I have no agenda currently, other than wrapping my brain around this concept.
St Thomas set the parameters of a ‘blameless defense’ in Summa Theologica.
Nothing hinders one act from having two effects, only one of which is intended, while the other is beside the intention. Now moral acts take their species according to what is intended, and not according to what is beside the intention, since this is accidental as explained above. Accordingly the act of self-defense may have two effects, one is the saving of one’s life, the other is the slaying of the aggressor. Therefore this act, since one’s intention is to save one’s own life, is not unlawful, seeing that it is natural to everything to keep itself in “being,” as far as possible. **And yet, though proceeding from a good intention, an act may be rendered unlawful, if it be out of proportion to the end. Wherefore if a man, in self-defense, uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repel force with moderation his defense will be lawful, because according to the jurists **[Cap. Significasti, De Homicid. volunt. vel casual.], “it is lawful to repel force by force, provided one does not exceed the limits of a blameless defense.” Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense in order to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s. But as it is unlawful to take a man’s life, except for the public authority acting for the common good, as stated above (Article 3),
it is not lawful for a man to intend killing a man in self-defense, except for such as have public authority, who while intending to kill a man in self-defense, refer this to the public good, as in the case of a soldier fighting against the foe, and in the minister of the judge struggling with robbers, although even these sin if they be moved by private animosity.
So while it is lawful to use moderate force in repelling an act of aggression even if that results in the death of the aggressor, it is not lawful for an individual person to
intend to kill in self defense. Now I’m suggesting here, that owning an instrument that is guaranteed to kill, in anticipation that you may one day be attacked, constitutes
intending to kill in self defense. Others have circumnavigated that point by saying they don’t own the gun to intend to kill… they only *intend *to stop the aggressor by aiming at the largest mass area of the body which is the chest area. I counter that reasoning by the same process as we would define ‘occasion of sin’. “I didn’t intend to have sex. I just intended to lie in bed cuddling with no clothes on”.
When scenarios are offered to support everyone owning a gun for self defense, they appeal to the empathy that the rational person would have on hearing about a large ugly aggressor attacking a small delicate lady or a vulnerable child and mother. Their aim in using that tack is to ask, “are we willing to sacrifice these vulnerable people for the sake of the criminal”. I counter that with the overwhelming view of outside observers of US culture in saying that by flooding the community with guns and tolerating the inordinately high incidence of school and university gun massacres as well as the inordinately high murder rate in the country… the sacrifice of the young and vulnerable to the gun culture is already shocking and has the empathy of rational people who find death and crime horrible.
. Could it be that you don’t appreciate a poor man’s (I mean woman’s) attempt at Socratic logic? 