From: ghm@sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au (Geoff Miller)
Subject: Re: I will only threaten the proven guilty.
Organization: Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra, Australia
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1993 02:42:30 GMT

anon.39@pax.tpa.com.au writes:

>Hi guys.  I used to be anon.526, now I'm not.

Realised you were getting into too many kill files, did you?

>...  I recognize that we live in a peaceful society.
>I would not point a gun at another human being unless he or she
>were guilty of the intent to harm me or my family or a third party.

Good. That's the kind of safe and responsible gun handling many of
us advocate.  However, if you're prepared to point a gun at someone
you should also be prepared to use it.  You've used a very interesting
phrase there, "guilty of the intent".  The word "guilty" has legal
connotations, so maybe you should recall another legal phrase  -
"beyond reasonable doubt".  Jurors have to be convinced of a person's
guild, not absolutely, but beyond reasonable doubt.  The same criterion
applies to an assessment of a threat, that you have to be convinced
beyond reasonable doubt  -  and be prepared to convince a jury beyond
reasonable doubt  -  that the action you take is justified.

>And in a peaceful soceity, everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

There could be an argument about whether parts of the USA have a
"peaceful" society, but since I can't comment from personal experience
I won't.  But again, what do you mean by "proven guilty"?  Consider this
example  -  you see a naked man with a hard-on and armed with a kitchen
knife chase a woman into an alley.  Is he threatening her?  Is he
"proven guilty" by his actions?  If your only way of rapidly and effectively
ending that threat is to shoot him (possibly killing him), do you?
In this case there is no-one else around who can intervene, and no time
to call the police.

>That is what I mean by "nearly limitless benefit of the doubt".

If your limits of the benefit of the doubt stopped short of the case
above  -  I took it, to the best of my memory, from "Dirty Harry".
Do you feel lucky?

>Is it radical to assume that a man is guilty of evil action or 
>intent until proven guilty?

I presume you mean "... not guilty of ...", but again  -  proven by
his actions or proven in a court after the event?

>o So what if Christian Brando was convicted?

>So he went to prison and life will be hell form him for a long time.
>His attempt at self-defense was a terrible pyrrhic victory.  That, IMO,
>is the main drawback of using a gun for self-defense.

Pyrrhic victory my ....  You regard what he did as a conscious and
reasoned act of family defence.  The court disgreed.  On what I read
of the evidence, I agree with the court.

>o How come I don't have any statistics?

>Because I am not giving advice.  If I were to advise all of you here
>that self-defense with a gun risks a deserved prison sentence, then it
>would be incumbent upon me to back it up with some "data".  But your
>risk of going to prison is not my concern here.  Obviously most of 
>you think you can bear the risk.  Unless your program of self-defense
>is an intolerable risk to society, it's your business, even if it
>might be foolish for you personally.

>On the other hand, I have never seen any statistics to demonstrate that
>my doctrine of non-confrontation results in a shorter life expectancy
>or higher burglary insurance, only statistics about those isolated
>experiences involving face-to-face confrontations with violent strangers.

Someone who has the figures to hand will no doubt post  -  again  -
the statistics which demonstrate that those who defend themselves
are less likely to be injured in crime than those who do not.

>However, many people here have advised Rich Kelly that defending
>yourself with a gun is a good idea, and they have not addressed, with
>or without statistics, the possibility of making a criminal error when
>doing so.  Statitics were instead given on other, and in my
>mind, ultimately irrelevant, points.

To demonstrate that your point is relevant, _you_ need to produce 
some data that it is other than a theoretical possibility.  There
is a theoretical possibility that a meteorite could land on my head
but I don't spend time worrying about it;  there is a practical
possibility that I could be run over on the street if I don't take
sensible precautions, so I take them.

Look  -  in previous posts you've used vague terms like "numerous"
without showing that you have even tried to examine the actual data.
Do some homework and then people will listen.

Geoff Miller  (g-miller@adfa.edu.au)
Computer Centre, Australian Defence Force Academy

(See  -  it's not difficult to identify yourself.  Try it.)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns