Well, what would you suggest? Obviously bullhorns and surveillance cameras aren't much of a deterrent. No one suggests simply "more guns" as a solution, but rather home and property owners be able to defend themselves. More guns in the hands of the good guys would have nipped this in the bud. I hear the police are talking about using rubber or plastic bullets soon. What next? Threat of more arrests? Really, how do you stop mayhem and thuggery other than by use of force? It'd also be nice if the bad guys knew ahead of time they'd face some real consequences for behaving badly. People with nothing but long rapsheets aren't afraid of getting arrested again and they'll never pay any fines.

Sorry to hear about your fun in NJ...and it gave you a good side step of the initial issue.
You carry at all times when possible...and so self defence is a very different thing... can you consider that going back to get a weapon then returning to the fight counts as self defence... that is the as this is what happened in one of two cases used as exemplars in the article you quoted...

That may help us work out what we view as 'self defence'... or not.

Hell no! If you can leave the fight and decide to return to or resume it, you'r no longer in danger of life or limb and especially when not on your own property. You're begging for a prison term. I guess there could be exigent circumstances, like you know an armed robbery or assault is taking place inside the store and you go to your car to get a gun and thwart the crime. That's legally fine if you come out of it ok with no innocents harmed. But anything less than a perfect outcome and you'll be in trouble.

Now, if you're on your own property, in the US it generally comes down to whether the bad guy is in an occupied bldg. If he's in your tool shed or barn and it's not connected to the main house, no shoot. If he's in your hallway with your wife and kid sleeping nearby, kill, kill, kill. If he's armed, you're probably good to shoot anywhere on your property. One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard was in my NV CCW class - unless you absolutely have to shoot, don't do it. Don't do it because you legally can. Do it because it's the only thing that will keep you or your loved one alive or free from serious bodily harm.

It happening because it can...
One thing that we (on this side of the water) have to look to is a couple of generations of gradual increase in the Monday morning quarter-backing of police actions (some totally justified, others less so)....The UK police, in particular the MET have a very mixed record on 'good' policing with firearms....too many errors, many of judgement have eroded public confidence in the police.
This year the phone hacking scandals was in many ways the final straw.

So we have a police force that does not enjoy much public support and respect.

Allied to that a large section of young people (and their parents) who have been raised in a society that patronises them (social benefits etc) and at the same time uses merit as a stick to beat them with...(a competitive work place system)... to most that mean they have no clue how to get out of whatever hole they are in... regardless of what they want to do.

They see people, say footballers, who earn massive amounts of money for a relatively low skill/ intelligence activity...and are envious... they see bankers for example, earn massive amounts of money for 'preying' on others...and they ask, why? I want X, Y, Z...and when the last restraint from going for whatever they want they go for it.

These riots were very 'scary' thanks to the media, but in truth they were far less violent, scary and widespread than those in the 80s which did pull society apart..or the miners strike which saw thousands of miners in battle with phalanxes of mounted police on the fields of the north of England...

These 'flash riots' were a symptom of the current 'I want' culture.. but the only 'solution is to provide a 'this is how you get' path for these people to earn what they want legally.

And before any in the US jump in saying its all about hard work etc... take a look and really ask if 'hard work' is really a sure fire way of getting to that place.. over here there is a perception (true or not) that hard work is not going to get there.. that's the problem.

As regards the Kenneth Noye case (he was the guy who returned with a knife and killed a man who had given him a beating) from Ricks article...

Can I make it clear that Noye was the scum who had previously managed to get away with the knife murder of a policeman after claiming self defence. The policeman had him under surveillance during the enquiry into Noyes roll in the robbery of £26 million :mad:

Thanks Rick... Ken Noyles did leave, get a weapon and return to the fight...
It is that sort of mixing of assualt/ murder in an article on 'self defence' that discredits the basic article, regardless of any coomn or good sense in it...

In your home it is a different ball game as you say...

I don't know the details of that case. But in most states, your car is considered an extension of your home. So you can use deadly force to defend an occupied car, but not an empty one in your driveway. Obviously, you can't choose to return to the fight or kill for revenge. The case that spawned TX's CCW law, IIRC, was a guy who shot an unarmed man in a road rage incident who had him in a headlock while still in his car and was beating the life out of him. Court decided the shooter didn't need to wait until he was about to die before shooting his assailant.

OK. Can I suggest you read the links in the article you posted to get some background?

From that article the actions of the man used as an exampel of 'convicting a 'self defence' incident fall outside any of the considerations you put forward...So that makes the basic premise of the article somewhat moot.

So there is this Korean grocer. He came to the UK with nothing, he's worked 30 long years to build a business in some *****e neighborhood full of hostile people, and along comes some piece of genetic filth with a molotov cocktail getting ready to burn his business to the ground.

F the legal issues, you REALLY think its fine that the grocer should step aside, and let some waste of breath burn his business to the ground. Really?

I simply cannot conceive of a universe in which that is the case. I find it morally repugnant that anyone would not let the grocer defend his business with whatever means he saw fit.

Brits talking about civility.....lol. God forbid I let my (rather nationalistic) Indian wife get going about the Brits treatment of humanity. :D

Rick says that some guns in the hands of good guys would have "nipped this in the bud". Obviously that fantasy is untrue, since the LA riots and the Katrina disorder were not nipped in the bud, and there were more guns in LA and New Orleans than there would ever be in a British city.

If you want privately owned guns to deter looting and rioting, then you need:
(1) a large portion of the law abiding population have guns
(2) those good guys are willing and able to shoot/kill to protect property
(3) the looters and rioters do not have guns.

(1) is the easy part. Just be like the US, but more so.

(2) is hard. Not just the law, but our society and psychology, must change such that an average person with no special training will unhesitatingly kill another human being for burning a car, stealing merchandise from a store, smashing a window. Kill to defend property - and in some cases not even your own property, just a car on the curb or a store on the street.

(3) is the hardest. If the good guys have guns, why wouldn't the bad guys have guns? (as in the US) If the average person is instinctively conditioned to kill to protect property, why wouldn't the bottom 1% (in morals, self control, wealth, etc) be equally prone to kill to get property?

So, that's the society you'd have. You decide if the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Give them better weapons and they'll be better criminals. It's the difference between looting and armed robbery. Simple.

This is the kind of people out rioting this week....

BBC News - London rioters: 'Showing the rich we do what we want'

BBC News - Today - 'I'll keep looting until I get caught'

There is no punishment bad enough if you ask me. These are the people that made me give up on Britain. Got tired of paying for them.

Katrina is a total red herring. People who could get out, got out and didn't stick around to defend their businesses, guns or no guns. I'd have done the same. I'd much rather survive to rebuild another day than stick around when things are under water or worse. And there were plenty of Korean store owners who kept the mobs at bay during the Rodney King riots with their guns.

Where did anyone say it was fine to step aside?

What? You did not read the link posted on UK law?

But you commented anyway?

And your denial of your comments on your own Germany thread is as dishonest as possible.

What informed and educated opinions are you capable of?

So I read it. I must retract most of my statements. I believe one of the key differences is that people here have an inherent understanding of what is 'reasonable' and that a person's home is their castle (hence castle doctrine). Another key element is that should you be tried, it is not an agent of the state leaving your fate to the agent of the state (CPS), but an actual jury that must find you guilt of the crime, should it even make it to a prosecutor's desk (See 5th and 6th amendments to the US Bill of Rights).

Things started going awry when actual 'punishment' ceased. Instead of real corrective action being taken, the system throws criminals in a cesspool to become better criminals. Not to mention being put up all-expenses-paid for the duration of their stay.

not all CCW holders are uncontrolled vigalanties, and handcuffs not just for kinky sex anymore.
Citizen takes down gunman after shooting in Skyway - seattlepi.com

dont all you brits have cricket bats in your homes?
why do you have to buy out all our childrens aluminium baseball bats.

Well they arn't happy about being unarmed...

Baseball Bat Sales Rise on Amazon UK | PCWorld

And what about the other 99% of LA's commercial area that was equally gun-populated, and yet thoroughly looted? How does 1% prove your point? Maybe your point should be that we should all be a tight-knit, ethnically cohesive group of Koreans who were protecting a few square blocks containing their family-owned businesses, that were, in some cases, also their homes. An unusual case.