…the victim has the right to use the minimal necessary force in defense of himself [and his other property]. Logically, then, the aggressor [temporarily] loses those rights which that minimal defense will violate. He maintains all others.

That’s about as succinct and clear as it gets. Thanks Paul.

I certainly don’t think he loses all rights. In most cases, defense does not require deadly force. Even if it did, there are obviously things the “victim” could do which would be not within his rights, such as killing the attacker slowly.

Regarding 4, I would say overkill, meaning use of more violence than reasonably necessary for defense, is aggressive violence, and a violation of the perpetrators rights, for which restitution will be required.

The use of minimal necessary violence when simply allowing the attack would be more appropriate, however, is not a violation of rights, nor will it require restitution, but may result in ostracism.

1. If you are aggressed against in the form of theft/fraud, vandalism and trespass (murder, rape and assault being givens), any amount of force — including deadly — is on the table.

If so, this confirms my theory that until the aggression is resolved, the aggressor temporarily forfeits all valid, moral claims (rights) to not be aggressed against by you. Quid pro quo.

2. The aggressed must decide how important the aggression is to them and choose to either forgive the aggressor or to resolve the aggression with violence.

3. If the aggressed chooses violence, they must determine for themselves how much is required in order to correct the situation and use the minimal amount necessary to achieve resolution.

4. Choosing overkill, however, could have very negative consequences for the aggressed.

While the gun action is not intrinsically immoral, it would definitely be considered to be in poor taste and would raise questions about one’s fitness to act within society.

That cover it?

If someone is threatening to steal your sandwich, it is nearly 100% certain that there are alternate, less violent ways to prevent it than shooting them. That’s what determines that you have no right to shoot them — not the value of the sandwich.

If someone has already stolen your sandwich, the goal switches from prevention to restitution. In that case, you then have the right to use the minimum force necessary to obtain fair restitution.

In both cases, minimum force necessary is the key — not the value of the good.

The value of the good only comes in when determining whether it is moral to exercise a right. So, although I have a right to use whatever minimum force is necessary to prevent someone from stealing from me, I may decide that that force is too severe, and that I would prefer to lose the property, and so do not exercise that right.

The difference is, if a person acts outside of their rights by using more force than is necessary, they should be required to provide restitution. If a person exercises their rights in an irresponsible manner, by using the minimum necessary force in a situation when forgiveness would be more appropriate, ostracism is an appropriate response, but restitution should not be forcefully required — they have acted within their rights.

It would benefit you to have far more potential force at your disposal than the thief is willing to employ. Third-party arbitration leverages a majority sense of fairness to provide precisely this condition… but is unfortunately only available after the fact. The thief has already initiated force in pursuit of your property, and will be (temporarily) victorious in the conflict over it unless you mount a superior defense. This would still be true if you tracked em down, but at that point arbitration is probably a much more attractive option than direct force—for both of you.

I’m not sure that the above can be accurately cast into the language of “rights”. My best effort would be to state that thieves have the same rights as everyone else, except to the extent that their actions defend theft.

This doesn’t seem right to me. There must be a different way of handling it than basing it on the value of the property lost vs the value of the aggressor’s life, right? As far as I know, there is no value lost from trespass other than your right to control what is or isn’t done with your property. You can remove that person with violence if necessary but deadly force?

And if the proposed method for handling those situations *is* true, what criteria determines the value of the aggressor’s life? I’m not sure that’s even possible. I know it was done in the age of weregeld but that doesn’t mean it was appropriate.