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Originally Posted by Dr.Zoidberg
An "easy solution" would be, not to leave the house (like the dispatcher urged Horn) and shoot the burglars if they try to get in your house...
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and then tell your neighbor, "sorry dude, I saw the guys rob your house, and I could have stopped them, but I decided to let them get away." So the next time those guys return to the neighborhood and choose MY house to rob while I'm not home, what incentive will my neighbor have to help me out? None. He'll return the same favor of just watching and letting the criminals get away.
It's easy to sit here on a chatboard and second guess Horn. If I were in his shoes, it's hard to say if I would have gone outside or not. Based on what I know about me, I would probably go outside too, because I believe we owe it to each other to protect our neighborhood. I would help my neighbors, as I would hope they would help me.
To Horn, here are the unknowns at that moment:
1) Are these guys armed?
2) How long will it take for the cops to arrive? (Horn didn't know the plain clothes cop was there)
3) If I don't do my civic duty to stop them, how many more houses will they rob?
Horn didn't go outside and just start shooting. He told them to stop. He warned the burgulars. He told them what he would do if they disregarded his warning. The law clearly allows for deadly force to prevent a criminal from fleeing the scene of the crime (as posted by dalmations202). Is that a death penalty for every crime? No, it depends on the circumstances and the choices the criminal makes when looking down the barrel of a gun. When a man is pointing a shotgun at you, how stupid do you have to be to try and run???