[Ramrod]

Originally posted by Graham
You do not *prevent* someone from robbing you by shooting them with a gun!

Yes you do.

however attacking them pre-emptively is not an "effective way" of preventing burglary either.

Yes it is.

With that action he stepped *over* the line from "self defence" and into attempted murder.

He was done for manslaughter wasn't he?

Let me give you an alternative version:

You are wakened in the night by a crash from downstairs. You grab a convenient blunt instrument and sneak down to see a shadowy figure in your hallway.

In your righteous indignation you belt him over the head and then turn on the light, only to discover that it was your next door neighbour who had heard the noise, found the door open and decided to come in and check everything was ok.

Oops.

Come on that is an unlikely scenario....unless your neighbour is a mute and therefore couldn't answer when you shouted "whos there?" and didn't stand by your door shouting "graham, are you ok m8?"

Let me quote from an article in the Telegraph: "Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, said there was still "no excuse" for Martin's actions.

"Giving his judgment at the High Court in London, Lord Woolf said: "Mr Martin was entitled to use reasonable force to protect himself and his home, but the jury were surely correct in coming to their judgment that he was not acting reasonably in shooting dead one of the intruders, who happened to be 16, and seriously injuring the other."

Hence the law needs changing

When he went from "defence" to "revenge", he went from "wronged householder" to lynch mob style justice.

That probably happened in a split second in the dark. I hope you make a reasoned judgement in similar stressfull circumstances.

If the law needs changing, there are perfectly good procedures available to "decent, law abiding people" to get it changed. One such method is by writing to your elected Parliamentry representative or MP, but for some (unstated) reason you think that's a source of amusement.

I have tried writing to my MP about other matters, nothing comes of it.

Nonsense!

Right and wrong are not, despite what some may claim, graven on some stone tablets somewhere, they are *opinions*, nothing more.

So by that token it can be reasonable to argue that what Martin did was right.