Harmeet Dhillon Appears on Fox News’ ‘Fox and Friends’ To Discuss Property Defense Amid Looting
According to Dhillon (Video Transcript):
The categories that different states have of our 50 states are, they go from stand your ground rule which means no matter where you are, if you’re under threat of attack, violence or robbery, you can defend yourself with a weapon. Then, in sort of the middle ground is what’s called the capital doctrine states and in those states, the term “your home is your castle,” well, in those states if somebody tries to invade your home, and in some states that’s even including one’s business or a car you are occupying, you have the right to use deadly force under circumstances. Then, there’s a third bucket of jurisdictions which has a rule called ‘duty to retreat’, that is if you’re confronted with force you have a duty to retreat to a safe place if you can. Now, in each of these circumstances there’s still a right to self-defense. So, if somebody is coming at you with a weapon, you certainly have a right to defend yourself but you may have the burden of proving that. And so, really, your rights will depend on where you are. Now, of course, we have to use common sense, you cannot sort of booby trap your property and then use that, you cannot stand as a sniper far away and sort of pick people off. So, I think proportionality is going to be the key. When a court looks at somebody’s behavior, was it proportional? Were they under attack themselves or are they blowing somebody away for stealing a pack of gum? That is the spectrum of behavior we’re talking about.
That’s right. In most circumstances, you may look at the current circumstance. We have seen a lot of people get killed including law enforcement over the last few days. We’ve seen rioters coming armed with bricks and hammers. Those are weapons. If somebody comes at you with one of those and you have a weapon yourself, I don’t see a jury convicting people in these circumstances unless it is a set up or clearly disproportionate. People do have a lot of rights in this circumstance.
I think that was great. I think it is a good deterrent for people to know that people who are armed are going to be able to shoot them and kill them if necessary. Let me tell you something. Those of us who live in places like San Francisco where I’m not able to get a concealed carry permit because of the law there, and then police never come, so that’s a very different circumstance, they quality of life is very poor in that sense that there is no sense of safety, but even in San Francisco you can have a weapon in your own home, not carrying it around outside and the fact that somebody might have that as a deterrent and rightfully so, we don’t anybody to lose their lives in these circumstances but our rights are important and a robbery gone wrong could become the murder of you. When your life is at risk or your family’s life is at risk, people are going to be willing to use deadly force and unfortunately some lives are going to be lost because of these rioters and looters gone wild and police not doing their jobs frankly in many parts of our country.
