I don't think any member of the middle class should be shooting others in order to defend their shit, which largely seems to be what is happening.
This is an interesting distinction to make to me because I think most people here would consider ourselves part of the middle class. I mean, we own our homes, and many of them have been in families and aren't mortgaged anymore; most of us also have cash reserves or community support (or both) sufficient to absorb small losses, but... a car isn't a small loss, that's more than ten thousand dollars, on top of having to drive into town (ie, get someone to drive you into town
because your car was stolen) to get to a used car lot.
I personally tend to have a zero-tolerance approach toward trespassing and property crime in general... when I was a kid (under 10), we had this problem with a certain group of rich townie assholes illegally "camping" in our woods where I was otherwise prone to playing on my own. My mom
didn't have a gun, for personal (depression) reasons, so we resorted to systematically dismantling their campsite in such a way as to make it obvious that we knew what they were doing... which mostly didn't deter them. It was really nice when they finally stopped coming back after a few years and I could
feel safe in my own house again. I will not accept the assertion that their lives are worth more than that when they're the ones making the choice to put them on the line.
Shifting over to the immigration example, would it be malice/maliciousness to mount the heads of those caught on pikes along the border fence? Just a little bit of scare tactics, right? (I am not being serious.)
I don't understand why it hasn't come across yet that malice is a mental state that depends entirely on your
intentions, not your actions. Literally any action could "not be malice" if, for example, you're stupid enough to believe it's a nice thing to do.
I wanna add that I have personally scared off multiple would-be thieves from my building, some of whom actually made it inside, without use of firearms or calling the police (largely because the police didn't come the first time I called 'em and escalating with a gun makes me more likely to get shot myself; I don't own a firearm). Internet bro-posturing aside, point is that ... there are options ...
Yeah but
at least in the city, there's better targets (i.e. abandoned buildings) than my home.
which is to say, the reasons people are breaking into houses in the city are different and the things they're prepared to do in that situation are different. Out here where most homeowners
are armed, housebreakers are much, much rarer but much, much less inhibited.