San Franciscans were appalled, and now there is an uproar and the politicians are responding with an effort to make it illegal to use a gun to defend property.

I agree human life is more important than property, but everyone has the right to defend their property and their life. So here’s an idea… perhaps the criminals who steal other people’s property should place a higher value on their own lives, and stop doing crime?

— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) May 9, 2023

If there was self-defense involved, this is not entirely on point in this case. However, it is clear that the proposed law would essentially require a duty to retreat in any case where property is being taken. Don’t confront a shoplifter. Let him do what he wants, or you could wind up in jail.

That is very on-brand for San Francisco.

The moral case being made is that “life is more important than property,” which has a very nice ring to it. As a practical matter of course your own life does matter more than your property for obvious reasons. Losing a bit of cash and some credit cards is not worth dying for, after all. And it seems at least a bit churlish to impose the death penalty on someone else for wanting your cash.

But that is not the way to look at the interaction with the lawbreaker at all, and to illustrate this I will go back to my political philosophy roots and discuss John Locke’s discussion of the foundations of a liberal society.

Locke was a social contract theorist, and along with other more recent philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment deeply informed the American Founding. In fact, the Declaration of Independence could in places have been written by Locke his influence was so great on the thinking of the Founders.

He argued in his Treatises on Government that human beings willingly embrace the idea of government in order to escape the state of nature, which as with Hobbes’ understanding was essentially a state of war. Everybody is at war with everybody else, not because we all want to be, but because we have no recourse to anything else to defend ourselves.

Hobbes saw this as an explanation and excuse for surrendering our rights to an absolute power that is required to defend us but is not required to recognize our own freedom and rights. Locke believed that the answer to protecting our rights was a social contract in which we give up the right to exercise violence in most circumstances in exchange for a defense of our rights to life and to property, which in Locke’s view were intimately entwined. Our natural rights are defended within the contract in exchange for giving up our right to exercise violence arbitrarily.

So where does the right to self-defense within society exist if we have given it up to the state?

Simple: when somebody else breaks that social contract by threatening life and property, society has broken down. You are back to the state of war, not against everybody now, but against the lawbreaker. He has declared himself outside the rules of society and hence is potentially very dangerous indeed–you have no idea how far outside the rules of the contract he is willing to go, so you may use violence to defend yourself and your property.

I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the commonlaw of reason, have no other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.

The idea that life and property are fundamentally different is a very modern notion, bred both by our incredible wealth and the existence of insurance and safety nets. But the truth is that you worked for your property and it is an extension of yourself. If somebody steals your car, burns down your house, or takes your limited supply of cash you use to live, you are being attacked directly. It may not be as devastating as it was in 1600, perhaps, but it is still a direct attack on you by somebody who has declared he has no respect for your rights.

This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief, who has not in the least hurt him, nor declared any design upon his life, any farther than, by the use of force, so to get him in his power, as to take away his money, or what he pleases, from him . . . . [I]t is lawful for me to treat him as one who has put himself into a state of war with me, i.e. kill him if I can; for to that hazard does he justly expose himself, whoever introduces a state of war, and is aggressor in it.

Locke himself argued that the reason government exists is to preserve property, the biggest portion of which is your life and freedoms, but it also includes what we call property today. Property is what is properly owned by you, and the first thing you own is your body.

A robbery can turn into an assault in a second, and your obligation should never be to submit to the desires of anybody who is willing to break the social contract.

If that were the case then anybody could do anything they want at any time, short of outright assault or murder.

Societies, where that happens, are no society at all. They become a free for all, and if nearly everything is permitted, then inevitably everything will wind up happening. This is why we are afraid of muggers. They MAY leave your body alone, but the implied threat of mayhem is there. A world where theft is shrugged at and defended is at best a society of quivering cowards ruled by thugs, and will likely become one where anything goes if you are willing enough to be violent.

Locke’s main point is that people who have gone down the path of rejecting the fundamental rights to life and their own property are no longer participants in that society. They opted out. And if they opted out, they don’t deserve the benefits of society. They rejected society, and we can reject them.

This is, by the way, the principle used to incarcerate people. Incarceration is taking away people’s rights. Incarcerated people have rights given to them, and their natural rights are stripped. We tell them where to be, where to sit, what they eat, and when they can move around. We deny them political representation. All based upon the fact that they have rejected societal rules laid out in the social contract.

Locke of course understood that once the threat of violence passes the normal societal rules apply again–the justice system should take over, not revenge. But in the midst of a theft? Your right to self-defense is absolute, at least it should be. It is up to you to judge at that moment the size of the threat, and no be second-guessed. It is your life, not theirs.

What makes the liberal social contract different from the sheer exercise of force to ensure compliance–Hobbes’ vision of government–is that the contract itself is intended to enshrine natural rights in a civil contract. But it is the contract that rules within society. We can rebel if the government breaks its side of the contract, but among ourselves, we are bound to follow the rules laid out.

Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers. This political judgment, moreover, is not simply or primarily a right, but like self-preservation, a duty to God. As such it is a judgment that men cannot part with according to the God of Nature. It is the first and foremost of our inalienable rights without which we can preserve no other.

See the Declaration of Independence in there? Our society is Lockean. As if the right of self-defense.

Robbery is a grievous violation of the rules, and even simple shoplifting can quickly escalate to something brutal. Look at the videos from San Francisco and elsewhere–would you feel threatened by those thugs stealing at scale? I would.

As a practical matter, it would be unwise to shoot every shoplifter. Life would get pretty dicey if we did.

But that is a practical consideration.

Morally, too, I would never think highly of somebody who shoots a kid stealing a candy bar or a toy. They are too young to understand the social contract and present no real threat. Take the candy bar away and you are done. That is the proportionate response and respects them as human beings.

But a young thug who presents a credible threat? I believe you have every right to kill or wound him. It may or may not be prudent. It may even, in some cases, be morally reprehensible. But it ultimately is the fault of the person who presents a threat.

FAFO.