In a disturbing story out of Texas, Joe Horn was recently acquitted of shooting and killing two men robbing his neighbor's house. Horn called 911 when he saw burglars entering the house next door, but decided to take matters into his own hands as the two exited before police arrived. He ran outside, without hanging up the phone (so there's an audio record), and shot both men with his 12-gauge shotgun.
"Joe would be the first to tell you that he wasn't acting as a vigilante," said Horn's attorney. Well, that's nice of Mr. Horn to say about himself, but his actions are the definition of vigilante:
One who takes or advocates the taking of law enforcement into one's own hands.
And while the jury might have understood Horn's actions, the law doesn't really provide for this kind of thing--meaning the jury was wrong to acquit. Imagine what a society might look like if anyone carrying a firearm were permitted to shoot to kill, not out of self-defense, but when simply perceiving a crime. Such a society would quickly devolve into chaos with no respect for authority.
While the burglars in this case were certainly in the wrong, their crime just as certainly did not deserve death. And Mr. Horn had no right or authority to take two lives into his own hands. As he made a conscious choice to kill these men, he should face consequence for his actions.
