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Comment by njharman | Hacker News Reader

So person breaks into your house and squats it, or shoots up there, bith crimes. Your house should be forfeit?

What "ethics" you following?

I think there's a fundamental difference between "someone breaks into your house and commits a crime" and...purposefully allowing someone use of a gun or vehicle, or negligence leading to said use (ie, leaving your car running in front of a convenience store, and then someone stealing it and going on a high speed joyride, running a red light t-boning a minivan, killing a family of four), and someone, with no negligence on your part, using property of yours to commit a crime.

If you leave your gun on the floor of your car, someone smashes the window and steals it and shoots up a convenience store: you should be charged criminally and subject to civil liability.

If someone breaks into the gun safe in the trunk of your car and shoots up a convenience store? No crime, no liability - you took reasonable precautions.

A gun comes with special obligations to protect it. If someone borrows your car, or steals your left-running car, I don't think you should have have any criminal liability or risk of seizure. (Assuming you didn't conspire ahead of time, of course.)

While I agree with you on someone stealing your car, I don't see the gun and the car as so different as you do. You can easily kill people with a car or box truck, and possibly in greater number.

Blaming someone because their car or gun was stolen sounds a lot like victim blaming to me. And to the comment about breaking the window, I'd like to point out that most safes are practically as easy to break open as a window is. I recall buying one safe, and another customer explained to me in detail how they had pried one open in only a few seconds.

> Blaming someone because their car or gun was stolen sounds a lot like victim blaming to me.

This is punishing one of the victims.

Not a single example here is just. In every case someone has committed a crime. Stealing a running car is grand theft auto (assuming the car is worth the minimum). Even if I left it running, the thief alone committed a crime.

"Leopards would never eat MY face" ethics.

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