Sparks, I don't know how you could have articulated the statist view more clearly. The notion that the state (society) has collective 'rights', but the individual has none is an anathema to Americans.
I wasn't expressing a statist view unless you believe that "rights" and "duties" are the same thing.
You further attempt to impugn the death penalty by linking it somehow to religion.
I'm not linking it to religion, except to say that you'd have to be religious to believe it was sufficent punishment for murder. Me, I'm a humanist - I don't believe in an afterlife or divine justice. So if someone kills my family, I want them to spend as long a period of time thereafter suffering - not to be given a quick and relatively easy death. That means life at hard labour, not a needle in the arm and a quiet drifting off to sleep.
There is no practical right of self defense in England.
Wrong. But keep saying it. It won't become true, but maybe you can convince someone in a vunerable position like another Osborn to give up his freedom because he didn't understand that he had a legally gauranteed right to self-defence. I don't know why anyone would
want that, but since it seems to be your goal...
Osborn plead guilty to a lesser crime because he was at risk of being found guilty of a crime with a far higher penalty.
Sure, in that the facts of the case had not been stated in court and therefore there was a possibility he could have been guilty of murder. However, given the facts of the case that were reported (though we have to question the accuracy and honesty of the media doing the reporting), that would appear to have been as likely as being killed by a meteorite landing on your head.
Not all risks are dire ones.
So be it. The crook didn't have to break in.
And if I kidnap someone, bring them home, set them on fire and then say "oh, he was a burglar"?
Individuals, in any society, have an affirmative right to self defense against violent attack. Period. I have no idea why you people in the UK have a problem with that.
They don't. Mainly because they have that affirmative right. What they don't have, and what
you don't have either, is a right to execute someone in cold blood.
Would this be your admission that in fact there is a legal right to self defence in the UK?
The question is whether it has the practical effect of securing that right from the prejudices of authority.
A question which the cases over the past twenty years and more prove conclusively to be answered "yes".
In addition to your domestic predators, you have a huge internal problem in the form of Muslim extremists, and you and your countrymen will most assuredly pay the price for your 'tolerance'.
Given the laws proposed only this week for the UK by the home secretary, that's laughable. They're looking at taking a long walk down a dark road towards an orwellian nightmare over there at the moment, and the word "tolerance" isn't one you could use to describe what's proposed!
To someone who purports such things to be the truth in the face of the available evidence, no rational argument can be made.
Horse hockey. Osborn pled guilty. That's what happened. It's not even in contention.
The de facto state of affairs is what concerns me.
Strange that that which most concerns you is also that which you seem to know the least about.