Posts Tagged ‘Abiding Citizen’

The Tories have recently said they will turn around the law and allow people to look after there property and families safe in the knowledge that they wont be arrested as long as the act reasonably.

How nice of the Tories. Its a play on words and means absolutely nothing. The Criminal Law Act 1967 says in part Any person may use such Force as is reasonable in the circumstances.

Reasonable can be further broken down into necessary and proportionate. If you use force inside or outside your home which is necessary and proportionate then you have acted lawfully. If, as in so many cases you use force legitimately and the attacker runs off and you pursue him/her and carry on the attack then this would be unlawful as the threat has gone and the use of force becomes Retaliation Retribution Revenge and Teaching the person a lesson.

This is also backed up by Section 2 (2) of the Human Rights Act 19998. The hype that the press give to this is nothing short of scaremongering and plants the seed of doubt in the minds of the ordinary law abiding Citizen. This use of force stands whether the attacker is a child, adult, old, young, male or female.