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Venus Pax wrote:

Crime committed at your neighbor's house affects you. Criminals are emboldened with each successful act, and some become increasingly violent as their criminal career progresses.

Your statement hints at the "urban jungle" defense, which holds it is axiomatic in certain environments someone, anyone is out to get you one way or the other, so get them first in self defense. Been tried and not upheld at bar.

if you let a criminal escape and he rapes a girl next week, you're a little bit responsible because you could have stopped it.

If that were so, I should go out and shoot anybody I think might rape a girl next week. And how about guys who might rape guys, I'll shoot them too. They had one of those awhile back in Baytown. Why, I'll just make a run through Houston and kill everybody without clean hands. Man, Frontier Justice is back!

Tonto: Best we leave now, Kemo Sabe.
Lone Ranger: Nah. According to this internet message board, we got a heap 'o work to do, Tonto.
Tonto: What you mean, Kemo Sabe?
Lone Ranger: Well, it says here to kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out. Hey, who's that on the cell phone?
Tonto: Lisa Falkenberg of the Houston Chronicle.
Lone Ranger: Let's ride, Tonto. And turn that phone off. They could be GPS tracking us.

I stand corrected. But I am having some trouble with this shooting in the back thing. Cowards shoot people in the back. Persons apprised of the law know when to pull the trigger on a frontal shot. Like cops. When the perps are running away, it time to pursue, not shoot. Certainly human life has some value left in Texas. I can understand the property owner shooting in the back to protect his property rights. But a third party has no vested interest in the property, and suffers no personal loss if the property is stolen. That is hardly a mandate for shooting people in the back. The law in Texas on this matter is a bit of a stretch. I wouldn't count on going to the bank on it. Except maybe to borrow money to pay a lawyer to settle a civil claim from the survivors of the deceased.

Unless the shooter was charged by the neighbor with protecting the neighbor's possessions, the shooter has no safe harbor under law. This is not to say the suspects didn't need to be shot. They did, and the shooter acted accordingly. But that is not going to add up to justifiable anything.However, the local District Attorney, ever mindful of election day, may call the shoot justified. And The People may say justice was done. And that's just the way it will go down, just like the Joe Horn case.