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Man Burgled After Being Banned From Using Giant Ballista

Posted by samzenpus on from the personal-protection dept.

A man who had a 30ft dung-firing ballista on his land to deter intruders has been burgled after police told him that it would be illegal for him to use it. Joe Weston-Webb, a former traveling showman who also owns a human cannon and an "exploding coffin," decided to use the siege weapon to scare off intruders after a series of break-ins and an arson attack last year. He fixed the old ballista and equipped it to fire bags of chicken droppings at intruders if an alarm was triggered. Nottinghamshire Police put an end to his defense plan when they told him that using the giant catapult would be illegal as it did not constitute "reasonable force." Burglars broke into his workshop this week and stole or damaged £10,000 worth of goods and equipment. "It is ridiculous that we are in this situation now in which we can't defend ourselves," Joe said. I don't want to live in a world where an honest, hard-working man can't use a classical Roman weapon of mass destruction to defend himself.

12 comments

  1. I'm all for defending one's property, but... by bradley13 · · Score: 1

    ...booby traps are a really bad idea, as you have no idea just who they will target.

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    Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
    1. Re:I'm all for defending one's property, but... by Q-Hack! · · Score: 2, Funny

      Actually, using a booby trap to capture the next door neighbour's punk ass 12 year old kid from stealing my stuff sounds like a real good idea. Now where did I put that bear trap?

       

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      Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
    2. Re:I'm all for defending one's property, but... by Kral_Blbec · · Score: 1

      Sure you do. It will hit someone who has no right to be on your property. Punk kid, rapist, burglar all the same. On my property without my permission, there will be trouble.

    3. Re:I'm all for defending one's property, but... by Fotograf · · Score: 1

      or chick trying to escape rapist

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      God's gift to chicks
    4. Re:I'm all for defending one's property, but... by TerranFury · · Score: 2, Informative

      Say my car breaks down on the side of a road, next to farmer's field. I see a farmhouse on the other side of that field, maybe half a mile away, so I decide to cross the field by foot in order to reach the house, so I can ask the owner if I can call a towtruck.

      If the right to property were paramount and sacred, then the farmer would, at that point, be perfectly within his rights to kill me at a distance with a high-powered rifle. But this would be completely unreasonable. Any property owner who did this would be guilty of cold-blooded murder.

      We live in a society. With other people. You have to consider your rights in relation to theirs.

      Furthermore, the law is not a piece of software, and you can't determine whether something is right or wrong by evaluating a simple boolean expression like (ON_MY_PROPERTY)&&(NOT_ME).

    5. Re:I'm all for defending one's property, but... by RattFink · · Score: 1

      She'll be covered in chicken shit, what rapist would want to fool with that? He would be doing a pubic service.

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      "I don't necessarily agree with everything I say." - Marshall McLuhan
    6. Re:I'm all for defending one's property, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Screw your "society." Don't like it? Say the frick off MY land!

    7. Re:I'm all for defending one's property, but... by Kral_Blbec · · Score: 1

      Stay on the road and follow the driveway if you want to approach my abode. In many states the situation you described is completely legal. You have no right to be on my property, if I decide to permit you then it is under the terms I choose. One of those terms is that you don't try to sneak up by the back door. I don't care the situation, if it really is that much of an emergency then you should be running across screaming your head off. That changes the situation quite a bit.

  2. That isn't a ballista by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe a catapult?

  3. another story from the UK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Considering I have seen mock balistas, I can understand unreasonable force part of the post. However It would be a lot clearer if I knew what reasonable force was. I would think the chicken dung would soften the blow enough to allow the perp to survive, so that may be a problem...

  4. Used to be legal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Back in Victorian times shotguns, crossbows, mantraps etc could all be used in anti-burglar boobytraps quite legally. Obviously it's good that we've left those days behind, but as the Tony Martin case proved there's a lot of sympathy for the idea we should have greater rights to self-defence, given how useless the police are.

  5. An Man? by glowworm · · Score: 1

    Is an "an man" like an "an hero"?

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