Property Defense a Crime?

Colby Cosh reports on the circumstances of a farmer that has Alberta talk radio on fire, in the National Post:

Brian Knight, 38, runs a farm near the hamlet of Tees, east of Lacombe; its rodeo venue is home to an annual donkey and mule show. Last Wednesday morning, Knight heard some noise and confronted three men outside his home. Two made the smart choice to hop into their truck and vamoose, but the third, hoping not to leave empty-handed, had jumped on a nearby four-wheel ATV and sped off on it. Knight got in his own truck, chased down the stranger on his ATV, and rammed it off the road. When the suspect fled, Knight fired a shotgun at him. No details of the ammunition have been provided, but buckshot or road salt would be good guesses; in any case, it amounted to distinctly less lethal force than a policeman might have used in the same circumstances. (No word on whether any staplers were found on the perpetrator.)

The lightly injured thief kept running, but was eventually rounded up by Knight's neighbours and kin. In a moment of deranged inspiration, he even tried to make off with another truck in which he was left to bleed while the cops were called. Knight now faces seven criminal charges, including assault, criminal negligence causing bodily harm and dangerous driving. The thief was taken to Edmonton, bandaged up and released by police without bail after being charged. The RCMP will not name him, but a local spokesman warned: "Don't take the law into your own hands. Contact the police as soon as possible, because all you're going to do is get yourself into trouble."

Perhaps only in Alberta do people still understand that this is nonsense -- that the police's privilege of investigating and punishing crime is derived from our primary right of self-defence, which we delegate but do not abandon, and that property is an extension of ourselves, and may be defended in the same way and for the same reasons we are allowed to defend our persons. No RCMP officer is transferred to an aboriginal community without abundant cultural-sensitivity training. Maybe something similar, perhaps involving a careful reading of John Locke's philosophy, should be done before assigning them to the Alberta countryside. (If Knight is found guilty, do you suppose he will get the benefit of a "sentencing circle" made up of other farmers from around Tees?)

I don't like the precedent. If somebody breaks into my home and I smash their head in with a baseball bat does that make me criminally reckless?