Some (rare) good news from beautiful Austria: Property, Right to Self-Defense, and Perpetrator Protection

From PFS member Andreas Tögel, a translation of Original Commentary

Property, Right to Self-Defense, and Perpetrator Protection:
A Debate on Private Property and Self-Protection

By Andreas Tögel

Self-Defense: Conflict over Property Defense

A pending court case in Salzburg is currently sparking fierce debates about how far a person is allowed to go to protect their life and property. After a burglar was caught in the act by the burglary victim and shot dead, the shooter stood before the jury court on charges of murder. On the afternoon of May 11, after hours of deliberation by the eight jurors, the verdict was delivered: Acquittal. It was therefore self-defense—not murder.

The facts: A 31-year-old man and his partner broke into the house of the subsequent shooter on July 31, 2025. They entered the garden through a cut chain-link fence and proceeded to the terrace. There, they stole valuables. After the first theft, the couple returned to the house a second time. At this point, the 66-year-old homeowner returned home and noticed signs of a break-in (an open door and a missing decorative blanket). The burglary victim assumed that the perpetrator or perpetrators were still inside the house, reached for his legally owned 9 mm caliber pistol, and fired a warning shot, prompting the two burglars to flee. The defendant ran after them. On the terrace, he is said to have fired two more warning shots. Then he knelt down to get a better aim. Apparently, the two criminals were already in full flight when the fatal shot hit one of them in the back of the head from a distance of about nine meters. The burglar died shortly afterwards in the hospital.

In social media and in the comment sections of various press publications, a heated debate promptly erupted over the legality of the shooting, with the majority of entries defending the position of the fatal shooter, whose lawyer asserted self-defense.

The legal basis for self-defense in Austria is formed by § 3 of the Criminal Code (StGB), which states:

(1) A person does not act unlawfully who merely makes use of the defense that is necessary to ward off an imminent or directly threatening unlawful attack on life, health, physical integrity, sexual integrity and self-determination, freedom, or property of themselves or another. However, the action is not justified if it is obvious that the person attacked is threatened with only minor harm and the defense is disproportionate, particularly given the severity of the injury required to ward off the attacker.

(2) Anyone who exceeds the justified level of defense or makes use of an obviously disproportionate defense (paragraph 1) is only punishable if this occurs solely out of consternation, fear, or terror, if the excess is due to negligence and the negligent act is punishable by law.

In Germany, self-defense is regulated in sections 32 and 33, similarly to Austria.

Given the course of events and the wording of the law, the murder charge was obviously completely exaggerated—for several reasons: First, a motive for the crime was lacking (a circumstance that does not stand in the way of a murder charge, however). The shooter is a man of unblemished character who until now showed no criminal inclinations whatsoever. Second—and particularly important—property is an asset eligible for protection under self-defense law! It is therefore principally permissible to prevent its theft with the use of weapons if necessary—meaning, for instance, by shooting at a perpetrator fleeing with the loot. Third, the circumstances present at the crime scene must be taken into account. Unlike the court, which can spend days dealing with the case and drawing its conclusions from it, a burglary victim is always under considerable time pressure, which given the extraordinary nature of the situation can naturally lead to errors in judgment. In the present case, this could have consisted of an ‘excess of self-defense,’ as apostrophized in § 3, paragraph 2 of the Criminal Code (StGB).

Are there cases in which justice must yield to injustice?

Regardless of the outcome of the current murder trial—which is gratifying from the perspective of the Salzburg pensioner and any future burglary victim—and the circumstances in self-defense situations that always vary from case to case, a fundamental question is of central importance: Are there cases in which justice must yield to injustice? Must someone—even though they could prevent it through the use of potentially lethal force—accept as a burglary victim that substantial assets are stolen by a criminal attacker because the court values the life of the perpetrator more highly than material goods?

In the USA, the so-called ‘Stand-Your-Ground Law’ applies in 30 of the 50 federal states, which fundamentally grants the victim of a criminal assault every right of defense. This means that no burglar can expect to leave the crime scene alive and uninjured. The Salzburg pensioner would not even have faced an indictment like the one described above there.

The matter is fundamentally very simple: The burglar (any criminal) has the choice of whether to commit a crime or not. His victim, on the other hand, is forced into a predicament by him and faces heavily restricted alternatives for action. One of them is precisely the use of a firearm—if available.

The fact that it has become common practice in Europe to indulge more and more in perpetrator protection, while the fate of crime victims is largely ignored, is a devastating development. The first question of journalists, who are as clueless as they are woke, in cases like the one described above is: Did there really have to be a shooting? Couldn’t one have just reasoned with the perpetrator? And if you have to shoot—why not just in the legs?

Parliaments and governments have lost a great deal of credibility in recent years. If citizens, due to hair-raisingly lenient, scandalous verdicts, such as those recently handed down multiple times against migrant violent offenders while at the same time ‘hate postings’ on the internet are met with draconian punishments, now also lose confidence in the judiciary, the signs point to a storm.

The loss of all respect for private property is an evil caused by excessive welfare state policies. Without property—a fact that is often overlooked—the individual is at the complete mercy of the arbitrariness of an increasingly intrusive state bureaucracy.

Because private property makes people free, it is under permanent fire from all enemies of freedom: left-wing parties and NGOs. The fact that the acquisition of property requires intellect, risk, and effort does not interest them. Property is simply there and is declared by the government to be a self-service resource. Consequently, expropriations—under whatever ‘social-sounding’ title they are promoted—have meanwhile become the favorite topic of the redistribution factions resident in all parties.

Perpetrator protection instead of a ‘Stand-Your-Ground Law’ fits the picture perfectly here. A burglary theft is fundamentally nothing other than material redistribution, so it cannot be bad, since it forms the core of all state activities.

The acquittal in the recent Salzburg murder trial against an unblemished burglary victim is a true ray of hope. It confirms that justice does not have to yield to injustice after all!