The Roggero case: Legislating self-defense can be an extremely complex matter, both legally and morally. Take the case of Mario Roggero, a small-town north Italian jeweler who in 2015 was robbed by thieves who immobilized his wife and daughter before assaulting him and making off with money and expensive items. Lesson learned, thought Roggero, who acquired a handgun to protect himself and his family should thieves try again. And they did, in April 2021. Three men entered his store brandishing a knife and what turned out to be a toy gun. This time Roggero showed them his weapon, after which the thieves immediately turned and fled. But Roggero, apparently seized by lucid rage, followed them into the street and to their waiting car, where he shot all three, wounding one and killing two others. One of his mortally wounded victims tried to flee, but Roggero caught up to him and kicked him to death.
The attempted robbery and its aftermath were captured by the store’s and street security cameras.
During his trial, the jeweler testified that he feared for his life and that of his family and responded accordingly. Notwithstanding his passionate explanation, Roggero was convicted on two counts of murder and lost a series of appeals, the final one brought before Italy’s highest court.
He has already begun a 14-year, nine-month prison term during which he will also be compelled to compensate the families of his victims. All this because the legal system, quite properly it seems, ruled that he was no longer in imminent danger and that self-defense did not apply. Not surprisingly, Italy’s ruling far right is furious since it has no quarrel with vigilante justice — so long as the avenger is, or was, a law-abiding white middle-class Italian. Even Elon Musk has weighed in, insisting that it is the prosecutors and the judges, not Roggero, who should be serving time. There is no moral to this story, and the jeweler, 72, may well see his sentence reduced or even commuted by presidential decree. The National Rifle Association (NRA), America’s leading gun lobby, has long stood by the slogan that it is people who kill people, not guns. The truth is that anyone, when armed, has a breaking point. Beyond which massacres lurk.