Walter Block asks us to consider the following case: Suppose someone is shooting at you. He has two babies strapped in front of his body. He is clearly an aggressor and, of course, you have the legal right to shoot back in self-defense. The moral and ethical considerations as to whether you ought to shoot back are the subject of debate, and Murray Rothbard has addressed those debates extensively, but from the perspective of libertarian law there is clearly no legal dispute here. This is not a matter in which there are legal arguments on both sides, though there may be debates about what counts as proportionate use of force in defending yourself.
Walter Block thinks otherwise. He thinks that, according to the non-aggression principle, you cannot use force in these circumstances, as shooting back would put the babies in the line of fire. He has invented a non-existent legal problem in order to bypass the powerful moral and ethical arguments advanced by Rothbard.
Do you have the right to protect your self even as NAP applies? Not if it includes killing innocent people that are in the way!
Now, let’s see, where would this apply in the world? Does anyone have any ideas of who is violating the non-aggression principle? Hmmm ……. Who could violators be?