HN has a great guideline here:
>> "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
So you didn't mean you would murder someone for defending their property, because you didn't understand that's what I meant, and didn't know about the guideline. Okay. I accept that. I should have followed it too.
The thing about the guideline is there are two ways to go: your interpretation is correct and going off on a tangent is just going to be fruitless as we've seen here (because clearly I'm an unhinged freak who goes around hitting people over a glance), or you're wrong and making a mess of things over nothing (because I'm a rational human being who only uses violence as last resort).
It's about assuming the person you're talking to is the latter because there's no point talking to them if you're right and it's the former.
Let's move back to the actual topic.
Good luck arguing this one.
> we can't even agree that murder is an excessive escalation
We're not going to agree: you are not entitled to strike people in public for looking at your phone.
In my area, this makes you fair game to be apprehended for assault, using as much force as necessary to subdue you. Someone who is so unhinged as to hit people in public is not likely to submit to arrest peacefully - nobody said "murder."