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whiteflame55 said:
That's a very interesting Dextion... I mean question. Perhaps I should check for the answer in my little black book...
The morals of taking peoples lives in any case is something of a thorny issue. If we assume all of the positives you're talking about here as certainties, then we're really only left with the idea of vigilante justice being meted out, and what that means.
I don't think a simple "good" of "bad" suffices. This isn't a Batman-esque character who is obviously taking the moral high ground door not killing anyone - we're talking about the ending of a life here. But still, it's worth discussing the moral quandaries that exist with that type of actor. Is justice without a courtroom really justice? One could say that the certainty of a person's guilt should be enough, but without running it through the legal system, it's not justice in the sense that many of us know it to be. Essentially, these people are spurning the rule of law. Even if the purpose is good, that's something to take into account.
Taking that justice so far as to execute someone on behalf of the legal system that either couldn't of wouldn't is also a difficult issue. Suddenly, that justice becomes murder. One could say that someone doing this would only be defending others from further heinous crimes, but there's a difference between killing someone who is about to commit a crime versus killing someone who has committed a heinous crime in the past. In doing so, there is no certainty that the vigilante is actually saving anyone's lives, at least not with any certainty. It's somewhat similar to the concept behind Minority Report, except we're talking about people who have already done something horrible committing future crimes. A likelihood isn't a certainty. It would be similar to Batman saying it's OK to lock up Poison Ivy when she was just getting out of bed in the morning. Sure, Poison Ivy might be planning some crimes later in the week, but unless there's proof, she's innocent of that potential crime. Killing someone just ensures that they actually are innocent of their own future crimes, as they'll never commit them.
But how do we balance this against the facts regarding these people? They should obviously be punished, there's no doubt about that, and in these cases we can assume that these criminals will never be punished to the full extent of the law. I personally don't find that incredibly convincing, but it is a point. The better point for me is that they have a very high recidivism rate. Even if they went to prison and are on parole, these offenders will be far meer likely than others in the general population to commit the same crime. There is, thus, a unique benefit to removing them from the population.
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