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Originally Posted by MuadDib
I agree that this guy was a hero. But it's silly to say the 'what-ifs' don't matter. First off, though this guy is undoubtably heroic, but as a society we don't want to encourage this type of action. In most cases vigilantism makes a situation worse and when the difference between the guy being a hero and him being responsible for the deaths of others is a matter of luck, well that's not exactly heroism we want people engaging in.
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I'd have to say I would love to be in a society where this is encouraged. I don't see this as being a vigilante type of act. Vigilantism to me is actually going out and wandering around in known areas with a high crime rate and looking for bad guys. This is protecting innocent people.
I foresee someone asking whether or not I'd agree with it if I was an innocent bystander in a robbery and someone else pulled a gun on the robbers and one of the robbers killed me because of it. I would still agree. Hopefully the guy took the advantage and killed the robbers, thus saving everyone else. No one can know if the robbers would have killed without the provocation or not. Admittedly it's not the standard procedure for armed robbers, but I'd want to encourage people to protect others rather than be frozen because they could get in trouble for escalating the situation. I believe if it was encouraged crime rates would go down because robbers would be hesitent to attack people that can fight back without wondering if the law is on their side.
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Originally Posted by MuadDib
No, on the flip side if he waited for the other robber to leave the store and headshotted him while escaping he would be a murderer. Lethal force is not acceptible in preventing a robbery, it is okay to protect the lives of people. Once those people were no longer in danger and he was just leaving with the money then shooting to kill him would not be heroic, it would be homocidal.
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By the rule of the law, yes, you will get in trouble for shooting someone fleeing the scene of a crime and not currently endangering anyone. I don't agree with the law. My problem with this, in this situation, is that you just saw the guy waving a gun at people. Who's to say he doesn't do it again tomorrow night and kill someone? I think if you see an armed robbery take place the robber should be fair game. Less risk to everyone if you can get him when he's not endangering anyone.
I do think this should only apply to ARMED robbers though. If he doesn't have a gun then the danger to innocents is greatly reduced and therefore killing him is an overreaction.
I get the feeling your hesitent to allow joe public that kind of leniancy with firearms and I can see where your coming from. I can easily see how it could go very badly, and undoubtedly it does sometimes. I just believe that encouraging people to protect one another is the best way to decrease the crime rate. Nothing against police, but they are hardly ever at the scene of a crime when it happens and there's no way they could be unless every other person was a cop.