Some people are dangerous. They prove they are dangerous by killing people. Once they have demonstrated how dangerous they are, we shouldn't just wait around until they kill someone else. We should protect society from them. If a person expresses a preference for the taste of human flesh we shouldn't ignore that in order to preserve the illusion of a perfect socialist society. We should institute court proceedings and protect ourselves.
>...
> Punishing the Mason family doesn't do a damn thing to protect their
> dead victims and it does nothing to protect the victims of the next
> mass murderer to come along either.
It does something to protect *their next victim*.
>...
> >What if with my own hands I build a new kind of computer from parts I
> >find in dumps over six years and my neighbour covets it?
>
> Don't give it to him if it means that much to you. Why should
> anyone care about two neighbours squabbling over possession of junk?
Because the guy who made it has a natural right to it. That's my personal opinion. Cops should protect that right. What you build with your own hands is *yours*.
...
> There are obviously going to be consequences for violence. One of
> those consequences, as you point out, may be more violence in the
> form of retaliation. You are implying that it is only the
> threat of legal retaliation that prevents violence being rampant.
> I don't accept this, there are many other things that act to
> constrain people. Such as what their friends, colleagues and
> neighbours will think of them.
Without cops, who will establish *who* killed a particular person? If killing a person gets the same amount of investigtation as public defacation, it will be only slightly less common.
> It may be true that some people restrain their impulses to some extent
> on account of legal sanctions, but I think you are exaggerating the
> effectiveness of official revenge. But to the extent that revenge
> does cause people to stay their fists, don't you imagine that
> the possibility of non-legal revenge would be just as effective a deterrent?
Nope. Some people don't have morals and don't care what people think of them. I've met them. They do things to make people hate them every day. Killing would just be another thing added to their list of social transgressions.
Paul Prescod