15 July 2013, 1009 EDT
The idea that citizens should be empowered by law to lethally judge who is a criminal threat is dangerous and wrong. Here’s one reason why:
Just a small-n social experiment? Yes, though here are some stats to demonstrate how this does and is likely to play out in the criminal justice system..
Charli Carpenter is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is the author of 'Innocent Women and Children': Gender, Norms and the Protection of Civilians (Ashgate, 2006), Forgetting Children Born of War: Setting the Human Rights
Agenda in Bosnia and Beyond (Columbia, 2010), and ‘Lost’ Causes: Agenda-Setting in Global Issue Networks and the Shaping of Human Security (Cornell, 2014). Her main research interests include national security ethics, the protection of civilians, the laws of war, global agenda-setting, gender and political violence, humanitarian affairs, the role of information technology in human security, and the gap between intentions and outcomes among advocates of human security.
Although interesting, this example does not compare with the deadly force issues of an assault or carjacking. This is not a home invasion, like the one caught on the Nanny Cam a few weeks ago. This example is apples to oranges.
I didn’t know it was legal to shoot bike thieves.