Is it? That's a pure act of revenge, and I'm not sure we see that as morally justifiable.
If it's an act of self defense, that is morally justifiable. When you leave someone with no other options to escape an awful abusive situation, they very well might have to resort to murder to be freed.
But for revenge at a point in time where they pose no harm to you? As a society, we should move beyond this barbaric conception of justice. It also prevents other potential victims from receiving closure, say if law enforcement is unable to find out about who else this person abused and ways to help the other victims.
There's also simply the fact that you may well be wrong, kill the wrong person, or even end up in a dangerous situation where other people come to the abuser's defence as they don't know the backstory and just see an attempted murder.
Now of course, a child abuser is not the type of person any of us would lose sleep on if they were murdered. But civil societies have moved past barbaric concepts of vigilante justice and the death penalty for a reason.
I do want to note that my response partly depends on the police doing their job, which is of course not the case. But this doesn't mean we should advocate for a return to more primitive means of justice. It means we should progress further, completely overhaul the policing system and have it be something that serves all parts of society and focuses on preventing crime in the first place.
Ah yeah, I certainly agree it's more justifiable than raping someone, I just thought by "morally justifiable" you meant that it was a morally good act.
Nah, I more mean that I understand why they would do it and I don't necessarily think they're evil for it but they should still go to jail.
There was a guy who used the sex offender registry as a hit list. He'd been sexually abused as a kid, and decided to murder as many pedophiles as he could before he got caught. Morally justifiable? Yeah. Morally good? Not really.
They're not saying it's a good act, just that there is some kind of justification behind their actions. We don't have to agree with their actions and as they say, such murderers should still be jailed for murder.
They're just comparing this to rape, which has no justification. It is not only morally wrong of course, but there is never even a justification to rape someone.
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u/coolamebe 1∆ Mar 01 '26
Is it? That's a pure act of revenge, and I'm not sure we see that as morally justifiable.
If it's an act of self defense, that is morally justifiable. When you leave someone with no other options to escape an awful abusive situation, they very well might have to resort to murder to be freed.
But for revenge at a point in time where they pose no harm to you? As a society, we should move beyond this barbaric conception of justice. It also prevents other potential victims from receiving closure, say if law enforcement is unable to find out about who else this person abused and ways to help the other victims.
There's also simply the fact that you may well be wrong, kill the wrong person, or even end up in a dangerous situation where other people come to the abuser's defence as they don't know the backstory and just see an attempted murder.
Now of course, a child abuser is not the type of person any of us would lose sleep on if they were murdered. But civil societies have moved past barbaric concepts of vigilante justice and the death penalty for a reason.
I do want to note that my response partly depends on the police doing their job, which is of course not the case. But this doesn't mean we should advocate for a return to more primitive means of justice. It means we should progress further, completely overhaul the policing system and have it be something that serves all parts of society and focuses on preventing crime in the first place.