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Originally Posted by A_McDougal
Since the police aren't obligated to protect me or get my property back after I'm robbed, why does society think that justice should only be available when the police and courts choose to dispense it?
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I bet we could have almost as much fun with a thread on "What is the nature of justice?" as we did with the "Legal vs. Moral" thread... (Yah, mods, not in T&T, though...)
But the short answer is that civilized societies have found that a "justice system" (police and courts) is a preferable alternative to a free-for-all, in which "justice" tends to be confounded with revenge and the like, and in which weaker citizens have very little chance of getting any.
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Originally Posted by MLeake
Potential risk to others needs to be considered.
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I'm a bit surprised no one else has elaborated on this. If you can identify the person who tried to break in to your home and report him to the cops so they can arrest him, doing that is a way better choice than chasing him, armed, at the risk of the situation's escalating into a gunfight in the street, where other, innocent people
will be put in jeopardy...
Query: if this situation had involved three "gangbangers" (all with clean records, hitherto) and a stolen bicycle, would so many people here be defending the shooters? I think one problem with these discussions, in general, is that a lot of us assume we always know who's a "law-abiding citizen" and who's a BG. The difference is a matter of who has or hasn't committed a crime, not of whom we identify with.