Doctrine of Public Self Defense

Although I am against the death penalty, I will be a hypocrite if I deny feeling a sense of relief and satisfaction whenever I learn about  a notorious criminal who has killed or harmed other people being eliminated by the police or the public. And it does not matter if the criminal was slain in a shootout albeit under suspicious circumstances or a public lynching. What matters to me is that at least the public have one less criminal to lose sleep over.

In order to reconcile my conflicting stance about the death penalty and elimination of notorious criminals, I am toying with the idea of the right of the public to defend themselves, their lives and properties by permanently eliminating those who they catch as having committed violent and heinous crimes against them or those they caught as having deadly weapons at the time they were committing the crime.

While we have our laws and the police who are supposed to address the problem of criminality in our country, I believe that this problem will be more effectively addressed if there is greater public involvement.

If a person can justifiably kill another man to defend and protect his own life, the public too should have this right to defend itself and its peace. This is what I call the Doctrine of Public Self Defense.