Ethical Dilemmas ...
Does an Attacker Deserve to Die?
By Kathy Jackson
Awhile back, some lowlife in Portland, Oregon, kidnapped a 10-year-old
boy. A witness reported the kidnapping, and gave a description of the
vehicle along with the license plate numbers. Later in the day, someone
who'd heard the account on the news spotted the pickup truck as it turned
onto a dirt road outside of town. The police converged on the scene. When
they arrived, the man was standing near the boy, waving a firearm around.
When the kidnapper turned his gun toward the officers and began shooting, the officers
returned fire, killing him. The boy was unharmed (except, of course, for
psychological trauma).
Did the criminal deserve to die? Well, whether or not you believe he deserved
to die for kidnapping a child, the fact is that when he raised his gun to
fire at the officers, the criminal had just made the most important choice of the day.
He decided that someone was
going to die.
The officers on the scene had to decide whether the person who died would be
an innocent child, or one of themselves, or the criminal. The choice that someone was going to die had already been made,
and the good guys weren't the ones who made that choice.
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