It is wrong to conflate self defense with vengeance, even though the common concept is to continually do it. Such a conflation starts a slippery slope, leading to ambushes and enticements.
The trouble is that the left is doing so. They are pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia, but anti-gun self defense and anti-capital punishment. This amounts to “Murder the innocent, but protect the savage.”
Right now, the SCOTUS may do something terrible. Their last three decisions about juvenile offenders have been to forbid the states from protecting themselves from them. The last of these, in 2012, was to forbid states from giving life sentences without the possibility of parole to juveniles.
But now, the latest case is of a former juvenile offender in prison for life without parole, who is asking the SCOTUS to retroactively require that such murderers in prison be offered parole. There are about 1,500 of these former juvenile convicts tried as adults.
And by the rules of many states, many of these killers have already served enough time so they would be released immediately. (The oldest of them subject to this would be 52 year old.)
Many of these *could* have faced the death penalty, had in another case the SCOTUS not forbade the death penalty even for the most heinous of juvenile offenders.
So with this as background, let me say I am not conflating self defense with vengeance, but that capital punishment is, on its own, part of self defense. Now, instead of the government turning off these violent savages, the public will be forced to do so to many of them, not out of vengeance, but self preservation.
And how many innocent lives will they ruin because the government is too weak to execute such monsters?