I hear this often that people don’t trust the government to execute people. This seems to me that people haven’t actually thought about this enough. It seems to me that this individual supports a military and police force. Namely, one activity of a police force or military is the killing of people. So, does he support a military or police force?

He states that this doesn’t apply to police officers shooting in self-defense. But this falls back on him when you wonder why trust a government with being honest about it being self-defense? If they would lie on a state level to murder people, but not on a local? It seems that distrust isn’t sufficient to explain why this governmental skepticism applies on one level but not another. Why doesn’t this principle apply to governmental entities like the police and military? What justification might we suppose we can trust them to wield the executioner’s blade justly, but not a judge, jury, and gavel cannot?

Furthermore, I’m more in favor of figuring out a way to cut the legal fees. It probably loses most of its force because legal loopholes make the process difficult unnecessarily for murderers.

My point also isn’t that you blindly trust the police, but merely any skepticism equally works against these other areas. There is no reason a court is inherently distrusted but police/military/private citizens warrant any higher place of trust in self-defense cases. So, if you allow that investigation can uncover anything that can justify self-defense, then you can make the same argument for courts and the death penalty. If the principle you seem to be presenting is true, then it seems it can easily be applied to these other things.

That isn’t to say self-defense and capital punishment are the same things, but rather that they are similar enough for the principle to apply. In both instances, there is an agent killed one party because they have relinquished the right to live because of their deeds.