Bronsonian wrote:
the current law encourages vigiliantes to shoot people
If you're referring to the "stand your ground" law, I disagree.
Stand your ground laws should be unnecessary. All they do is make clear what most people consider to be common sense. If you are threatened with violence and mayhem, you have the right to defend yourself by whatever means necessary. Due to years of ridiculous anti-self defense laws, you faced criminal charges if you did anything other than run away or submit to the bad guy.
In order to avoid criminal charges, you had to prove you had exhausted every possible means of escape before resorting to deadly force. And you had to prove that there was no doubt whatsoever that you would be dead had you not used deadly force.
Now how the hell do you prove both of those things? You can't. So without these barbaric "stand your ground laws" you have two choices when faced with a person who intends to do you great bodily harm and/or kill you: Die or go to jail.
So if using deadly force on someone intent on doing me violence makes me a "vigilante", than yeah, I guess the current law DOES encourage vigilantes to shoot people. Thank god!
By your definition you become a vigilante if you in any way forcibly stop someone from doing whatever they want to you. I wonder if you'd do the correct thing if I decided to fart in your cheerios. Would you notify the proper authorities and let them handle it, or would you become a vigilante and stop me yourself?