George Costanza
A Friendly Liberal
Shooting someone who is committing a robbery is not vigilantism, tracking them down later and shooting them is.
Good point. My choice of the term "viglante" was probably not well taken. That does not change the fact that, generally speaking, police officers are the preferred method for taking crime-commiting felons into cusdtody and/or stopping crimes in progress, not armed citizens who presumably do not have the training or experience to do the type of job a police officer could.
I actually agree with you, but the police are not capable of preventing crimes unless they happen to be there. If someone is chasing me with an axe I would much prefer some armed citizen to shoot him than wait around for the police to show up after I have been hacked into small pieces.
Of course - so would I. But that's not the point I am making. Sure, the "rescuee" might come out better if there was a civilian "rescuer" around (as opposed to no one else around). But what about the rescuer? Well, he may or may not fare OK - and that's my point.