A person proposed that defending your property or the life of loved ones is vigilantism. I disagreed.
He explained to me that we do not have the right to take the life of a person that is robbing you or is threatening a loved one. I was kind of dumbfounded by the response.
My response to him was that no one has the right to kill another person just because, but you do have the right to stop the threat and if in the process that person dies, then that is on the person committing the crime. The person committing the crime should have known that the possible outcome of their action was death.
I explained that I am not acting as judge, jury, and executioner, but rather I am acting as a protector. He still did not understand so I put it in terms of his 7 year old daughter. If a person was threatening your 7 year old daughter, would you stop to think that if I harm this person that they might die or would you think that if I do not do something then this person is going to hurt my daughter? The questions are not the same and the response is not the same.
If your first response is to protect the criminal because your actions might result in their death and then you carry out the act of shooting them and they die, then there is the potential that you might be a vigilante. Why, because you have now made a conscious decision to stop to think about they situation and then to shoot. The question that will be asked is why did you shoot and someone may interpret your actions as though you were a vigilante. If however, your first instinct is my daughters life is in danger and I need to do something now to stop the threat or she might die, then no you are not a vigilante. There is a subtle difference in what goes through your mind how your respond.
I know most of you who read this will disagree with me and that is okay, that is what makes America great. We do not have to agree with a person all the time or ever and that is okay, but we can do it in a respectful manner.
Think about it this way, Christ was not respected by the Sadducee’s or Pharisees because He made them look like greedy hypocritical fools. In fact they hated Jesus so much that they acted as judge, jury, and executioner when they called for His death despite the evidence and when Pontius Pilate found Him not guilty of any crime. Now that is taking the law into your own hands.