Vigilantism

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There are a lot of people that do not believe that our justice system works properly. Given the proper conditions and provocation, even someone who does believe in our system of justice and who is a law abiding citizen, can become a member of a modern day lynch mob on the spur of the moment. When crime hits close to home, like yourself, a friend, or a close family member, the desire for revenge upon the perpetrator of the crime is strong, in both men and women. I recently read an article where an 87 year old grandmother tracked down the animals that raped her granddaughter. She followed them to a flop house hotel. Walked right up to the door knocked and when they opened it she killed one guy and castrated the other with a bullet. She then left, went to the nearest police station and turned herself in. Though I am sure that the legal process will swing into action to try and take action against this woman but I am certain that she and a great number of people feel like her actions were justified and that she shouldn't be locked up like a common criminal. When legally she now is a criminal! I don't think that there is a single jury in her country that will vote to convict her, and even if they dco I assume that the sentence will be lenient, and will take in the circumstances which prompted this law abiding grandmother to take the law into her own hands. Even though we profess to be evolved, reasonable, and reasonably law abiding citizens of the world. If you scratch below the surface, it is quite possible that you will find a fundamentalist hiding under that placid exterior. Think about it, if something horrible happened to you or your children, parent, or sibling, and the authorities didn't seem capable of apprehending or making the criminals pay for their crimes, would you gain satisfaction and solace in the fact that God will get them in the end or would you entertain thoughts of revenge? And how far would you go to get revenge if the perpetrators of some heinous crime that touched your family, eluded and evaded apprehension and consequences? Keep in mind more than one criminal or even serial criminals have been caught and turned over to police by lynch mobs, or community action groups who caught someone in the midst or the immediate aftermath of their crimes. Richard Ramirez the night stalker was caught by a group of citizens in East Los Angeles. I guarantee you he was not "untouched" when the police got there to take custody of him. And the police would not have been surprised to have taken a corpse into custody when they arrived.