Quote Originally Posted by Enoch the Red View Post
Maybe I am missing something, but your moral calculus seems to goes something like this: steal a toothbrush, forfeit your life. Become a cop and murder someone in cold blood for doing something you ordered them to do and you get fired and have some mean articles written about you. Oh, and maybe if a big enough stink gets raised there might be a trial that you are almost guaranteed to walk away a free man from.

Death for petty theft, a slap on the wrist for murder.

You think that these are just punishments that fit these crimes? Which is more important to deter, and are you reflecting that value in your respective punishments?
Person A wakes up in the morning. Decides to be a parasite. To forcefully take something that does not belong to them. They did it yesterday and will do it tomorrow. That person chose the wrong shop and gets gunned down by a brave citizen.

Person B wakes up in the morning. They are a tax paying citizen with a stable job. A job that is critical for the well functioning of society, an honorable profession. They encounter someone and they fuck up. With their blood pounding in their ears as their heart rate sky rockets they make a horrible decision due to the very real fear that a suspect was reaching for a weapon.

That's the scenario that I see before me Enoch. That's why juries have a hard time convicting someone on a bad shoot. Cops do go to prison for crimes here is an example:

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/12/us...ed=all&mcubz=1

Deliberate acts of evil are punished while heat of the moment fuck ups are viewed in a different light.