re: the criminal getting shot on his way out of the store case.
The issue isn’t really about “coddling criminals”. It’s about what sort of society you want to live in and whether you approve of vigilante justice.

Would you be all right with the clerk finding the robber and shooting him in the street a few days later? if you think that’s a good idea, that it’s open season on anyone who commits any crime, then you’d better ponder where we end up if we allow people to shoot each other because they’ve been wronged or perceive themselves to have been wronged.

we have laws regarding the use of self-defense, varying state by state, and it’s impossible to tell whether or not the clerk was within the bounds of the law from a simple news article. But it certainly sounds risky to shoot a rober armed with a knife on the way out the door of a store, since the robbery appears to be over and the robber only has a knife. I don’t know what the answer is, but to say, “line em up, kill ema ll, give them a beating” is probably not going to end well on a societal level.

because ultimately this isn’t just about criminals and criminal rights. it’s about how we separate civilized from uncivilized behavior. And if you feel really good about someone getting their “just desserts”, if a beating or a shooting or torture sounds like a good resolution, then there is a very real risk that what you are salivating over is the slippery slope into vigilianteism.