"I do not believe that you and the majority of the board would endorse murder as an "okay" response to someone turning you in for having illegal images in your possession."

There's a difference between what I might ask of others and what I would understand in others.

Back when Germany was fighting the wave of bank-robberies and political assassinations by the Red Army Fraktion the head cop assigned to the case did some brilliant work to find these underground terrorists; including the first use of public computer DBs to eliminate suspects.

But he was also widely criticized for entertaining the possibility that they weren't just bloodthirsty madmen. And that if Germany wanted to eliminate the next generation of RAF, or address the widespread support these radicals had among the left, that the police would have to see just what motivated them.

We already know that a bomber is not a bomber. That the profile and activities of a drop-off and abandon bomb like the IRA used is very different from the motives and actions of a suicide-bomber.

We know that you are probably not taking your life in your hands if you approach the person who littered on your lawn. But that you'd be a fool to even come between an armed bank-robber and their getaway; even moreso if you know they've already killed and are facing the death-penalty.

When the possession of illegal images is treated harsher than murder, and the ability for someone post sentencing to create a new life is worse, then it incentivizes an extreme response.

The LEAs want to encourage turncoats, so they try to seek not to inform the public of just what kind of punishment they would be turning someone in to face. But that doesn't mean that the suspect they are confronting is unaware.

In this case the guy was fully aware of how ruinous and life-destroying the punishments were.

I agree with the LEAs when they advise that the public shouldn't take it upon themself to apprehend or turn in desperate men when it might compromise their safety.

And generally they do a pretty good job of indicating the ability of many desperados to retaliate, including hits ordered from behind bars.

But they tend to want to be very opaque when it comes to their war on KP and on consent. They don't seem willing to tell the public about the SOR's use as a hitlist. Nor about the communities where SOs can neither leave nor live. And they certainly seem keen on refusing to tell the girls they swear they are protecting about just what the officers might do against their will to enforce these protections.

In these cases they value the "snitch" so much that they refuse to let them know what are the obvious and likely consequences of turning in someone who stands to lose their life or of handing your daughter over to the State to be processed.

They seem perfectly fine with all the suicides of men faced with the end of their life in a way that even a murderer doesn't always have to face. But they aren't interested in letting the public believe that anything so draconian that it incentivizes just that many suicides might just also incentivize murder.

If we want to lower the amount of death surrounding the issue of looking at pictures, we must be willing to discuss the real consequences of treating it like murder. And those who are encouraged to go to a tipline because their sensibilities were outraged by cartoon imagery should be aware that they are about to take away someone's life.

None of the above should happen. But it will if nothing changes.

Dante