I agree with every important point you made in this post, Dante. And I fully understand that someone who is faced with the prospect of their life being ruined for having possession of pics our supposedly democratic government has criminalized - worse than if they were accused of committing an act of murder or armed robbery - can cause someone to react in extreme ways. Usually, this results in suicide. But yes, sometimes the person's mental breakdown can result in a murderous retaliation against the person who ruined their lives.

I will also point out that snitches are disliked in many cultures for good reason. I further agree that when LEA's create and foster witch hunts by criminalizing possession of pictures, it will create incentive for people to conduct surveillance upon their neighbors, thinking they are both ingratiating themselves to the powers and somehow performing their civic duty to society by doing so. Worse, it creates incentive for sundry individuals to commit acts of extortion and entrapment, and to point fingers to get back at someone they dislike. They will not take into consideration the degree of ruin they are inflicting upon the life of the person they are snitching on.

All of this I agree with, and I'm glad you pointed it out. I was simply saying, and still maintain, that while we should oppose censorious, moralism-based laws that encourage witch hunts and everything that witch hunts result in; and that we should point out what can happen to the people that snitch as well as those whom they snitch on; we should not outright condone such murderous acts when they do happen.

As an example, as a severely bullied youth, I fully sympathize with the factors that caused the Columbine killers to mentally break, and I duly oppose the culture of bullying and personal othering that resulted in their mental breakdown. I was there myself figuratively speaking, I know exactly how they felt, and I actually planned to commit suicide as a result (thankfully, the parent of a concerned friend who picked up on the signs intervened with a phone call to me and saved my life).

Nevertheless, I do not condone the actions that they took, even though I'm very tempted to tell the bullies themselves that they had it coming. Don't get me wrong, they suffered consequences of their own making, no doubt. But that still didn't make what the retaliation killers did right, even if it was a chance the bullies took by acting as they did. And there was also the matter of innocents who can easily get caught in the crossfire of a revenge murder.

Ultimately, the fault goes to the LEAs and the culture that supports their work, as you say. But as a popular saying goes, two wrongs do not make a right.