The Thug and the Fairy

I've been told that people find this amusing so I decided to keep it posted.

In this writing I discuss killing in self-defense. I believe most people can agree with the idea that it is ok to kill a person if they are actively trying to kill you. However, there is a gray area of just how much force you can respond with if the person's intentions are unclear. Police officers face the decision to use deadly force more often than the majority of people. I have read many reports in newspapers about police officers shooting an individual who appeared to be carrying a weapon but was actually unarmed. Some of these shootings result in the death of the suspect others do not. In the cases where the individual has died I read of much public outrage against law enforcement. In most cases where the individual has been killed and the public blames the officer and other local law enforcement I read that the person was fleeing the police or resisting arrest. In many cases the person had committed the crime for which the police were chasing him or her. If the person had not done these things the police would have had no reason to think they were dangerous and required the use of force. It is because of this that I believe it is mostly the individual's fault for getting him or herself killed. I do not believe that this means that police shootings should not be investigated because there are some corrupt officers who do shoot people illegally. However, I do believe that there is an overreaction in this country against the use of force by police. A person fleeing from the police and appearing to reach for a weapon, even if they have not committed a crime, is still fleeing from the police and is acting in a dangerous manner. It is unfortunate that an innocent person is sometimes shot because they acted suspiciously and fled but if they had behaved in an innocent manner they would not have been risking harm to themselves. I believe that I have adequately addressed the matter of police officers killing in defense of the law and their own person. I will now introduce a hypothetical situation in which a person is not in danger of being killed but may still have the right to kill to defend himself. Once, in a land far away there were many people living in a kingdom. On a street corner at night a fairy is dancing in the moonlight. In the shadows is a thug who is observing the fairy. The fairy continues to dance for much of the night while being observed by the thug. Without warning the thug springs upon the unsuspecting fairy. The fairy has three possible courses of action: it can do nothing and be beaten to a pulp, it can kill the thug, or it can try to outrun the thug. In this kingdom it is a sport among thugs to smash fairies into the pavement as hard as they can. Smashing the fairies will not kill them because they are durable magical individuals who can only be killed by things that pierce them. However, smashed fairies are badly injured individuals who will likely never be able to move at any great speed again. This is because their wings and limbs are very fragile and will break like twigs with enough applied force. The fairy chooses to flee but is not fast enough. Unlike most thugs this thug is extremely quick and capable of matching the fairy's pace. This leaves the fairy with the other two options. Should the fairy allow itself to suffer harmful injury rather than commit the seemingly evil act of killing a being, which does not have the intent to kill and cannot kill it? I believe the answer to this question is simple. The fairy should kill the thug. The thug has already committed an evil act against the fairy in attempting to violate its person by smashing it. The thug had no right to do this and therefore is open to action by the fairy to prevent this. The only action the fairy can take to prevent the evil thug from smashing it is to kill the thug. This is because the thug is so large compared to the fairy any other form of restraint is impossible for the fairy to accomplish. In explanation of how a fairy can kill a thug let us return to the story. The fairy flew at the thug's face and drilled through the thug's eyeball. Upon reaching the thug's brain it commenced to dig through it until the thug was dead. This hypothetical situation demonstrates how in our world a small person could be justified in using a firearm to kill an unarmed attacker but only if the attacker was so much more powerful than them physically that they could not fight them off in any other manner. An argument against killing the thug could be much like the following. The fairy did not have a right to kill the thug because the amount of harm it inflicted was not equally to the harm it could suffer. I refute this because in another example it is much like saying a slave does not have the right to kill his masters to be free. The slave's masters commit an evil act by keeping him in bondage. If he attempts to escape the masters capture and return him to his slavery. His masters are not extremely cruel because they keep him well clothed, fed, housed, and ask only that he clean the house once a week. However, he is not free to leave their service and if he refuses to work he is whipped. The slave will never be free until he kills his masters. To say that the slave cannot kill his masters because he would be causing them more harm than they cause him by his enslavement is the same argument as that against the fairy killing the thug. I believe I have done a satisfactory job of explaining the reasoning behind my arguments but if something seems unclear feel free to comment and I will try to explain myself more thoroughly.