Given varying conditions and circumstances every person has the ability to kill another. You may not use it but we all have a killer instinct within us. Any person can be driven to the edge where they pick up the nearest weapon and use it to snuff out the life of another.
Should we take the life of another though, we have to face the consequences of our actions and often the consequences are to lock you up away from society.
So unless you’re living in a country that has the death penalty as a sentence, no one except that country or state has a licence to kill.
At least that’s what we have been led to believe.
It’s not true though because men who rape, murder their intimate partner, abuse women, and children, commit terrible acts of interpersonal terrorism do have a licence to kill and this is why.
Abuse (physical, mental, emotional, etc) and rape effectively kill the person that lived before that was done to them.
The victim is not the same person as before the attack. That person was murdered. Murdered at the hands of the abuser and rapist and the “survivor” emerges as a totally different individual. In other words, if you were raped, though you may heal and emerge stronger, you are wary and cautious and careful (even though it was NOT your fault) and you take the necessary “precautions” to “safeguard” yourself.
The man or men who did this to you, gets a slap on the wrist or a prison sentence that allows him to continue being the rapist he is. The only difference is, he has no access to potential victims. The same applies to the abuser.
He is NEVER punished for killing the person that lived prior to the crime. Instead he is given a sentence or fine (if he is caught) that would allow him to continue his dastardly deeds should he be released.
Bob Hewitt, (the tennis coach who abused the girls he coached) is one such person I’m referring to. He paid NO mind to the long-term effects the abuse would have on his victims, yet we as a society must now be mindful of the fact that he is old and is of ill health? When he used his licence to “kill” what those girls were and could have become, did he think about what they may feel in 20 or 30 years or was he only interested in his perverse pleasure of the moment? And if he wasn’t mindful of that why should we be mindful of his ill health?
Life sentences with no possibility of parole are the only way we will be able to deter some men from casually “killing” the victims of their crime as if they purchased a licence to do that. After all, the victim has been handed a life sentence is it not?
Gender-based violence will increase because men have “bought” licences to kill womxn with no further thought about the life long consequences suffered by their victims.
It’s like taking from the cookie jar after your mom said not to but you disobeyed and took it anyway and when your mom discovers what you did, instead of punishing you for lying and stealing, she buys you the X Box game you wanted and tells you to go to your room for 24 hours.
A room where now you can have hours of fun with your new game and get the freedom you want after the 24 hours have expired. What have you learned except that it’s okay to not behave and it’s perfectly normal to lie and steal. So the next time that cookie jar is full and sitting on the counter in your kitchen, you feel no guilt in opening it and taking cookies even though you were told not to.
The sentences meted out for perpetrators of rape and abuse is not punishment but a “go to your room” lesson that men who do this willingly accept because there is nothing to deter them from re-offending when they are released.
Sadly, as a society, we tend to be more concerned about the criminal and how his life will change than the victim and so we continue to repeat the cycles after a few years in prison.
If Governments around the world don’t realize this, they may as well hand a licence to kill to the boy child along with his first school report.
