Suppose you see a cop using excessive force. Can you use violence to stop the cop? Suppose it’s wrong to criminalize pot. Can you violently resist a drug arrest? In general, is it morally permissible to use violence to defend yourself or others against government injustice? I think the answer is yes, or, more precisely, that the conditions under which you may use violence in self-defense or defense of others against civilians and against government agents are the same.

Social Philosophy and Policy just published my paper, “When May We Kill Government Agents: In Defense of Moral Parity”. Abstract:

This essay argues for what may be called the parity thesis: Whenever it would be morally permissible to kill a civilian in self-defense or in defense of others against that civilian’s unjust acts, it would also be permissible to kill government officials, including police officers, prison officers, generals, lawmakers, and even chief executives. I argue that in realistic circumstances, violent resistance to state injustice is permissible, even and perhaps especially in reasonably just democratic regimes. When civilians see officials about to commit certain severe injustices — such as police officers engaging in excessive violence — they may sometimes act unilaterally and kill the offending officials. I consider and rebut a wide range of objections, including objections against vigilantism, objections based on state legitimacy, and objections that violence can produce bad fallout.

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

Andrew Altman and Christopher Wellman say, “Surely, it would have been permissible for somebody to assassinate Stalin in the 1930s.”[i] If so, is it also permissible to kill a president, Member of Parliament, bureaucrat, or police officer from a democratic regime, if killing is necessary to stop them from harming the innocent? If it is permissible to assassinate Hitler to stop him from invading Poland, is it also permissible to assassinate a US president in order to stop him from invading the Philippines or from ordering the genocidal slaughter or forced relocation of Native Americans? If it would be permissible to kill a Gestapo agent to stop him from murdering innocent people, is it also be permissible to kill a democratic police officer who uses excessive violence?

Philosophers and laypeople often assume not. They assume that in liberal democracies, only non-violent resistance to state injustice is permissible.[ii] They assume we must defer to democratic government agents, even when these agents act in deeply unjust, harmful, and destructive ways.

This assumption is puzzling. The prevailing view is that, when it comes to government agents, the practice of killing in self-defense or defense of others is governed by different moral principles from those that govern defensive killing in other contexts. This presupposes that it makes a difference to the permissibility of killing an aggressor in self-defense or defense of others that the aggressor is wearing a uniform, or holds an office, or was appointed by someone who was in turn elected by my neighbors. According to the prevailing view, my neighbors can eliminate my right of self-defense or defense of others by granting someone an office.[iii]

To illustrate this asymmetry, consider the following three cases:

A. Shooter in the Park

A masked man emerges from a black van holding a rifle. He starts shooting at children in a public park. Ann, a bystander, has a gun. She kills him before he kills any innocent children.

B. Health Nut

Health guru John sincerely believes caffeine is unhealthy, that it causes laziness, and that it induces people to use hard drugs. John announces that he and his followers will capture coffee drinkers, confiscate their belongings, and imprison them in John’s filthy basement for years. Ann, who is too poor to move away from town, loves coffee. She secretly drinks it in the morning in her kitchen. One day, a henchman breaks into her house and attempts to capture her. She struggles to defend herself, and, in the process, kills him.

C. Terrorist

Cobra Commander, leader of the terrorist organization COBRA, has a device that allows him to launch the United States’ nuclear arsenal against Russia. Ann, a private civilian, somehow stumbles upon COBRA’s secret control room. Just before Cobra Commander enters the launch code, Ann shoots him.

I expect most people believe it’s permissible for Ann to kill the wrongdoers in A-C. Probably only radical pacifists would deny that killing is wrong in A-C:[iv]

But now consider three new cases (D-F) that seem analogous to the first three (A-C). In these new cases, the only obvious major difference is that the wrongdoer is a democratic government agent.

D. Minivan Shooter

Ann witnesses a police officer stop a minivan with a female driver and three children in the back. Ann sees that the woman is unarmed. The police officer emerges from his car and immediately starts shooting at the van’s windows. Ann has a gun. She shoots the police officer before he kills any of the children.[v]

E. War on Drugs

Town leaders decide to make marijuana illegal, even though there is overwhelming evidence that marijuana is in every respect less harmful than alcohol, a drug that is legal for any adult to consume.[vi] Ann has a pot stash in her house. One night, a bunch of police officers raid Ann’s house in a no-knock raid. She recognizes that they are police officers. She also knows that if they capture her, she will be imprisoned for a decade. Her government issues overly punitive sentences for drug possession and is unresponsive to citizens’ demands to overturn the law. Ann struggles to escape, and, in the process, kills the cops.[vii]

F. Hawk

Ann, a janitor, happens to be cleaning the Situation Room when the president and his staff enter and lock the door. She hears the president inform the Joint Chiefs and his cabinet that he intends to unload the United States’ nuclear arsenal on Russia. The head of NORAD, who is on the screen, has already entered his launch code. Just as the president is about to enter in his own launch code, Ann tries to restrain him. The president breaks free and is about to enter the code. Ann takes a gun from a secret service agent and shoots the president.

Many people judge these cases differently from A-C. They think killing in self-defense or in the defense others is wrongful in (at least some of) D-F, though it was permissible in A-C.

Thus, most people seem to subscribe to what I will call the Special Immunity Thesis:

Democratic government agents enjoy a special immunity against being killed in self-defense or defense of others. The set of conditions under which it is permissible to kill a democratic government agent, acting ex officio, is much more tightly constrained than the set of conditions under which it is permissible to kill a civilian.

The Special Immunity Thesis holds that to killing the agents of democratic governments, at least when they are acting ex officio, faces a special justificatory burden.

In contrast, one might reject the Special Immunity Thesis in favor of the Moral Parity Thesis:

There conditions under which a civilian may, in self-defense or defense of others, kill a fellow civilian are also conditions under which a civilian may kill a democratic government agent, even an agent acting ex officio.

The Moral Parity Thesis holds that killing the agents of democratic governments is at least on par morally with killing private civilians. Strictly speaking, I leave it open that it might be easier to justify killing government agents than civilians. The Moral Parity Thesis implies that if killing is permissible in any of the cases A-C, it is permissible in the analogous case from D-F.

This paper defends the Moral Parity Thesis and attacks the Special Immunity Thesis. My thesis is that the conditions under which you may kill a civilian, in self-defense or in defense of others, are also conditions under which you may kill the agent of a democratic government, even when that agent acts ex officio.

Note that I focus solely on the ethics of defensive killing against immediate threats from democratic government agents. I am not here discussing punishment, whether anyone might ever deserve to die, whether killing anyone might ever be justified as an end in itself, or whether violence is useful to overturn laws or produce social change. Many philosophers and activists believe that non-violent civil disobedience is both morally superior to and more effective than violent resistance in changing unjust laws.[viii] They might be correct, but that is not my concern here.[ix]

[i] Andrew Altman and Christopher Heath Wellman, “From Humanitarian Intervention to Assassination: Human Rights and Political Violence,” Ethics 118 (2008): 228-57, here 253.

[ii] For example, see Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, ed. [trans.] Mary J. Gregor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 6:319-322, 6:371, 6:382; 8:381-3; John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 363-391; Kimberly Brownlee “Civil Disobedience,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2009); Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in Hugo Bedau, ed., Civil Disobedience in Focus (London: Routledge, 1991).

[iii] Here, I paraphrase Jeff McMahan, Killing in War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), vii.

[iv] For some defenses of radical pacifism, see, J. Kellenberger, “A Defense of Pacifism,” Faith and Philosophy 4 (1987): 129-148; Richard Routley, “On the Alleged Inconsistency, Moral Insensitivity, and Fanaticism of Pacifism,” Inquiry 27 (1984): 117-136; Carlo Filice, “Pacifism: A Reply to Narveson,” Journal of Philosophical Research 17 (1992): 493-495.

[v] http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/07/new-mexico-cop-fired-for-shooting-at-minivan-full-of-kids/ {Add some commentary about the case}

[vi] Jason Brennan, “Marijuana,” in James Ciment, ed., Social Issues in America, ed. (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2006), 1044-1054.

[vii] Cf. to incident on May 5, 2011, in which Pima County SWAT team members murdered Jose Guerana in his own home. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/25/jose-guerena-arizona-_n_867020.html

[viii] See, e.g., Daniel Silvermint, “Resistance and Well-Being,” Journal of Political Philosophy 21 (2013): 405-425.

[ix] However, for two recent books arguing that violent resistance was essential for overturning Jim Crow, see Charles Cobb, Jr., This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible (New York: Basic Books, 2014); Akinyele Omowale Umoja, We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement (New York: NYU Press, 2013).