No, I am willing to execute them, to the extent of volunteering for the firing squad, without any interest in mine being the rifle loaded with a blank -- if they succeed in maiming or murdering. I notice my previous comment was not clear on this point, and am glad of the opportunity to clarify it now. The mere attempt, in my estimation, merits only a term in prison, as with any other deliberate but unconsummated attempt to inflict grievous harm upon another person, in the absence of extreme provocation such as the need to defend oneself from attack.
So let's consider armored car security. They will shoot people who take the bank's money. If I, perfectly reasonably, want some money, they will shoot me. So the banks who employ armored car guards are terrorists who should be imprisoned or executed!
Do you seriously equate armored car guards with tree spikers? I can't imagine you mean your comment to be taken at face value, but I also can't imagine any other meaning with which you might have loaded it.
Much the same: imprisonment for the attempt, execution for the success. I suspect you will take this response as cause for horror at my unthinkable whatever-you-call-it in equating the gravity of a tree spiker's crime with rape and murder. If so, then you will be no less amazed than am I at the idea that the crimes of such saboteurs are of any less gravity than those of anyone else who, lest the nature of tree spiking be forgotten, sets out to maim or murder, or -- hardly less grave, or more permissible -- to use the threat of such mayhem, occurring at random, to enforce their will.
