A thought experiment for you all: You are in a totilarian state of your choice. The police have come to arrest you. Although they are honorable men who truly believe they are doing their duty to the law/state/people/etc., you know you will not experience justice. Is is morally permissible to kill the policemen to escape, if they aren’t responsible for whatever bad things will happen to you if arrested? Do they bear enough responsibility to warrant death as a moral issue?
If they’re coming to take you away – and they know you’ll be killed (tortured, whatever) then they are not honorable men, but thugs.
(They harder question is: what about those who serve the tyrant because they’re afraid to rebel?)
The practical answer is: when the policemen break the law, there is no law. As Kipling might say, “Order the guns and slay.”
There was a case of some note, here in my home town of San Diego, where a guy killed a policeman and a civilian in what he thought was self defense (he was terribly mistaken about the entire affair) and was acquitted. And that’s a situation where society hadn’t really broken down, just circumstances.
Of course, once you use “outlawry” as a legal justification for your actions, you become an outlaw… This is not necessarily a “bad thing.” The members of the French Underground in WWII were, in essence, “good outlaws.” But it’s uncomfortable, and you’ll lose a lot of sleep…
Trinopus
Assuming that in the glorius totalitarian state so many long for you even have access to a gun.
Since they become an element of an oppressive state, and they volunteered to represent that state, they are free targets.
Not to sound cavalier about it, but certainly. They are responsible, by willingly carrying out the orders of a corrupt authority.
In practice, however, I’d most likely end up dragged off to whatever fresh hell awaits anyway, as I have no experience of killing and would probably not be very good at it.