MIG tourney R3: Vigilantism is Justified when the U.S. Government has Failed to Uphold the Law

Thank you, TUF, for your prompt reply.Negative ConstructiveNC1: Vigilantism is self-refutingMy opponent says I have the wrong idea about vigilantism, but it is in fact my opponent that has the wrong idea, especially in how it pertains to the resolution in question. Vigilantism is the act of taking the law into your own hands, plain and simple. But the resolution focuses on whether or not vigilantism is justified when the government fails to do that for us. For example, TUF's story about the man that quoted Pulp Fiction to scare away a would-be criminal is not the kind of vigilantism about which the resolution is concerned. In that story, the US Government didn't fail to do its job because the US Government didn't even have a chance to do it in the first place.Implied in the resolution is the notion of reactionary justice, and TUF's anecdotes are false analogies. We're not talking about self-defense. We're talking about bringing people to justice after they've managed to slip through the cracks of the Criminal Justice System (CJS). The reason my argument holds water is due to the fact that judgment over a person's "guilt" is subjective to the vigilante. In other words, after a jury fails to find enough objective evidence to convict, a vigilante subjectively decides the jury was wrong and then sets out to take the law into their own hands.Subjectivity is the issue here. TUF says vigilantism by definition is always legal, but that doesn't mean that a person isn't bias in their vigilantism. In fact, the only way to uphold truly legal vigilantism is to regulate it. If an entire justice system can't always get it right, surely individuals won't either. Therefore, the CJS will have to regulate all vigilantism in order to verify its legality, in which case, it's not really vigilantism anymore. Hence, the whole idea becomes self-refuting.Cross ExaminationAC1: Vigilantism only ensures the government's goal's [sic] are carried out to peak satisfaction."So why not allow us to provide those basic rights for ourselves, when the government fails to?"Keep in mind that we are talking about responding to the failures of the CJS, not cases of self-defense. So, the answer to this question boils down to the fact that "we" are not objective. Due Process is not some whimsical idea designed to let criminals run amok. It's meant to ensure the government (and by extension, its citizens) does not throw innocent people in the slammer left and right in order to make sure it's rounded up every bad guy in the process. It's unfortunate that some criminals get away with their crimes, but it's much more unfortunate when innocent people are incarcerated. What happens when a vigilante is mistaken? Oh, right, I forgot. In this debate, vigilantism is defined as never being mistaken."So what exactly is wrong with convicting a guilty person? Should we not give him his proper justice simply because of how the evidence was obtained?"There is nothing wrong with convicting a guilty person, and such a question poisons the well against my case. The problem is that elimination of due process has far reaching consequences. It's convenient that my opponent quoted only the first sentence, deliberately taking it out of context. The whole quote shows that when the police are permitted to use illegal means to acquire evidence, then citizens lose their right to privacy. Imagine a "guilty gun" that only discharges when fired at someone guilty of murder. What would be the natural human response? Point and shoot at everyone. Likewise, police would invade the privacy of anyone they desired in the hopes of finding something they are looking for."Finally my opponent questions my sources. I ask him to review these, as I am quite sure all the statistics, graphs, and analytics I provided in my source are completely accurate."My opponent remains confident in his claim that "60-80% of all crimes are likely to be set free." So, I went back to his argument (which is at http://www.debate.org...) only to find out that he edited it. There are two graphs that were not previously there. I'm sorry, but I find this to be highly unfair as I am not able to go back and edit my rounds. At first, I didn't make a big deal that my opponent was exceeding the 8000 character limit in Round 1 (9500+ characters by the way) by placing his arguments into another debate, but changing the data after I've made my rebuttal is clearly overstepping the line of conduct since readers will think my previous round is ignoring data I was not actually privileged to view and evaluate at the time.That being said, neither graph supports his data. The "Failure of Due Process Rates" details the number criminals set free, but doesn't come close to the 60-80% my opponent claims. In fact, the graph supplies no percentages at all. His second graph titled "Criminals that are likely to go free in 2012" is merely a percentage breakdown of criminals estimated to go free this year. Again, nothing in this graph indicates that "43% of criminals with evidence to their crimes . . . go free this year." My opponent is simply slapping data on the screen and pulling his statistics out of a hat.In order for this contention to succeed, TUF needs to show that the justice system is failing to the point of necessitating vigilantism, yet all he's offered us in support of this idea is anecdote and arbitrary numbers.AC2: The people have a right to defend the Justice system.TUF criticizes the failures of due process for letting murderers go free, which is an emotional plea designed to distract the readers from my insistence that granting vigilantism as a right directly counters the right of due process, which has been deemed a fundamental right for since this great nation's inception. My opponent is under some kind of delusion (probably based on his wildly unsupported 60-80% figure) that murderers are just running rampant. If this were really true, then perhaps due process could be set aside in some fashion, but my opponent hasn't come close to proving this to have any basis in reality whatsoever. I must insist that the benefits of due process outweighs the costs.TUF then quotes the Fifth Amendment and asserts that "the lawful judgment of his equals" text somehow applies to vigilantism. This is just wishful thinking. In the complete context of the amendment, "equals" is referring to a fair trial by jury. In no way can the Fifth Amendment be twisted to do anything else but protect the right of citizens to have due process.TUF defends his hypotheticals as being examples of vigilantism in practice. He insists that without vigilantism, we might see self-defense and citizen-arrest laws revoked. Again, this is not vigilantism as it pertains to this debate. These are cases of dealing with crime on the spot when the government is not immediately available. But the resolution implies that the government has to fail first. Defending oneself is not a matter of vigilantism as much as it is survival.ConclusionMy opponent wants to define vigilantism as always being lawful, by definition. I insist that such a definition is impractical at best and begs the question at worst. TUF's sources completely fail to substantiate his outrageous claims, so his contentions amount to pleading. In every respect, he has failed to affirm the resolution.I've offered my own argument in negation of the resolution, but even if that fails, TUF carries the burden of proof. Until such burden is met, I contend that resolution remains negated.