A Stitch in Haste

It was only a matter of time:

A 35-year-old Washington state man was charged with double murder on Thursday after telling police that he had decided to hunt down and kill two sex offenders listed in an online sex offender registry.

Michael Mullen told police that he decided to find and murder sex offenders in Bellingham, Washington, 90 miles (140 km) north of Seattle, after the high-profile arrest of a sex offender in Idaho in July.
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Sex offenders in most U.S. jurisdictions are required by law to register with local police when they take up residence, and such information is often provided on a Web site for community residents.

I understand and appreciate that child molesters (who, incidentally, are only a subset of "sex offenders") have an extremely high recidivism rate. And perhaps there is some vague, open-ended "right to know" the criminal past of your neighbors (I'm skeptical).

But the apparent quest to have, in an increasingly gay-accepting society, a class of "new perverts" to loath and be threatened by clearly has at least a hint of bloodlust behind it. It's obviously not "all about the children."

And as cities take the next step of banning sex offenders altogether, this heinous act might be a good time to reflect on what exactly sex offender registries are meant to accomplish.

Surely wholesale slaughter isn't on the list.