Powerful story of a man who begins to believe in the death penalty after his brother is brutally murdered. Then, through a strange turn of events he draws near enough to the murderer to actually consider the act of killing him. But, removed from the anonymous abstraction of capital punishment, the thought of revenge feels strangely different. When we kill through state action we all feel innocent, but what if we had to take personal responsibility for the act? Would we still believe in capital punishment if we had to choose an actual weapon and perform the act?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/wanting-to-kill.html?_r=1&hp