The religious notions I absorbed in the past tell me no and my analytical nature tells me to question what the meaning of effective and easier would actually be here.
My reaction to your question is along these lines: Everyone is created in the image of God, meaning we were born a blank slate with enormous genetic potential, the very potential we project that God is. You can't go around killing Gods if you want to become that which God represents. Unfortunately, when the path to Godhood within has been subverted and deeply damaged by being made to feel evil one can act out in revenge by becoming what those who made us feel that way suspected, we become agents of evil.
Here we come up against the notions of just war and the right of self defense. Once a person crosses the line from feeling worthless to seeking the harm of innocent people out of revenge, one enters another class of human being. One becomes evil incarnate. Faced with people like that one is morally obliged, I believe, not to allow them to act out. The Republican Party has been acting out for a long time.
The Jews brought us the easy way, an eye for an eye, the law is the law whereas Christianity broke that limited view with forgiveness for sin. Islam reconciles these two sides of the same coin with this idea: Destroy the law breaker mercilessly and without compromise to protect the good and the innocent like a Jew, but the instant the evil doer surrenders and asks for forgiveness one must at that moment become a Christian, the the repentant only gets that one chance. A relapse and the revelation of insincerity and gamesmanship then becomes a death sentence. In a modern society that can be substituted for by life in prison. The only operational value is that evil be stopped. In ordinary life the only time it is permissible to kill, or so in my opinion, is to defend oneself from a real threat or to defend some other person, where the danger is real and immediate and no alternative is available. Red Beard.
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