Flickr/ Steve Rhodes. Some rights reserved.David Cameron has recently indicated that the RAF sometimes uses drones to kill people who are neither convicted criminals nor members of the armed forces of countries with which Britain is at war. Whatever the status of such actions might be in terms of international law, the question of whether and how such killings might be morally justified arises. John Locke’s theory of a natural right to self-defence might seem to offer a possible answer. However, it gives only limited support to this sort of killing.
Locke argued that all individual human beings have not only a natural moral right to kill those who are a direct threat to themselves but also a natural moral right to kill or punish those who are a threat to other people if there is no legal authority available to fulfil that role.
He went so far as to claim that, if you discover a burglar in your house, it is morally justifiable to kill him even if he has not actually explicitly threatened to kill you yet. The burglar has already indicated ill will by invading your property and privacy. Who knows what else might he do?
