It's impossible to know what you'd do in any circumstance until it happens to you.
I like to imagine that I'd tear someone who did that to my child to pieces. And then I wonder why most parents of murdered children don't.
If the murderer is in custody, obviously he's beyond their reach. But I suppose it'd be possible to persuade someone to do it for you.
That doesn't seem just the stuff of revenge fantasy films. There are people who are in prison because they'd do anything, so how difficult would it be to find someone? Maybe some of the attacks on prisoners really are contract jobs, rather than a prisoner trying to be cock of the walk for his own ends.
But it doesn't generally happen. I guess that might be because what you imagine you'd do isn't what happens when it becomes reality.
Maybe you couldn't bring yourself to murder and mutilate another human being, no matter how hateful.
Most probably, you'd wonder how it'd help your spouse and other children if you were behind bars for murder too. Because that's what would happen, though I suppose you'd probably serve about 15 years, because people would understand that in this case life shouldn't mean life. It's still 15 years of your life, and your children's lives, though.
Your marriage probably wouldn't survive whatever you did. There's enough evidence of this.
I loathe it when people who haven't been there say they'd do this or that, because it suggests that people who really have been there, and haven't done it, don't love their children enough.
I'd prefer to believe the people saying those things aren't really thinking it through.
On a related note: I find it upsetting that Lee Rigby's family felt the need to release a statement today asking people to remain calm.
Upsetting is my shorthand for 'an obscene imposition on them in their time of grief'.