Question about one scene.

"Besides, who doesn't want to see a rapist shot in the balls?" - well, perhaps some might, but then what about rules and laws that follow, and if he wasn't a direct threat to him or the victim when he had him held at gunpoint, maybe he should've shot him in the leg and then have him arrested, no?

Heck, if you remember the film "Dirty Harry" (1971) for instance, when Clint Eastwood's character stepped on the injured leg of the serial killer Scorpio, his department not only wasn't happy with him but they even had to let the Scorpio character go.

And OK I get how a lot of us might feel a sense of joy and relief at a scene like this but plot-wise, how would a MACHINE know and have enough related feelings to, well, shoot a male rapist in the balls? Its almost, but it wasn't confirmed in the film, as if they inserted some kind of programme into him which described how terrible those perpetrators are and should therefore you know, be shot like this painfully when come across by cops, but since it wasn't shown, how would RoboCop know such feelings?

bingo

OK, so basically then, it wasn't just his hatred for perps of his kind that caused him to do it, it was in a way an act of (not quite self but still) defense and he was making de-facto threatening gestures? And also possible, in a way not too dissimilar to when John Coffey in The Green Mile (1999) punishes both Percy and that creep, even if the victims there were mostly children but still, it could be that in RoboCop and in this scene, maybe he had a detailed file on him not too dissimilar from "The Terminator", right? So maybe he knew that he was a real menace and danger possibly guilty of other offenses too, right?

I've NEVER heard a murder victim, guilty criminal or not, by police or not, "grateful" to someone who KILLED them. )

It takes balls to be grateful in a situation like that

I honestly thought that RoboCop simply wanted to teach that creep and offender a brutal and vengeful Death Wish-style lesson, and maybe, he also had some kind of computer file on that guy that revealed him to be a mass sex offender and hence decided to, you know...

OK I get it now, I just kind of wrongly assumed he did it intentionally in a "Death Wish-like" (yes, I am indeed referring to the Bronson classic Death Wish from 1974, as watchable to OK as sequels were, original was the best) vengeance scenario, but as it turns out, that perpetrator also posed a tough scenario and RoboCop himself had little choice, I see now.

For example, in the Russian film "The Rifleman of the Voroshilov Regiment" (1999), the old man shot INTENTIONALLY at least one of the perpetrators in the nuts for abusing that way his granddaughter, not "accidentally" or in self-defense, and in plenty of the "I Spit on Your Grave" and its ilk revenge themed movies, the victims also did it with supreme grudge-oriented intent, and I wondered if RoboCop was along similar lines also.

P.S. What does this say, albeit NOT necessarily wrongly as AT LEAST some err (cringe) MRAs (or even a lot, ESPECIALLY cringe then) may think, about men, their genitals and IF they happen to be GUILTY or about to attempt an act of sexual violence etc, its seen as morally well at least UNDERSTANDABLE without any "justifiable complaints" even about EXCESSIVE force on those who are GUILTY and "may deserve it", to attack and blow away with bullets their "balls"? (The various aspects of harsh reality and downright sensitivity surrounding the de-facto issue of 'sexual abuse' in all its terrible nature and aspects of existence notwithstanding.)

I also ask this because that 'rapist' looked, acted and even seemed on the outside to be pretty STUPID and, as evil and downright wrong and criminally offensive as he may in fact have been, I couldn't quite foresee him OUTSMARTING a state of the art, futuristic and tough looking ROBOT police officer with a gun, and it kinda looked and seemed to me that, even with him having a female hostage and holding her with a knife to her throat, he wasn't that effectively or cleverly using her as a human shield and that a simple shot to the LEG would've subdued, incapacitated and stopped him just FINE.