In criminal law, attempted crime is treated the same as successful completions. That’s because we don’t want to encourage people to make attempts: many such att

In criminal law, attempted crime is treated the same as successful completions. That’s because we don’t want to encourage people to make attempts: many such attempts could be successful. Imagine a world in which someone is trying to murder you or your children. You know who they are, and you even have incontrovertible evidence they are doing it. Yet they get off scot-free every time because their bullets missed the mark. (This is covered in the mandatory first-year criminal law course in law school, BTW.)