It's only a weak argument because you've strawmanned it. I didn't say that the only thing that makes a police state is state killings. My point was about proportion, not mere absolute existence. You wouldn't say that Norway (0.7 murders/100k pop) is the same as Honduras (~90/100k, from memory) in terms of personal safety, simply because murders exist in an absolute sense in Norway.

> Either the government and its agencies are held accountable, or they are not.

Such philosophical absolutes are useless in the actual human experience. You chide me for weak arguments, yet you hold the modern US state and Hitler/Stalin/Mao/Pot's states as morally equal, since they all have extrajudicially killed at least one person and proportionality does not matter. Clearly this is not the case - the world is shades of gray, not black and white absolutes. Some grays are darker than others.