Another Tragedy Caused by an Armed Citizen Topic

MikeT23
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Posted by babypop985 on 1/27/2011 9:29:00 PM (view original):
Posted by MikeT23 on 1/27/2011 1:36:00 PM (view original):
Posted by babypop985 on 1/27/2011 12:11:00 PM (view original):
Posted by MikeT23 on 1/26/2011 4:10:00 PM (view original):
Posted by vandydave on 1/26/2011 3:42:00 PM (view original):
Posted by MikeT23 on 1/26/2011 3:17:00 PM (view original):

If you think everyone, or even the majority of us, could commit a murder, my understanding of human nature far exceeds your understanding. 

Try to start a fight without physically touching anyone.    Human nature will tell them "Avoid this" and they'll only fight back to defend themselves.   If they can walk away, they will.   Is that person capable of murder?  Of course not.

Sure I think the majority of us " could" kill someone and are "capable". That doesn't mean they will nor will be put in circumstances where they feel it is necessary or required, whether for self-gain or self-preservation. But that doesn't change the fact that they could and are capable, especially with readily available means for making killing easy, such as a gun.
Self-preservation isn't murder.   The topic is "murder".   Look it up.

And, by the way, it's ridiculous to think the majority of us could kill someone intentionally.    I think the majority runs from a fight.    
If there was a war, what percent of people would be able to serve and kill in the military?
Would people be shooting at them?  Sort of a "kill or be killed" situation?    Not murder.     Look up the meaning of "murder" and come back.
You were the one who said people couldn't kill someone intentionally. I think they can. I think a military draft shows they can.

And unless I'm mistaken, someone has to shoot first in battle.
If I'm not mistaken, I've also said some people are capable of murder(which, for the sake of argument, we'll just say "killing someone").   Nonetheless, do you consider battlefield killings to be murder?    if so, you have a pretty broad definition.
1/28/2011 8:43 AM
MikeT23
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Posted by The Taint on 1/27/2011 9:43:00 PM (view original):
The prison experiment shows exactly how easy it is to steer humans away from knowing the difference between right and wrong and absolutely has bearing on the discussion.
Are you now saying that murder will not only be legal but encouraged?
1/28/2011 8:44 AM
MikeT23
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Posted by genghisxcon on 1/27/2011 10:09:00 PM (view original):
Posted by MikeT23 on 1/27/2011 5:19:00 PM (view original):
OK, I'll make it easy for you.   Taking the life of another when your life is not in danger.  Such as to get a nice pair of sneakers.   Or the other person looked at you "funny".    Don't give me "If I guy was pointing a gun at me and I had a gun, I could shoot him first" BS.   That's not murder.     Use that as your definition since you refuse to look up the meaning of "murder" and obviously don't know what it is. 
Mike is trying to address the definition here, or maybe I should say he is trying to sidestep the problematical nature of the definition. But this almost a side issue. The more serious flaw in his argument are the sweeping statements about human nature which have no basis in fact whatsoever.
I'm not really trying to address the definition as much as I'm trying to get the vast majority of you to understand what "murder" is. 

It is the intentional taking of a life.   It's not the same as manslaughter, self-defense or a battlefield killing.    If you are in danger and you take action to remove yourself from that danger, which includes killing what threatens you, it's not murder.   If you are driving a car and hit a jaywalker while trying to pick-up the joint you dropped, it's not murder.   If you're in Iraq and kill a guy shooting at you, it is not murder.

Murder is saying "He has a nice pair of sneakers.  I want them" and killing the dude to steal his sneakers.
Murder is thinking "That dude looks weird.  I don't like the way he's looking at me" and killing him so he'll stop looking at you.


Again, I think I'm dealing with a bunch of "tough guys" who think they're capable of murder and the only thing holding them back from killing their boss is the threat of jail time.   That's not the reason your boss is still yelling at you.  It's because you can't kill him.
1/28/2011 8:51 AM
MikeT23
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Posted by vandydave on 1/27/2011 11:30:00 PM (view original):
Posted by MikeT23 on 1/27/2011 5:19:00 PM (view original):
OK, I'll make it easy for you.   Taking the life of another when your life is not in danger.  Such as to get a nice pair of sneakers.   Or the other person looked at you "funny".    Don't give me "If I guy was pointing a gun at me and I had a gun, I could shoot him first" BS.   That's not murder.     Use that as your definition since you refuse to look up the meaning of "murder" and obviously don't know what it is. 
Life being in danger is a ridiculously slippery slope to try to define. Being in danger is nowhere near as simple as having someone directly pointing a gun at you in a specific moment. Lets say I know person A killed person B, and maybe I fear I'll be next, so I kill person A because I felt my life was in danger. Or I know someone and get in a heated argument with them and fear later repercussion, or I owe someone money and can't pay on time and feel in danger.

When in doubt you seem to try to simplify your arguments, and you simply fail. You alone can't be the determiner of what words mean nor the great understander of all human nature.
I'm simplifying it because no one seems to be able to differentiate between murder and any other type of killing. 
1/28/2011 8:53 AM
MikeT23
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Now, if you really wanted to "win" the gun control argument, you should use catching someone raping your daughter.   While I think most of you would say "Oh hell yeah.  I'd kill him deader than ****!"    While I think you'd have a rage you've never felt, I'd still argue that you'd be unable to intentionally kill the rapist.  Unless, of course, it was quick and simple like a gunshot.   I think very few people could beat him to death with a baseball bat.  Once he was no longer a threat to her, they'd stop.  However, if it only took a single shot, they could do it to get the guy off their kid.  

I'll somewhat equate it to a fight.   The objective is to hit the other guy so hard, or frequently, that he stops hitting you.   You're crazy mad but, once he stop fighting back, you stop because the threat is gone.
1/28/2011 9:13 AM
The Taint
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Posted by MikeT23 on 1/28/2011 8:44:00 AM (view original):
Posted by The Taint on 1/27/2011 9:43:00 PM (view original):
The prison experiment shows exactly how easy it is to steer humans away from knowing the difference between right and wrong and absolutely has bearing on the discussion.
Are you now saying that murder will not only be legal but encouraged?
No, I'm saying that humans are easily capable of accepting different circumstances that change their behavior no matter the moral ramifications.  Too many examples of people commiting atrocities in the name of one cause or another to think otherwise. 
1/28/2011 9:42 AM
MikeT23
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If these atrocities doesn't involve the loss of life, it's not the same thing. 

And, as I've said all along, there are individuals capable of murder.    But the law isn't what stops people from committing murder.
1/28/2011 9:46 AM
The Taint
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There's plenty of examples of atrocities that caused the loss of life.


What stops people from owning slaves now?  Laws.  You should have prefaced that last sentence with "I think" the law isn't what stops people from committing murder, because you really don't know. 

Myself, in a general sense I think you are right, but I also think that if murder was legal, you would see a large increase in it's occurence.  Too many examples of human behavior being corrupted by the current environment to think otherwise.
1/28/2011 9:57 AM
MikeT23
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If you're talking mob mentality, I agree that people will do unthinkable things that even they thought they'd be incapable of.  

If you're talking about individual actions, we do have serial killers and murderers.   I've never said they don't exist.  But to think that the law is what's stopping Joe Average from committing murder is silly.  Human nature is what stops people from killing other people.   It's how we're wired. 

1/28/2011 10:09 AM
The Taint
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We've been rewired too many ways, too many times for me to believe we couldn't be rewired again.  It dosen't even take that long to do the rewiring.  Anway, just going in circles now, and I know I'm not going to change my mind, and I know I'm not going to change yours so there's no use in going on further. 

The whole thing was just posted as a moke at Swamp because I was going to my yahoo basketball team and saw three headlines for three shootings.  At least we got 10 pages of **** I actually read.  Rare for these boards these days.


I do find it weird though that you can find the best in people in this thread yet not  find the best in Gil Meche when he retires with all that jack sitting on the table.  There certainly isn't a mob mentality rushing to give up 12 million bucks.  Pretty damn rare.  Prop up the Mecher! 

1/28/2011 10:17 AM
antonsirius
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Posted by babypop985 on 1/28/2011 7:48:00 AM (view original):
Posted by antonsirius on 1/27/2011 4:41:00 PM (view original):
Posted by MikeT23 on 1/27/2011 1:44:00 PM (view original):
By the way, taint, I'm pretty sure I saw the experiment you mentioned.   I came away thinking "mob mentality" more than anything.    Same thing I felt about Abu Ghraib.   If you take "normal" people and put them in a certain enviroment, they'll act appropriately. 

Doesn't apply to discussion because we don't have a "Murder Colony" where we can place Joe Average to see what happens.
I agree with Mike here - the Stanford Prison experiment (which is what Taint was trying to think of) and the similar Milgram experiment (recently adapted for a batshit crazy and kind of sickening French doc) both involve people being told what to do by authority figures, and don't have much bearing on what people might do when left to their own devices.
Isn't saying murder is no longer a crime implying a new societal acceptance of killing someone?
Sure. But that's still a different set of circumstances than what the experiments set up. In each one an authority figure or figures specifically encouraged the amoral behavior. 

If you want to use Milgram & Stanford to make a generalization about human nature you can, but I think it's a bit of a stretch.

I think Mike's overstating his point, because that's his shtick, but I generally agree with him. 99% of the population doesn't need a law to tell them not to kill other people. That law exists for the other 1%.

To put the argument in terms swamp can understand, your view of human nature is based in Lord of the Flies (a book that I thought was crap when I read it as a teenager) whereas we think it's more akin to the Dark Knight (where even a badass thug like Tiny Lister won't blow up a ship full of people).


1/28/2011 10:22 AM
The Taint
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Well the government is an authority figure.  Hell they might become the biggest beneficiary of such a law.
1/28/2011 10:25 AM
MikeT23
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Posted by The Taint on 1/28/2011 10:17:00 AM (view original):

We've been rewired too many ways, too many times for me to believe we couldn't be rewired again.  It dosen't even take that long to do the rewiring.  Anway, just going in circles now, and I know I'm not going to change my mind, and I know I'm not going to change yours so there's no use in going on further. 

The whole thing was just posted as a moke at Swamp because I was going to my yahoo basketball team and saw three headlines for three shootings.  At least we got 10 pages of **** I actually read.  Rare for these boards these days.


I do find it weird though that you can find the best in people in this thread yet not  find the best in Gil Meche when he retires with all that jack sitting on the table.  There certainly isn't a mob mentality rushing to give up 12 million bucks.  Pretty damn rare.  Prop up the Mecher! 

It's not that weird if you think of it like this:

12m is a nice pile of change.   However, I don't think that number would convince Joe Average to murder someone if he wasn't already capable of murder.   As they say, it's just a negotiation at that point. 

Let's see if I can **** off some gay people.   Homosexuality isn't illegal and it really isn't frowned upon in most sections of society.   Why aren't all of us partaking in some buttsecs?   I mean, we double our chances of doing the nasty if we're open to both men and women.   Are straight men on this site saying that sticking it up some dude's pooper is more difficult than murder?

I'd suggest we aren't flying our gay side because it's how we're wired.   We're wired to want sex with women and not to kill people.

1/28/2011 10:33 AM
antonsirius
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Posted by The Taint on 1/28/2011 10:25:00 AM (view original):
Well the government is an authority figure.  Hell they might become the biggest beneficiary of such a law.
No, "the government" is not an authority figure because it's not a individual person in a position of authority.

If you've got any real interest in this stuff, track down that French doc (Game of Death is the title in English). Taking the Milgram experiment and re-formatting it as a game show was a stroke of genius. 
1/28/2011 10:35 AM
The Taint
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Someone else was telling me about that at work the other day.  He said it was pretty twisted.
1/28/2011 10:36 AM
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