Posted by MikeT23 on 1/25/2011 3:03:00 PM (view original):

Posted by creilmann on 1/25/2011 2:49:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 1/25/2011 2:29:00 PM (view original):
If 5% of the population is capable of murder, a law isn't going to stop them from doing it.   Again, all crimes aren't created equally.

Yep.  I've had guns pointed at me before, by convicted criminals, and no one has had the balls to pull the trigger.   You know why?  Killing someone isn't as simple as point and squeeze.  

But, of course, none of us would have to pull the trigger.  If murder were legal, the assassin/hitman industry would flourish.  Most of congress would be shot by now, making a run for political office akin to suicide.  Divorce rates would drop to virtually nil, because why pay her half or let her have custody when you can hire Vinnie to off her?  Don't wanna deal with the competing business across the street?  That can be fixed.  IRS stopping by for an audit?  Not any more.  There are millions of situations where hiring an assassin would make one's life much easier if murder were legal.  It would be open season on homosexuals for the religious right as they, of course, would find permission to do so in the Bible.  

The very notion that murder rates would not go up if it were legal is so absurd, that I have to believe that MikeT23 is an alias of Swamphawk22.

This is quite possibly the dumbest argument I've seen.  Wouldn't it stand to reason that everyone would hit a "hitman" to kill the "hitman" that's been hired to kill them?    If so, wouldn't we eventually only have one remaining "hitman"?   Or, quite possibly, only one living human left on earth?   I mean, if we're going full-on stupid, let's go all the way.

My argument, way back when, was that laws do not prohibit murderers from committing murder.    They either do it as a crime of passion or pre-meditated.  Either way, they know it's against the law and they do it anyway.   Joe Schmoe on the street isn't walking around saying "Man, if murder wasn't illegal, I'd be killing some people!!!!"   That's just some fantasy that soft America has invented to make themselves feel tough.

once again, you are making very strong assumptions as to the type of people that murder, which has been conditioned by our existing set of laws.

semi-interesting thread, which is surprising.

MikeT's entire argument based upon his ability to understand human nature and know who is capable of killing and who isn't is absurd and completely indefensible.

Much like seemingly everyone else's belief that a set of laws is what separates the average man from those capable of murder.    Not only absurd but quite stupid.  Intentionally taking a life is not the equivalent of turning on the oven to cook a pie.

Here's a test for anyone who thinks it's just that simple.

Surely there's a stray cat running around your neighborhood.   Kill it.

i dont think anyone is suggesting random killing would be rampant, so that analogy fails.

crelman has suggested that virtually every politician, disagreeable spouse, flaming homosexual, registered sex offender and competing businessman would be killed.    That may not be random but it's pretty damn rampant.

Again, it's easy to say "Man, I'd kill that guy if I wasn't afraid of going to jail" but that's a lot different than actually doing anything. 

Posted by MikeT23 on 1/25/2011 9:12:00 PM (view original):
Here's a test for anyone who thinks it's just that simple.

Surely there's a stray cat running around your neighborhood.   Kill it.

Also against the law.  If the Hammurabi Code was the law today, there would be no qualms with killing people for smaller transgressions. 

Posted by creilmann on 1/25/2011 3:58:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 1/25/2011 3:20:00 PM (view original):

Posted by creilmann on 1/25/2011 3:19:00 PM (view original):

Are you now saying that you didn't state that people would hire hitmen to kill virtually every politician, disagreeable spouse and competing businessman? 

There you go!  You have it about half right.

OH BOY!!! Now sexual predators are on your new hit list!!!

Who, exactly, gets to live in your world?  

Seriously, if it were legal to kill anyone, do you honestly believe that....

- some self-described, "good intentioned" people wouldn't kill some guy in the neighborhood on that list instead of taking a chance that he might come after their kid?

- more homosexuals wouldn't be killed in the name of God?

- more politicians on both side of the isle wouldn't be assassinated because some Glenn Beck-like nut job believed their politics were too extreme for America?

Just those three....answer them honestly.

I'll let you have another crack at this.  A simple yes or no is all that is needed.

Read the thread.   The answer is "People aren't going to start murdering other people because the laws change.  People are either capable of murder or they are not.   Breaking a law does not factor into that equation."

So your answer is no to all three.

Posted by MikeT23 on 1/26/2011 10:39:00 AM (view original):
Read the thread.   The answer is "People aren't going to start murdering other people because the laws change.  People are either capable of murder or they are not.   Breaking a law does not factor into that equation."

Or people have been so conditioned to not consider murder because the negative repercussions are so high, which has nothing to do with capability.

An interesting question.  I can't give an honest answer because, as you know, everyone alive today has been conditioned under the same circumstances.  Of course, this plays right into what I've been claiming since page 1.    Under the current conditions, repealing murder laws isn't going to turn the world into a bunch of murderers.   Whether it's genetics or conditioning, people aren't swayed away from committing murder because of a law, they don't do it because they're not capable.

You do see you completely contradicted yourself there right? If laws created conditioning which impacts behavior then lack of laws could certainly create an alternate set of conditioning and thus behavior. To think killing wouldn't rise gradually if not radically if legal is optimistic yet terribly naive.

Did I say it was conditioning?   No?  OK, how did I contradict myself?

You said everyone has been conditioned under the same circumstances, and those circumstances are that murder has been illegal.