Justified Killing - Progressive vs Conservative morality

[Cow Poke]

I think he is partly messing with people. All he has to do is start threads and people freak out and become so upset they can't see straight.

Meh, I kinda enjoy him -- sure he has some extreme positions, but I'd agree it's not a total 'messing with people', though I have to believe there's some of that.

I know from experience that people misunderstand things on here very easily and often assume the worst in their opponents, which is what I think he uses for his own entertainment.

Which is why I politely asked him, on more than a few occasions, to clarify his position. In one, where I think he worded it kinda oddly, I'm glad I asked.

[mossrose]

Either you guys live in some sort of horrific post-apocalyptic hellscape where gangs of marauders roam the streets and thus a gun is vital for self-defense... or much more likely I think is that you're just all delusionally paranoid and absolutely kidding yourselves about the seriousness of the threat and dwelling in fear that is purely a construction of your own minds and completely lacking any sense of reality about the sheer improbability of any of these things ever, ever, ever, happening to you.

In the large city near where I live, in the past 2 weeks, home invaders have killed at least 2 residents in their own homes. Of course, they were killed with guns, which are, of course, illegal in this country. Of course, if the homeowners had weapons, perhaps the perpetrators who entered the homes looking for, of course, money and drugs, would have been frightened off. Or maybe killed. But, of course, people died because other people involved in criminal activity had weapons that the average person, of course, is not allowed to own to protect their self and their families.

According to you, it was ok for the "marauders" to break into these occupied homes and murder the residents because the marauders are intelligent and who cares about the victims.

It isn't a "horrific post-apocalyptic hellscape" nor are we "delusionally paranoid and absolutely kidding" ourselves. Threats are out there in the real world, and even if you think you are safe where you are, I would bet you money that if somebody broke into your house with a gun you would do everything you could to save yourself.

In fact, I bet you money that if somebody broke into your house with a baseball bat or a tire iron or their bare fists on your face you would do whatever you could to save yourself. And maybe even your family. As long as your family is intelligent, I guess.

[Sea of red]

Meh, I kinda enjoy him -- sure he has some extreme positions, but I'd agree it's not a total 'messing with people', though I have to believe there's some of that.



Which is why I politely asked him, on more than a few occasions, to clarify his position. In one, where I think he worded it kinda oddly, I'm glad I asked.

I think he just enjoys how unhinged some people can be on here, so he never bothers to correct the assumptions people make about him. I'm just like him in that I make analogies that often fail and sometimes people just fill in the blanks with the absolute worst extreme that comes to their mind - where it then becomes very difficult to undo the damage.

I think the reactions he gets from people are just too priceless for him to put in the effort and frankly, I can fully understand that. A lot of the people on here are just too loopy to bother wasting your time trying correct something they've misunderstood, and when they throw the nastiest bile they can think of your way, you tend to not care if they cause themselves grief in the process of calling you everything under the sun.

[Jedidiah]

It seems a very strange hypothetical scenario where the only available defense is lethal defense. For example, if you had a gun, which is the main weapon that offers lethal defense, then your options include threatening to use it on the criminal and actually using it non-lethally on an arm or a leg and attempting to disable them. However, it is my view that a criminal trying to beat up your family does not validate shooting them four times in the chest, for example.

In general, the answer to your question is that I do not agree that the use of lethal force is reasonable in such situations, because the value of the criminal's life outweighs the non-lethal harm done to people. Not to mention that it sets a terrible precedent of people thinking they are free to kill criminals whenever they feel threatened.

Anything that protects my family is validated in my opinion. If someone is trying to beat my family, or even myself, their life is not worth much to me. Any one who tries to use a weapon on an arm or a leg is a fool, unless they are far better with a weapon than am I. When anyone takes to crime they have effectively reduced the value of their own life.

[rogue06]

This isn't Hollywood. Shooting someone in the arms or legs - particularly someone who is moving around - is incredibly difficult, even for someone who is highly trained. It's also much less likely to stop someone before they can do any (further) damage, particularly if that someone is pumped full of adrenaline, alcohol and/or drugs.

As for using a weapon to threaten, that happens all the time and it can certainly be effective, but there are plenty of situations where simply threatening the use of force is not enough. It really depends on the circumstance.

For example, if someone is on top of someone else and they're beating the ever living crap out of them, chances are they're not even going to hear you or see that you have a gun. Waving a gun around yelling "I've got a gun and I'm not afraid to use it" in that instance is just a waste of precious seconds that the person taking the beating might very well not have.

IIRC, there are multiple studies that show that merely announcing that you're armed, showing the weapon, cocking the weapon or aiming it has stopped far more assaults than actually shooting someone.

[Jedidiah]

You've been downplaying the very real threat that physical violence using only one's own body actually poses to the recipient on multiple occasions.

You appear to value the "intelligent" life of the person who's currently dishing out the beating over the life of the one who's receiving said beating.

And, Starlight, most of us see it exactly the opposite. The life of the "disher" has become of much less value purely as a result of his actions. Don't act like an animal and I won't put that level of value on your life.

[Cow Poke]

I think he just enjoys how unhinged some people can be on here, so he never bothers to correct the assumptions people make about him. I'm just like him in that I make analogies that often fail and sometimes people just fill in the blanks with the absolute worst extreme that comes to their mind - where it then becomes very difficult to undo the damage.

I think the reactions he gets from people are just too priceless for him to put in the effort and frankly, I can fully understand that. A lot of the people on here are just too loopy to bother wasting your time trying correct something they've misunderstood, and when they throw the nastiest bile they can think of your way, you tend to not care if they cause themselves grief in the process of calling you everything under the sun.

Hey Sea!!!! We have like two whole responses to each other that are calm and civil! Let's see how long we can keep that up!

(And I did appreciate your post in my 'sun is cooling' thread - still haven't gone back yet, but it's on my list to follow up)

[Cow Poke]

And, Starlight, most of us see it exactly the opposite. The life of the "disher" has become of much less value purely as a result of his actions. Don't act like an animal and I won't put that level of value on your life.

Yeah, how "intelligent" can somebody be who wants to attack and beat up a person?

[mossrose]

I think he just enjoys how unhinged some people can be on here, so he never bothers to correct the assumptions people make about him. I'm just like him in that I make analogies that often fail and sometimes people just fill in the blanks with the absolute worst extreme that comes to their mind - where it then becomes very difficult to undo the damage.

I think the reactions he gets from people are just too priceless for him to put in the effort and frankly, I can fully understand that. A lot of the people on here are just too loopy to bother wasting your time trying correct something they've misunderstood, and when they throw the nastiest bile they can think of your way, you tend to not care if they cause themselves grief in the process of calling you everything under the sun.

I think we are all getting kind of tired of your own nasty bile-filled posts against the believers on this site. You used to be fairly even-tempered and posted with some degree of desire to make yourself understood and desire to understand what others were saying.

Now you say nothing except how awful we all are and how mean we are and how we've treated you so horribly. You know darn well that this is not the case. Something has happened to make you very thin-skinned, and you and your buddies are merely trolling at this point. I am sure you all agree on your "plan of attack" and tag-team each other in a ridiculous attempt to make us feel guilty about something that we haven't done.

I am guessing that this post will put me on your list of people who have been mean to you, but, oh, well. C'est la vie.

[Jedidiah]

It kind of shocks me the way you guys talk about these extremely hypothetical scenarios as if you face them every other week... Rogue's insane delusion that he needs his gun to protect his family... you all discussing highly unlikely hypothetical scenarios as if they were some sort of serious threat that you really needed to take seriously. Either you guys live in some sort of horrific post-apocalyptic hellscape where gangs of marauders roam the streets and thus a gun is vital for self-defense... or much more likely I think is that you're just all delusionally paranoid and absolutely kidding yourselves about the seriousness of the threat and dwelling in fear that is purely a construction of your own minds and completely lacking any sense of reality about the sheer improbability of any of these things ever, ever, ever, happening to you.

Not a single person I know has ever been "beaten up" even once in their entire life. That's just not a thing that happens often. Because it is such a rare event, no normal person spends time thinking about how they would prevent it happening, or believes they need a gun to protect their family in case it happened, any more than any normal person spends time worrying about how they would respond to a meteor crashing into their neighborhood. Obsessing over the possibility of being beaten up (and to the point of death at that) strikes me as a sign that a person needs medication for mental illness as they would seem to have paranoid delusions out of all proportion to actual reality and probability. Now, of course, it's theoretically possible that where you live is such a hellish place that you need guns for self-defense to save you and your family from the roaming hordes of zombies criminals, in which case move somewhere else ASAP. But, in practice, when I look at the US gun statistics I see that actually a family with a gun in the house is many times more likely to have an accident with it or use it for a suicide than they ever are to use it in self-defense against those virtually completely imaginary criminals who are on the prowl waiting to attack the family. So, because the threat is imaginary, the "solution" of a gun makes the family demonstrably less safe. (A similar issue arises with the mostly-imaginary fear about it being dangerous for children to walk alone - parents driving their children to school to 'protect' them from all the imagined predators cause more children to die in car accidents, because cars are dangerous, than child-snatching predators ever did.) So it seems like anti-anxiety medication would be the better solution to the fear of imaginary violence that seems rampant in this thread.

P.S. An analogy I've just thought of is that a person carrying a gun around to protect themselves from all the imaginary people about to beat them up is like a person who insists on always wearing a hat with a lightening rod on it in order to protect themselves from a lightening strike, except stupider because the gun is actually dangerous to themselves whereas with the lightening rod hat they merely look silly. A person who is genuinely that scared of highly improbable things happening to them should probably spend their life cowering in a fetal ball barricaded in their home.

However unlikely it is, and I admit that it is not likely in the circles I move in, if it happens it is a big deal. A bigger deal than the death or hospitalization of the attacker. I am not statistically likely to have a fire in my house, most of us do not. But if there is a fire I want a fire extinguisher first, not the fire department. Likelihood is not a very useful argument in my eyes.

[Sea of red]

Hey Sea!!!! We have like two whole responses to each other that are calm and civil! Let's see how long we can keep that up!

(And I did appreciate your post in my 'sun is cooling' thread - still haven't gone back yet, but it's on my list to follow up)

That's cool man. I appreciate you returning the favor. If you have any questions that are science related I'm always ready.

[rogue06]

Not a single person I know has ever been "beaten up" even once in their entire life. That's just not a thing that happens often.

I think it is safe to call B.S. on this one.

[Terraceth]

IIRC, there are multiple studies that show that merely announcing that you're armed, showing the weapon, cocking the weapon or aiming it has stopped far more assaults than actually shooting someone.

How are they being compared, though? If it's simply "more assaults are stopped by demonstrating the presence of a gun than shooting" then we have to ask if demonstrating the presence of a gun is more common than actually shooting, and by how much, as that can make a very big difference in regards to the comparison.

[Sea of red]

I think we are all getting kind of tired of your own nasty bile-filled posts against the believers on this site. You used to be fairly even-tempered and posted with some degree of desire to make yourself understood and desire to understand what others were saying.

Now you say nothing except how awful we all are and how mean we are and how we've treated you so horribly. You know darn well that this is not the case. Something has happened to make you very thin-skinned, and you and your buddies are merely trolling at this point. I am sure you all agree on your "plan of attack" and tag-team each other in a ridiculous attempt to make us feel guilty about something that we haven't done.

I am guessing that this post will put me on your list of people who have been mean to you, but, oh, well. C'est la vie.

I guessed I learned that my efforts were in vain and to just not try anymore.

I'm as blunt with people as they are with me on this forum now. It's how I used to be before I joined this site and mellowed for a bit. But I went through some changes in real life and some other things happened on here that made me just say "forget this" and just lay it on the line. Your buddies do the exact same thing and you have no problem with it - in fact, you say it's within the rules. Why do you only speak-up when the other side does it? They are big boys and girls and if they don't like what they receive, then they should go back and critically examine some of their own posts.

Not everything is their fault, I'll admit, but it's not all my fault either. Your friends are not angels. I've made mistakes and tried to apologize to some people I've been unfair to - most on here never do that. But I've learned it doesn't go very far or make a difference. If other people aren't going to make an effort then I'm not going to either.

If that makes me a bad guy and you still see me as the sum of the problem, sorry to hear you feel that way. Request me to leave and if I'm such a problem.

[Cow Poke]

Not everything is their fault, I'll admit, but it's not all my fault either. Your friends are not angels. I've made mistakes and tried to apologize to some people I've been unfair to - most on here never do that. But I've learned it doesn't go very far or make a difference. If other people aren't going to make an effort then I'm not going to either.

Sea, I tried apologizing to you fairly recently, and it only sent you on another rage. There's plenty of blame to go around. And, as Carrik can attest, I fully admitted that I "play to my fan base" just like I accuse the liberals of doing. I said I needed to reign that in, and I am.