Poll: The Murder Question

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KissingSunlight

Molotov Cocktails, Anyone?
Jul 3, 2013
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This was a hypothetical question I asked online about ten years ago. I am curious how much has the people's attitude has changed with this question.

Suppose that your government has declared that murder is legal. You can kill anyone for any reason. The police won't arrest you. You will not be prosecuted for any crime. Would you start killing people?
 

tippy2k2

Beloved Tyrant
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Mar 15, 2008
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Dear God no.

I feel bad when I kill a bug in my house (poor little guy!), let alone to kill a person who has hopes and dreams and aspirations. Frankly, the only way I could ever see myself killing someone is if I am fearful enough for my life that my hand is forced (in which case, your answer would still be no since I imagine just about everyone would not consider it murder if you are defending yourself).
 

Saelune

Trump put kids in cages!
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Mar 8, 2011
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Only the ones who are trying to kill me. Fuck them. Meanwhile I just try to hold out as we wait for a new government to arise from the now Red House, since all the idiots who made this legal have been summarily executed.
 

Wintermute_v1legacy

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Mar 16, 2012
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Is this like that movie Purge, where all crime is legal for a day or something? If that's the case, and I could afford a fancy security system I'd just stay at home, or better yet, I'd leave the country until things got back to normal.
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

Queen of the Edit
Feb 4, 2009
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Can I kill anyone? Absolutely anyone? What if I have a list of people across the world? If the law is simply; "As long as you're back before a certain period it's fine, we won't extradite you ..." I might be tempted. It's a far shorter list if it's just domestic targets.
 

KissingSunlight

Molotov Cocktails, Anyone?
Jul 3, 2013
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Wintermute said:
Is this like that movie Purge, where all crime is legal for a day or something? If that's the case, and I could afford a fancy security system I'd just stay at home, or better yet, I'd leave the country until things got back to normal.
It was inspired before the movie came out. I was working somewhere that my bosses were letting customers, figuratively, getting by with murder. No, this is the new way of life in your country.

Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Can I kill anyone? Absolutely anyone? What if I have a list of people across the world? If the law is simply; "As long as you're back before a certain period it's fine, we won't extradite you ..." I might be tempted. It's a far shorter list if it's just domestic targets.
For you, let's make it worldwide. I am more curious about if people would kill someone, than I do about hypothetical international laws.
 

Sniper Team 4

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Apr 28, 2010
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Honestly...I'm not sure. There are quite a few people that I think deserve to die that live just here in the U.S. If murder was legal, that's one hurdle out of the way to be sure, but...I don't know. While I would not lose an ounce of sleep if Donald Trump died, or the CEO of the company that makes EpiPen, or that guy that got a 6 month sentence for raping a girl and then was released early (and the judge in that case too), I don't know if I would have the nerve to kill them.
Acting in self defense is one thing, and I would have no problem ending someone's life if they were trying to hurt me or someone I care about, but deliberately hunting down someone just because they're scum and I don't like them? That's dangerously close to a line I would rather not find out if I can cross.
 

Silentpony_v1legacy

Alleged Feather-Rustler
Jun 5, 2013
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Yes, but only in the traditional Klingon way. The Borta'S'Tay. The Rite of Vengeance. When one has been dishonored, he must throw his blade at the feet of those who wronged him. If they refuse to pick up the blade, they are a coward. If they pick up the blade, they must defend themselves.

This should be the only acceptable way of killing.
 

FalloutJack

Bah weep grah nah neep ninny bom
Nov 20, 2008
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There are some pretty shitty people out there. If all you needed was a good reason...
 

Anti-American Eagle

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May 2, 2011
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I'd assume castle doctrine is in effect and immediately fortify for when the people who treat this like the purge show up... so I can purge them.

Alternatively I suppose it would mean being the punisher is a valid career move now that the government's stopped caring about a real crime. Assuming the police won't take advantage of also being immune to murder charges to keep the streets safe, someone needs to. Can't have murderers running around.
 

Terminal Blue

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Feb 18, 2010
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Remus said:
So if murder were legal, I'd deeply consider it, but only as a public execution with a listing of their crimes and a psychologist on hand to back the necessity of these individuals to be plucked from the gene pool for the betterment of mankind.
No psychiatrist with any integrity would do that.

I mean, sure, wish death on whomever you want, but if you want some kind of pseudo-scientific justification for the morality of your decisions, then you're looking in the wrong place. Maybe try religion.

Ironically, rationalization of your own justification in hurting others would be (if you actually were to kill someone and were still able to continue doing so) a psychopathic trait. Psychopathy describes people who don't fit in with a society where empathy is valued and where hurting others is frowned upon.

The guards at the Nazi death camps were not "psychopaths", the people who planned the holocaust were not "psychopaths", the death squad members who lined up women and children and shot them into ditches were not "psychopaths", the scientists of unit 731 were not "psychopaths". Don't equate morality and mental illness, a human being doesn't need to be a "psychopath" to commit atrocities without remorse, they just need a way to justify themselves.
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

Queen of the Edit
Feb 4, 2009
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KissingSunlight said:
For you, let's make it worldwide. I am more curious about if people would kill someone, than I do about hypothetical international laws.
Possibly, maybe. I mean, I was trained to kill so I think I could kill. But given that I've never killed before it's pretty hard to say how I'd feel about it after the fact. There have been moments in my life where I have met people who I definitiely wouldn't be sorry if they disappeared from the face of the Earth. On my weakest moments, and with means to kill, I may have even taken that step if there was the right (or wrong) combination of emotional triggers, latent baseline anxiety, context of the environment, and then presented with opportunity.

But the thing is, anybody can also say that. But arguably if presented with means, opportunity, the right triggers, AND the right environment (say, a licence to kill) ... then yeah ... I might very well start ventilating their skull. So the question is ... can I kill people? Yes. I have the prerequisite skills. Would I kill? That is a question I don't really want to answer save for the fact that I could see myself killing certain people if all the multitudinal variables fell into play.

I'm not going to lie and say I couldn't kill someone. I'm not going to lie and say I couldn't ever imagine doing so.
 

Terminal Blue

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Remus said:
Don't judge until you've actually been where I've been, known who I've known.
Why? Are you demonstrating any particular reservation in judgement which I was supposed to have picked up on.

For the record, I'm not claiming to be "better" than any member of the species, save perhaps in one singular regard. I know there are situations in which I would kill people and probably not even feel that bad about it. However, there is no logically defensible reason why one human being can ever claim to know what is "the good of humanity", it the kind of meaningless rationalisation people come out with to pretend that gassing Jews, vivisecting Chinese peasants or sending political dissidents to die in Siberia is totally legit. All for the good of humanity, you understand. Just doing my job! Nothing personal!

If you genuinely want to kill people, don't pretend that dressing someone in a white coat and having them tell you it's okay would actually make it okay. What bothered me was the absolutist implication of wanting to kill people but also needing someone else to be responsible. That deferral of responsibility is, in real terms, far more dangerous than psychopathy, and far less pitiable to boot.
 

SweetShark

Shark Girls are my Waifus
Jan 9, 2012
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Obvious answer is no.
However there are sometimes that "normal" laws are against even if you are innocent.

For example in Greece there is a case of a Bulgarian family which killed their daughter and cut her into pieces and put her inside the garbage....
But here is the best part: after a year I think, not only the laws didn't done nothing to get punished, but there is a possibility to get away with murder....get this.....because they couldn't OFFICIALLY TRANSLATE HIS CONFESSION!!
Yes, they now what the father said, but they can't touch him until his confession become official in papers....

With that said, if these bullsh*ts continue in Greece, then f*cking please give me a gun to kill the criminals muself!!!
 

Phasmal

Sailor Jupiter Woman
Jun 10, 2011
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No, I'd just get the hell out of there and go to a place where murder was not legal.

I'm not a hateful person, nor do I enjoy hurting people.
 

omega 616

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May 1, 2009
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I don't really want to but I would take one or 10 for the team. (in no particular order) Trump. Ann Coulter. Alex Jones. Hillary Cliton. You get the idea I guess.
 

Thaluikhain

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Jan 16, 2010
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Probably...in that that rule would apply to everyone else and anyone you bump into ever might be trying to kill you for no reason. People would end up getting rather trigger happy. Though, we'd end up with vigilantes murdering people in response to murder and for society to function some kind of legal system would have to develop again.

Though, I'd be dead or in some other country by then.
 

Recusant

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Nov 4, 2014
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As it stands? No, of course not. Considering what society would become? Still no. I'd leave. If it's spread everywhere, I'd find somewhere uninhabited and live there while I waited for the laws to change or the societies to collapse and rebuild. If the only way to survive in a society is to project an aura of perfect unceasing strength, I'm either going to leave that society, or quickly be killed off.

Very few people "deserve" death. What most of the mildly-to-moderately objectionable need is to be taken aside, cuffed upside the head, and told "knock it off"; modern societies have precious few ways of doing that- our punishments tend to be much more serious. The more seriously objectionable usually just need to be removed from something; a person, a group of people, some specific stimulus. Death isn't something you can take back, and a dead person can't appeal their sentence; there's a reason many countries (and many localities) have no death penalties. If it's going to be just, it has be handed out rarely. On the other hand...

Sniper Team 4 said:
...While I would not lose an ounce of sleep if Donald Trump died, or the CEO of the company that makes EpiPen, or that guy that got a 6 month sentence for raping a girl and then was released early (and the judge in that case too)...
... sometimes, the guns should be pointed in the other direction. Let me preemptively say I'm not trying to derail here, this is relevant to the larger discussion.

I'm assuming that here you're referring to Brock Turner. You can argue whether what we did should constitute rape, but under the law, it doesn't, which is why the rape charges were dropped. He was convicted on three counts of sexual assault, and sentenced very lightly (six months, from a maximum of fourteen years)- as courts often do for first offenders, which he was. Our society goes absolutely insane over anything suggestive of sexual impropriety, which depending on the circumstances, can mean almost anything having anything to do with sex. If you get drunk and get behind the wheel of a car, you're responsible for the destruction you may cause. If you get drunk and have a regrettable sexual encounter, somehow the standard of responsibility disappears entirely, and you can't consent even if you wanted to; you were illegally taken advantage of by the other person, even if they were also drunk, which is what happened in the Turner case. Add in the recommendations of the probation board, and it makes a great deal of sense to hand down a light sentence. Turner was released early from this, yes, but that was for good behavior; not something that's at all unusual.

So what has Turner done that warrants death? He fingered a drunk woman and kept doing it after she passed out. He was arrested, tried, convicted, went to prison, behaved well, and was released early. Is he responsible for the actions of the jury that convicted him, the judge that sentenced him, or the parole board that released him? That doesn't make any sense at all. That leaves the sexual assault charge. Are you really claiming that that should carry a death sentence? Or are you just leaping on the bandwagon of outrage and making assumptions based on incomplete information?

I'm not defending Turner's actions here. He broke the law, and those who break the law should be punished for it. But they should be punished according the law, not according to the armed mob standing outside their house. We've seen similar mobs in the past sentence people to death for such crimes as "encouraging black people to vote" and "whistling at a white woman while Irish". It doesn't end well. And I'm not accusing you of some sort of wicked conspiracy or a longing to return to those days, just of not thinking this through. If vigilante justice becomes acceptable, we won't need the government to declare it won't prosecute murder; it'll already have done so.