Topic awaiting preservation: things that make me want to kill...

http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/02/24/snowball.shooting.ap/index.html

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thats f***ing unbelievable!
Words are not enough to describe what I'd do if that little kid would have been mine!
/Dan

{cell 260}
-{ a vibration is a movement that doesn't know which way to go }-

Words cannot express enough the disproval and sickness that the article has provoked in me. That's just insane. WTF was that man thinking?

Jesus...of all the stupid f*cking things to do....


WebShaman

It... But... oooooooooo...

That just furthers my belief that we need to seriously thin out the population...

Well there is one good point to allowing stupid people to own weapons.

If we manage to wall them off someday, they'll kill each other and reduce the workload.


It's how prison should work, but somehow they have televisions.

~cough~

We should use our outrage when hearing these things to find ways to prevent these kinds of things from happening again. People have to be taught not to do these things and there just aren't enough teachers.

cool

While I understand your point Bugimus, you can't tell me that a grown man needs to be taught that it's wrong to fire a gun randomly into a group of children.

He needs teaching perhaps, but my curriculum ideas are more along the line of barbed wire, high voltage, and large stones.

I'm with DL (and also LF).

I also think we should look at banning snowballs - I know the arguement that "snowballs don't kill people, people kill people" but....

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Yep, I completely agree with DL, and DG on the prison comment...

Sorry, but it's not a "correctional facility," it's prison. The only thing it should be "correcting" is the fact that someone is alive that does not deserve that privilege.

Everyday I find more reasons to hate people. Pretty soon I'm going to become a hermit.

St Seneca this is exactly my point of view. As a die-hard fan of Dune, I must say that I dream of better minded humans. But nowadays mankind tends to get more and more silly. Ahhh... I would like to live in Sahara with other "intelligent" people. I do not mean a discrimination. But I mean staying away from those that I don't consider as human. We are called "Homo Sapiens". But for me only the half of the world population deserve such a title. The rest is "Homo egoism".

Silence is another speech. -Me

While this article does stir all the usual emotions, I would like to comment on one thing:

From Bugimus: "People have to be taught not to do these things and there just aren't enough teachers."

From DL-44: "While I understand your point Bugimus, you can't tell me that a grown man needs to be taught that it's wrong to fire a gun randomly into a group of children.'

What I think Bugs was trying to say was that this might not have happened had the man been taught early on not to do these things. It's too late for that sort of teaching at this point in this man's life.

While we're on the subject of teachers, I don't think the term "teacher" has to refer only to school teachers. A teacher is anyone who helps another human being learn. Parents, for example, are teachers whether they like it or not, and sometimes the lessons they teach aren't good. Parents teach their children all kinds of things without knowing it: hatred, prejudice, intolerance, etc.

Am I saying that this man's parents are to blame for what happened? Maybe, but I don't have the necessary information to make that judgment. Most likely he learned from a number of different "teachers" in his environment. If those teachers had taught the right lessons, this might not have happened.

I say "might," though, because I still believe in personal responsibility. Yes, our environment has a great influence on the type of person we become, but we are not leaves falling into a running stream, whisked away by the current of life without any say in the matter. Every day we are faced with moments when, no matter what we may have been taught in life, we must make our own decisions. It is wise to question and to search, as long as the goal is true learning and not mere cynicism. Those who act only the way they have been taught are mindless automatons, but this does not absolve them of responsibility--Nazi officers at WWII death camps are an extreme example of this.

Just as we have a responsibility as learners, though--a responsibility to take what we learn and test it to see if it holds true--we also have a responsibility as teachers. Though most normal human beings will feel anger and revulsion upon reading this article, we need to recognize that there may be Joseph Bests all around us. What are we teaching them?

This may seem paradoxical, but what I have said here follows logically from the belief that everyone needs to take responsibility for their own actions. Joseph Best needs to take responsibility for his actions, no matter what he may have been taught, because he has a free will to do as he wishes. Those who taught Joseph Best also need to take responsibility for their actions, but no one can force them to do this. In an ideal world, everyone would act responsibly and things like this wouldn't happen, but we do not live in an ideal world. Teachers will continue to be careless, and some of their students will continue to mindlessly follow the lessons they have learned.

As usual with this sort of post, I get the nagging feeling that I haven't quite been able to bring my thoughts together into a clearly defined point. Take what you will from it.

^ ^ ^ yes, well said.

I'm by no means the moral authority in the world. I'm just some guy with an agenda to rule the world.

That being said, I wonder if this particular thread is telling of a greater issue. It's not every day that we see some 35 year old open fire into a group of 10 year old girls. Lets admit, it's a fairly obscure thing. It just doesn't happen. What I do see in the responses in this thread is the outrage not that he fired a weapon into a group of people, but that he fired his weapon into a group of children.

Oh, to suffer the poor children.

I realize that this sounds like I'm being coldhearted, but I think this emphasis on the *targets* is silly. He fired into a group of PEOPLE. He shot a HUMAN. We hear about shootings all the time, but we elevate events like these into the records of "the truly evil," and file the man away to die in a prison. There's not a jury in the world that wouldn't give capital punishment to a 35 year old pudgy man that unloaded into a group of children.

We assign special emphasis on the age of the targets. "Poor Sally died young, and it was tragic. She didn't have enough time to learn just how painful life really is, and her cynicism was barely blossoming. She could've been a grade-A bastard, if given the chance. DAMN YOU, FATE!" Well, I think that's silly.

Perhaps I'm getting off on a tangent here, but maybe we should discuss why it is that we assign such horrors to the senseless, brutal attacks on children that we do not assign on the senseless, brutal attacks on 35 year olds. I think that just might be a little more telling on our universal society that we share here in the Asylum.

I think it has to do with our emotions. We have no control over how we feel about this act of violence and when the target is a little girl minding her own business we *feel* worse. When we *think* about it, then we know what you say to be correct but when we *feel* about it that's where we get the disparity. IMO.

There is a difference that is so unfathomably large between shooting into a group of random people and shooting intentionally into a group of children...

How you can not see that difference seems to me to be matter of semantic justificaiton rather than a realistic look at the situation.

And Suho - like I said...I understand Bugimus' point, but it doesn't change the fact that the man knew - at this stage, regardless what his mother may have done to him and barring the possibility of him being actually insane or mentally incapacitated - that this was wrong. Very very wrong. Are there things society needs to do to try to ensure that things like this don't happen? Of course.

Can we forgive, or try to explain away the cruelty of this action? Not a chance.

There's no excuse, and no explanation that can be offered will do anything to change that.

Actually, I would agree with twitch on one thing. The tone of the article presents a pretty one sided view of events. Granted, randomly shooting a group of people/children/insert plural noun here is not something to be condoned, however, I would really like to know what justification he had for doing this.

I would also like to know what the original confrontation was like, and what would happen to provoke a man to commit such an act.

Maybe I'm a bit too cynical, but I have a strong aversion to button pushing in literature or the news, and when an author deliberately tries to push emotional buttons by presenting a one-sided view of events, I am immediately wary.

Say you read a story about a 42 year old man who walked up to an 18 year old kid at the park and shot him with an old army issue beretta. Who'd side would you be on? Then you later read that the kid in question raped the man's daughter when she was 13. Would you be on the same side still? Now, that wouldn't make it right, but at least you'd be able to understand a bit more about the story. Hell, you might even be unsure about who the victim really is.

Then again, I could be really off the mark and Mr. Best turns out to be a complete psycho.

Now, I would like to point out that whatever the facts turn out to be, the person who was actually shot could indeed have been innocent as she was inside during both altercations so it is a heinous act in any light. But that doesn't necessarily make him a bad man. Wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a world where good men didn't do evil things?

Point taken, twitch. I wonder if it has something to do with some sort of innate "parent" instinct. Just a stab in the dark there.

silence also has a good point--a point that could be applied to a lot of news articles.

DL: I know where you're coming from, and I agree (it's buried somewhere up there in my post, something about free will, etc.). I'm not trying to justify in any way what the man did, or absolve him of responsibility (that was also in there somewhere too). If the truth be told, I was actually just inspired by Bugs' comment to go off on my own little rant about teaching.

The fact of the matter is, though, that your point and Bugs' point (as well as mine) are not mutually exclusive. I agree with you completely, in fact. It's just that I also think that maybe this could have been avoided if he had had some responsible teachers in his life. It doesn't change the fact that he is responsible for what he did, though.

I will take issue, though, with the "explain away" part. My post may have been an attempt at an explanation (an examination of what may have happened in this man's life previously--all conjecture, of course), but that does not mean I am trying to "explain away" (by which I assume you mean "excuse") what happened. An explanation is not an excuse, and vice versa. And no, no explanation offered will change what has happened--but a realization of our responsibility in influencing the lives of other might make things like this less likely.

I'm with twitch in that I didn't look at this any differently because it was a group of children than I would if it were a group of 30-somethings.

Let's look at the two groups:

Were the children any more or less innocent than an older group would be? No.

Were they any more or less able to protect themselves than an older group would be? No.

Were any of their lives more or less valuable than an older person's? No.

I noticed that at least two of the individuals who reacted strongly to the situation have children of their own and I am sure that played a big part in the reactions. Anytime something like this happens we tend to think about how we would feel if the victim was someone we love. I love my sister, my dad, and my mother. If that would have been an older person I would have wondered about what if that was one of them? I'd be just as upset as if it were a child.

He shot into a group of people. Their ages, races, and genders don't play any part in my reaction to the situation.

Oh, but it does make a difference, who the 'targets' (or victims) are...trust me on this one. The first Gulf War taught me that...

Though it sounds...very harsh, I guess, for someone who hasn't had the experience, killing a man is really not as bad as killing women (or children). The man would try to kill me, so....but the women and children would be less inclined to do this. Or able.

Intellectually, there is really no difference, that's true. They are all human. But emotionally, killing children is much worse...both on the killer, and the victims. The guy in the article has just sealed the doors on his own private hell...because he will have to live with this, for the rest of his life.

Funny.


I thought I was bothered by the pointless pain of an innocent in a situation that could have been wholly prevented by not allowing the stupid to live.
I thought I was moved by the idea that the monstrous drive of yet another human was bared and that the focus was once again obscured.
I thought that I was crying out for an end of some sort...a dissatisfaction with the pathetic human spirit, and the willingness we have to aid that spirit with less limitations and more jaded commentary.


I didn't realize that I was comparing the pain of one to another. I didn't realize that I had to judge by the height of the victimized. I didn't realize that it was about my perspective and how it should be changed to view one life as more valuable, or less so than the next.


---


I only knew that someone was hurt.


---


I'm glad that I can see now that I was wrong for just caring about that.

WS: So, because you've killed someone, you've got a greater insight into value of life than everyone else? That almost makes me laugh. The fact that you've actually taken a life doesn't make your point of view any more or less relevant than the rest of ours. We've all lost someone close to us and we all know how that feels; it's not necessary for us to have ended a life to be hurt by the loss.

DG: See, you should never stay away from the Asylum for too long, you might miss out on valuable life lessons.



[This message has been edited by krets (edited 02-26-2003).]

okay, people, seriously....stop agreeing with me. It's really bad form. As for the rest of you, agree with me more often.

The only point on which I wished to shed light was that the article in question was inarguably geared towards leaning on the age issue. It's as old as time itself, drawing an emotional response based off of the age of the target involved. It's tragic when a young kid is hit by a bus and dies, it's part of life when an old man dies on life support. I'm not saying that I'm not filled to the brim with sorrow that such an action happened--because I am. I may talk a big game, but I'm really just a rose-carrying, tree-hugging, teary-eyed bitch most of the time. I hate to see people in pain - regardless of any additional criteria. Which means that I feel sorrow when I see serial-rapists holding themselves in the pits of agony. Sure, the bastard deserved it, but that doesn't make *me* feel any better.

I see a distinct difference, DL, between the calculated shooting of an eleven year-old girl and the senseless, random shooting of a forty year-old man. I see the difference--and I'll tell you, it has nothing to do with age. I hope you see the difference, too.

quote:

---

Were the children any more or less innocent than an older group would be? No.

Were they any more or less able to protect themselves than an older group would be? No.

Were any of their lives more or less valuable than an older person's? No.

---

I have to disagree very strongly with all of these points, especially the 1st and 3rd.

But...whatever.

The last thing I'm interested in is a discussion about whether the fact that the victim is a child is more or less important than if it were an adult.

An innocent girl was shot at random becuase a man allowed his temper to soar beyond reason over a minor incident.

Silence - I also get your point, but we're talking about a girl the man knew nothing about, who he shot at random because she happened to be in the physical vicinity of other children that he had gotten in an argument with.

Not a man who had raped his loved ones...


And DG - being a child and being short are two distinctly different things...

Well, Krets, you have a point, granted. And a view, a valid one. So does everyone else.

*sigh*

Senseless killing, is always painful. Perhaps I should reword my statement to be 'for me, killing women and children is more painful....because those are the faces that haunt me at night.'

I apologize if I gave you the impression, that somehow, your views were not valid. My experiences, have led me to feel the way that I do. This in no way, shape, or form, invalidates yours.

And actually, my experiences have led me to have less value on life...yes, in a way, I'm broken...I care more for animals, then I do for humans.

[This message has been edited by WebShaman (edited 02-27-2003).]