Twokinds ARCHIVE Forums

I came to the decision long ago that it wasn't something that I wanted to experience ever. It's not because of gore (brain or milk splattered on the wall have about the same meaning to me) or fear of death. It's mostly because it means taking happiness/sadness/experience from not only the person you kill but everyone that they may have come into contact (potentially the whole human race), the belief that there is a higher authority than me(lets not get into that), and the fear of what I might become if I did.

However I would like your opinions on the matter(especially since a few people here make their livings doing it or being ready to do it at a moments notice).

I understand the will to protect and defend what you love but I guess you never know what you'd do in a situation like that unless you've experienced it.

Forgive my idealism and bad grammar.

We're just talking about people, right?

Myself, I think I'd only resort to that in a case of extreme self-defense...
:3

If I had to thing about it, I doubt I'd do it. But if someone was holding a gun to someone I love, I'll deal with my conscience later.

sane hmm...

There are times when knowing yourself is a scary thing.

I am a bit stoic and a bit of a sociopath but I do want good things for people.

That said I could imagine myself being a killer. I could turn off that part of my brain. But for me it would mean becoming less human. I could imagine myself as a merc (I can't follow orders) or an assassin. It would mean giving up on caring about alot things for me.

I think if it were just my life being threatened I could take the bullet (even though I thoroughly enjoy life). I'd want to protect the people next to me so If it came down to it it would be a split second decision(one I'd probably regret either way).

At the same time I could forgive just about anything I could think of so vengeance isn't a real issue for me.

So the only real solution for me is to remove myself from the possibility of a situation like that.

That, surprisingly, isn't a very hard task. I personally have never felt the urge to kill anyone. Also, it depends on your meaning of "the situation". Life throws us all curve balls, but you can't always avoid the circumstances. What you should focus on is dealing with any issues you have at that moment, and resolve them in a way that diffuses any hard feelings between you and the other party.

Me, I think I could kill someone easilly. In fact, there's a select few people in this world I know I want to kill. I have a friend halfway across the country, who ran away from home because her father beat her and her brother had been raping her for several months. So, yeah. It kills me that I can't even be there for her. If she ended up dead, I'd probably do something illegal...

Somni 8)

Threaten my family, friends or country? My conscience won't get in the way, not now, later, ever.

"Are you dedicated to this system?" style? No. Not happening.

(Wonders if anyone knows where the quote is from.)

Murder is Murder any way you look at it.

Technically, soldiers are no better then the mass murderer in a max-security prison. However, one must remember that with exceptions, most soldiers would rather not kill (what I'm trying to say is, soldiers don't kill, it's the governments who direct them. As a nuke launch tech on a nuc sub said, "We don't fire the missiles, the President of the United States fires the damn missiles)

Classic senario for a green recruit after his first kill- puke

(As for that firend of yours Insomniac, you want help holding the SOB down to uh, snippy-snip?)

Be careful about your wording- we do have military personnel on these forums.

However, I disagree with your statement. If what you're saying is true, then a soldier killing a terrorist about to detonate a bomb is no better than, say, Hitler. Technically, both of them have taken a life, and by you're definition, they are both guilty of murder. While I will not argue the murder part, I believe the reason, should you ever be forced to kill, plays a large part in defining the action.

Killing in the military, I assume, is no easier than murder. But, if you examine the reasons behind the attacker, patriotism says a lot more for you than vengeance or hate.

There's a saying in Judaism based upon the Adam and Eve story: Kill a man, kill a people (paraphrased from long-term memory).

Remember, most of the insurgents in Iraq are doing it for economic reasons, just like our soldiers (don't believe me? Watch any military recruiting commercial from the the last six or so years).

There's a funny survey on morality:
Question to group one: There's a train headed for a large group of people, but you're near a track switch and can save them, provided you're willing to let the train hit the person on the other track. Would you pull the switch?
The answer were almost unanimously positive.
Question for group two: There's a train headed for a large group of people, but there's a morbidly obese man next to the track before the people within pushing range from yourself. If you push him, his enormous girth will stop the train and save the other people. Would you push him?
The answers were overwhelmingly negative, with a few making the joke "fat people deserve to die anyway" before giving the negative, I'm sure.

That second scenario, with his girth being able to stop a train, is a HUUUGE "if"...
If it were a real-world scenario, one would have no way of knowing that it would work - heck, it would occur to very few people that it could work, or even be a possibility...whose mind works all "Murderous McGuyver" like that?
I think that little test is seriously flawed along those lines...and I'd also vote in the negative based upon those reasons.

As for the abusive situation, having actually had a friend die due to an abusive relationship, I would agree that, at the time, the rage/grief combo does indeed bring on the ability, even the desperate need to do the ******* in...but after some time, I know that if I had followed through on those impulses, I would deeply regret it today...

Agreed. It's a bit naive to say "Murder is Murder" as if the consequences or reasons behind the murder were nothing. Would I kill someone to defend my family? Yes, in a heartbeat, and I would never have looked back. My family has more of a right to live than a person who decides he can go around randomly destroying people's lives. Would I kill someone because I feel like they don't deserve to live? Not unless I was a judge, and even then, I would keep to the statutes of the law.

Ending a human life is not necessarily an undeniably horrible sin. It is an action, and, this particular action is one that cannot be neutral. It was either for good reasons or bad, for insidious reasons or for righteous ones. This is something where there is no in-between- with the exception of perhaps the most cold-hearted, I doubt many people would take a neutral stance on the death of a human being that meant anything more than a name in the newspaper to them.

But, I think it's safe to say that with nearly every death, no matter how horrible or wonderful the person, simultaneously one man will weep and another will leap for joy. Maybe not actively, but let's face it- there's plenty of deaths quite a few people are happy about. Saddam Hussein's- Nero's- Hitler's- Attila the Hun's- no one has ever regretted that these men should die, evil barbarians, hateful beings that are nothing but negative forces. What right do men who bring into the world nothing but hatred have to live?

I see life as precious, but there are times when the gemstone is too rough to be cut even by the finest tool. I would not ascibe the death penalty to every single crime possible- nor would I expunge it. I firmly believe that child molesters, serial killers, and the like deserve death- not torture or pain, but a quick death, a quick passing.

Then again, sometimes I wonder if the slow death of life in prison is not a worse punishment.