h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Mark Barton crushed his own children's heads in with a hammer. To save them from "the evergoing pain of life". They'll never have to feel the pain of graduating, or finding the love of their life or watching their kids grow up, or having kids at all. Or even making the choice not to.

Yesterday Buford Furrow decided to stroll into a little kids' community center and shoot at them. Over and over and over again.

I'm sorry, but these bastards should die.

Yeah, Fenchurch, these people should die - but then so should everyone else.

You want controversy, this is the forum that's going to give it to you!

I thought this one might become interesting. I’m a bit aftraid of the typical response though- one group saying “The Bible says an eye for an eye and besides, it’s just common sense” while the other group says “If you kill someone you are a killer yourself, it’s a neverending cycle”. There’s a difference between murder and execution.

I still have rollercoaster feelings about it, recent events have made the coaster a bit of a ride.

I sympathise with the reaction to recent events, just not with the desire to kill people for it.

I was discussing this here for a while after reading your post, and came up with the idea of personalised vengeance, i.e. if there is a victim who is directly afftected by the crime, and the criminal has been proved beyond reasonable doubt to have committed it, then the option of killing the criminal should be given to the victim. If the victim chooses to exercise the option, give them a weapon and allow them to kill the criminal. The final crux of the issue should be reached by not allowing the use of "stand off" weapons in such situations: you kill with a knife or a garotte [?] or some equally "up close and personal" weapon, rather than with a gun or by such a humane method as lethal injection. If you choose not to kill, then the criminal doesn't die.

People who are only indirectly affected by the crime, however, should not even be allowed to influence the decision of the potential vengeance-taker, and this is where this idea runs into difficulty. Personal responsibility for vengeance is a wonderful thing, but how carefully are you prepared to consider the consequences?

I was also reminded by your post of a quote from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, but I can't remember the exact words: it says a lot about the urge to vengeance, however, and I'll see if I can look it up and post it here tomorrow.

Though not all murderers are certifiable nutters, some are. Some people would be glad of dying, whatever the final cause, if their head wasn't a pleasant place to be conscious in. These people might find their continued life full of torment as they dwell over the suffering they've inflicted upon others, which would be an ideal punishment.
Unfortunately, there will always be those that are capable of performing deeply abhorrent shit without remorse, regret or even comprehension of what they've done. Asking the wounded party to kill them isn't going to help them any - even if it's a state-sponsored death with full legal assistance in the matter they'd still be ulimately responsible for pulling the trigger, tightening the wire, pushing the plunger, pulling the lever, pressing the button or pushing the piano off the tall building, all of which are equivalent to blood on the hands. Seeing as it's never really been done it might prove to be extremely therapeutic but it might also give people the creeping horrors even more than they have already for the rest of their days.
In the meantime, US schools have nutter-with-loaded-gun-in-the-dinerhall drills. Kids should not have to be put through this sort of shit. Even if it never happens they might still have constant fear for their lives drummed into them a little bit deeper. Clinton can go on the telly all he likes to say how sorry he is but it won't mean anything unless he finishes with "...so I'll be repealing the gun laws tomorrow. f**k the right to bear arms. If there's another war you can have them back but I'm confiscating them as you obviously can't be trusted." Sadly, this wouldn't be the root of the problem, though it is halfway down the trunk in the US. The root is the sick f**kers that decide to nail-bomb or shoot someone for no good reason. Sometime's it's done out of malice, sometimes by mistake and sometimes out of a sick form of diseased curiosity but for either the only way to assure the people they hurt that it won't happen again is to remove them from the streets. Some of the bereaved would feel that they're safely behind a thick wall, some would still feel sick that these people are still breathing the same air as them. Killing them might sometimes be what the perpetrator wanted. Even if the eys-for-an-eye thing didn't come from the bible I still wouldn't agree with it. With the fashion among nutters currently being to maim or kill several children they would still only have their one life to be taken in return for many. (Is this why some people turn to religion after such a bereavement? So that they can believe that the murderer will suffer the torment he avoided in life in the netherworld? If only it were so easy).

but how do you deal with the f**kers who dont have a damn conscience...how do you stop them in their tracks look them in the eye slap them in the face dig into the depths of their minds - and make them see, make them feel all the hurt theyve put their victims through...
-saffire

You can't: simple as that. Nobody can feel the same hurt as the victim of a personal crime. This is why the whole vengeance thing is a little pointless, as far as I can see.

I suspect Wingpig is on the right track: volubly, but noticably...

I agree whole-heartedly with your sentiments, Fenchurch! When I heard about the zombie who walked into the jewish center and opened up on a bunch of kids and old people I felt like blowing away all the nazis and klan types in the world (not that that's particularly unusual for me).

At one time, when I was more patitent with humans, I would have said that those people should be locked away for life (with no chance of ever getting out), but in light of current political-social trends, I'd have to say the expedient (not preferable) way to deal with them would be to just kill them.

Of course, the political-social realities I'm talking about are the rise of the right-wing nutcase- which I personally feel has no small part played by certain leftist groups and individuals who have declaired a vendetta against white males. Did you know that Gloria Steinhem's attendance at certain soviet-sponsored functions were paid for by the CIA? Couldn't think of an easier way to make a right-wing fanatic than by giving a misandrist enough power to make some of her agenda to destroy men into the law of the land.

i see...but what to do about those coldhearted criminals?
-saffire

As far as the death penalty is concerned - I'm all for it. As long as it is beyond any reasonable doubt as to who is responsible. Morally, it's a bit iffy, but then again many areas of society are grey and not simple black or white. And, I don't think that you can leave the decision and sentence up to the kin of the victim/s, the emotions involved in that situation would completely block any sense of reason. An unbiased unanimous jury makes sense.

But, I don't understand the fact that this sentence is usually never considered viable for killers under the age of 18 (as in the school shootings). I hate to blame it on the media, everyone does, but in all their coverage do they ever condemn it? No. They only talk about the horror and how everything would be better with gun control. I'm sure some messed up kid sees that and thinks, "hey, I could do something like that.." never realizing (or told) that it's just plain wrong.

Most of the young school shooters are just put in detention centers until they turn 18, then they're released and their records hidden. If one of them would be executed - just as an example - I think more kids would think twice about attempting something along those lines.

Then, we come to gun control. Let's face it, it would help some, but not as much as is constantly said. At the Columbine shooting they had bombs, Oklahoma City was a bomb... there are more deadly weapons out there other than guns, and some are easier to obtain.

I come from a rural area that is all about guns. And, I'd trust 95% of the people in the community with them. They know safety, and they not what guns are for. Should we take away the rights of the good part of society in order to hinder the bad part? Would that even work? I don't know. It's just one of those philosophical/political unaswerable questions...

I really don't see why we need guns. I understand that you'd trust people with them, but do we *need* them?

No one hunts anymore. Or at least, there's no reason to. There's no war. Is it just a power thing? Protection- you wouldn't need them if no one else had them.

Sorry, I should have clarified that. The coldhearted criminals are the only ones on whom such a "personalised vengeance" thing could work: you have to have a conscience denied or unrealised to be able to do that sort of thing, but at least you still HAVE a conscience.

The "nutters", as described, are a little more difficult. Do they even realise what they're doing? COULD they care? The ones with a conscience are the only ones who can feel sorry for what they've done, and to do it in the first place you have to be or make yourself "conscience-deficient". If you realise this, can you realistically expect murderers to feel as you want them to feel?

Thing is, the only people who would have them would be the criminals, who wouldn't balk a breaking a law concerning gun possession if they thought it gave them an edge in doing their nastyness.

Most places where there's high gun-ownership in the general population, there's very little violent or gun-related crimes.

As the fellow preceeding you pointed out, there's also more and more deadly weapons than guns for mass destruction and terrorisim. I know how to make them with just a few lighters and firecrackers, and they're easily strapped to an arrow or shot from a sling-shot.

Banning guns won't stop terrorisim- they'll even still have guns. However, when some ugly comes up on you or your family some night, you WILL be disarmed, being the basically decent sort of law-abiding citizen I know you to be.

I think the right to the best personal defense one can have is something which shouldn't be taken away simply because the same tools you use to defend yourself are used in an agressive manner by someone else. Before there were guns, there were people running around poking each other with swords and arrows, y'know- and as I said just a few minor modifications can make these primitive weapons even more deadly than a gun, even a machine-gun.

Nobody hunts anymore??

On that point I must disagree. Around here the first day of buck season is a holiday - schools are closed and everybody wants to know how everybody else did the next day. I know people who took a week off from school trying to get their deer...

I must agree with the Baron; somebody who is willing to commit a crime with a gun is not going to second guess owning a gun illegally - no matter how strict gun control laws are. And, when the polite, innocent, law abiding citizens are confronted with evil there will be nothing to do but succumb. Some people just don't like that possibility.

In the UK we abolished the death penalty over 30 years ago and although I hear about the odd bastard who I feel should have no right to life (Peter Sutcliffe, Myra Hindley, Dennis Nielson, Fred and Rose West etc.) there are enough miscarriages of justice that are overturned every year that seem to suggest that it is a bad idea.
The wrongful execution of one person out of every thousand 'deserving it' is enough IMHO to discount the idea completely. As 'we' are the state and the state is executing people on our behalf, then I would feel implicated in murder, which is something I am not happy with at all. I don't believe in the concept of 'acceptable losses'. This may make me a 'wuss', but at least my hands are clean.
Having never lived there, I don't know enough about the U.S. to want to argue the toss about whether or not gun control would work there. I guess the sheer size of the place would make it hard to police any new law. When you've grown up with stringent gun laws, as I have, the idea of owning a gun just seems bizarre - why would anyone want something like a gun?
A tank or a nuclear submarine, now those relly are objects of desire

That's the problem I've always had with the death penalty- it's a rather irreversable form of justice. You can't give someone back their life, once you've taken it from them- the main reason I've always said "lock 'em up and don't let 'em out!".

However, these politically-motivated mass-murders (and would-be mass-murders) are something new around here, on the surface level, at any rate. I mean, they used to go out and lynch the odd individual every once in awhile- but there was never any direct attack on groups of people like we're having now. If you put enough of these assholes in prison, there's a chance they could be sprung to kill again in some right-wing coup (and I'm afraid they're going to try- things are going to get worse before they get better). Of course, Prisons are notoriously hotbeds and breeding-grounds for racisim and intolerance (what do you expect from a bunch of criminals?) anyway. Still, I think the type of terrorist attack which prompted Fenchurch's original post should be met with the ultimate force (especailly when they more or less admit to it), just to make sure that anyone who would try it knows they WILL pay the ultimate price, and that there'll be no sitting around in prison, waiting for their "comrades" to bust them out...

Trouble with that idea is that these right-wing groups then end up with martyrs for their cause. Although Furrow allegedly acted alone due to a mixture of his psychotic tendencies and his racism, many times the jerks who commit the violent acts are doing so at the encouragement of a group of leaders who (as they directly commit no crimes themselves) are beyond the reach of the law.
These fanatical groups always say how they just want their own land. Fine, give them a couple of states of their own and let them get on with it. Build a very high wall around them and prohibit trade between the racist states and the outside world and let them degenerate into the eight-toed inbred mutants that they long to be.

That's what I've long thought (the let 'em inbreed and mutate)- however if you read any of the nazi pages (and I have), they won't be satisfied with the land they get. Hell, they can (and do) build their white-only communities on private land now, and even get to trade with the outside world. If you gave them the resources of a couple of whole states (nevermind having to relocate the people who wouldn't want to live under their thumbs) I think they would just use it as a staging area for more and bigger terrorist attacks- all just as "credibly deniable" as the tactics their leaders use now, but with probably far more damage. I'm sure if we can't keep the border to Mexico closed, we'll play hell trying to keep a border with a nazi state closed.

No, their goal is to be in control of everyone. They don't want to not only not mix with "coloreds", they want to prevent anyone who they consider "white" (especially women) to mix with "coloreds". They want to be able to kill homosexuals with impunity. They want to be able to kill anyone who violates their narrow, bigoted world-view with impunity.

They want violence, and will eventually get the violence they want- in one way or another. *sigh* You want to apply reason to someone who operates in a basically irrational manner- good for the short-term, but they'll screw you in the long-term. Because while your back is turned, they'll be prepairing to knife you. Take my word for it, I've known, studied, and associated with these types of people all my life.

I would encourage you to visit their web-pages (look for "christian identity" "nazi" "klan" and suchlike sites) and read what their goals are. It's not peace, my brother...

Yeah I know.
Maybe we should just cut their goolies off

I'm sorry I really haven't been keeping up with this as I've been busy, and maybe avoiding it, it does spark emotions... but let me explain my little blurb about guns, at least, while I absorb the rest-

-I know people still hunt for sport, but I really don't see the necessity, or the appeal. Of course, people's ideas of fun differ and I respect people who enjoy hunting, etc. etc., but I think if it comes down to safety or giving up shooting game...

-I know that there are weapons of mass destruction that would be available even if guns weren't, but do you think they'd be even remotely as easy to get- I wouldn't bet on the Columbine kids being given one of those by a bastard neighbor, or that "ticked off" day trader grabbing one...and the ones that could be homemade- at least they have some time to think about what the hell their doing? I can only hope that if people were given time to cool down they wouldn't be so blind. I know I may sound a bit ignorant or over-trusting, but I really like to believe that people are good.

That's all I'm going to write for now, I think. I'll have more later.