(pldennison has said he will no longer respond to me. I post this in case he is still lurking. Whether or not he changes his mind and decides to reply anyway is up to him.) (And his comments are in bold.)
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by pldennison *
There are ALWAYS choices. It’s just that some choices are more difficult to make.
You’re right, I never should have suggested that you do this. But the point I was (poorly) trying to make earlier was that only in extremely rare occaisions is it necessary to kill someone in order to resolve a situation. All too often, people simply kill the person because that’s the quick, easy way to resolve things. And guns make this even easier to accomplish. (Physically easy, that is. Psychologically easy? I sure hope not.) They do it simply because they don’t want to assume the burden and the risk of taking care of a dangerous person. Leaving him alive is the right thing to do, and it’s also the more difficult thing to do. The right choice is nearly always the more difficult one.
You have no idea how or where I live. (Well, if you look at my profile, you’d get a glimpse.) I live in Downtown Los Angeles. It doesn’t have the highest crime rate in the city, but it’s close. (Hollywood is more dangerous, IIRC.) Some of my relatives (in particular a first cousin) know where I live and are completely mystified that I don’t carry a gun or at least a really big knife or just live somewhere else. (The rent is cheap. And it’s convenient to public transportation {when the drivers aren’t on strike!}) How do I survive? Common sense. I seldom go out after dark. (But I’m a day person anyway. This is no hardship.) I choose bus lines that drop me off right at my front door. I try not to visit ATMs after dark, and if I do, never withdraw more than $20. I’m considering carrying a big-ass metal-cased flashlight both for self-protection and to illuminate certain ill-lit sections of the street. Not once have I ever felt the need to carry a gun.
No one is so inferior that he deserves to be killed.
What do pedophiles have to do with this? (And if this is true, it’s possible that pedophilia is genetic; they were born that way. Are all people natural-born killers? I believe some are and you mentioned two: Gacy and Bundy. I’m going off on a tangent here, but I believe that some people are more susceptible to their instincts than others. It’s more difficult for them to control their baser impulses. Either their self-control is too weak and cannot be made strong, or their instincts are too strong or both.)
I guess I just imagined reading and hearing people complain that they didn’t want the government to spend their tax dollars on prison reform. On a current death penalty thread, one or two posters say they don’t want to pay for killers to live in luxury, as if ANY American prison was luxurious.
You brought it up when you asked if the Allies had used Nerf balls in WW2.
I had considered jumping off a building myself, so I am well aware there is more than one way to do it. If a building was inaccessible, I was going to try drowning. Both these methods were not readily available, so I am still here. (There was time for someone to physically intervene.) But if a gun had been at hand…
Point conceded.
No, I don’t want you to make your wife give up her right to choose to prove she has the right to choose.
I meant drugs cause physical harm to the users only. (Why do I have to make that so clear? Why isn’t it obvious?) And I’m well aware of how drugs cause emotional harm to the users’ friends and families. My father died from smoking excessively. You think we never wished he had had a different habit? His brother was an alcoholic and it very nearly killed him. You think we never wished he had not drank?
If cold reason leads one to the conclusion that it’s sometimes all right to kill people, there’s something to be said for emotionalism if it leads one to the conclusion that no one deserves to die.