# What percentage of men and women would you say are capable of premeditated murder? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 12, 2010, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-men-and-women-would-you-say-are-capable-of-premeditated-murder/528727 "2010-02-12T16:39:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Trepa\_Mayfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Trepa\_Mayfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trepa_Mayfield)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2010, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-men-and-women-would-you-say-are-capable-of-premeditated-murder/528727/21 "2010-02-13T04:22:47Z")
wow you people are cynical ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2010, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-men-and-women-would-you-say-are-capable-of-premeditated-murder/528727/22 "2010-02-13T05:16:35Z")
Between the rape thread and this one, I’m a bit dismayed by the dim view of humanity a great number of people here obviously have. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2010, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-men-and-women-would-you-say-are-capable-of-premeditated-murder/528727/23 "2010-02-13T07:51:34Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > Between the rape thread and this one, I’m a bit dismayed by the dim view of humanity a great number of people here obviously have. \ ---
**Author:** ![lavenderviolet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/cdc98d/32.png) [@lavenderviolet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lavenderviolet)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2010, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-men-and-women-would-you-say-are-capable-of-premeditated-murder/528727/24 "2010-02-13T14:51:07Z")
> [@Stealth\_Potato](#): > > Nope! My feeling is that the proportion of people who wouldn’t be able to commit premeditated murder (either because they’d screw up or because they just wouldn’t have the will to do it) is probably substantially less than 33%. Maybe you got the wrong impression from my suggestion that this is an optimistic assessment. 😛 I agree. I believe there are a few people out there who have such strong convictions about killing they would never kill someone else under any circumstances, but I think that a very high number of people (both male and female) could definitely kill someone if they had a reason to and really thought they would get away with it. I think the only reason murder is relatively rare is because few people encounter a situation that really does make them think murder is the right answer, and of those few the majority realize the odds of getting away with it are low. I suppose you could say that this is a dim view of humanity. I would admit that, overall, I tend to view mankind as a whole as being not terribly different than hairless chimps (and murder is a normal part of chimpanzee society, too). Still, I would not say that someone is evil because they could potentially murder. For example, I’m including in my definition of potential murderers the sort of person who would kill a child molestor who had hurt their child (or even someone else’s child just because they think the world is better off without child molestors). While vigilantee killing is clearly not a good idea for various issues of innocent until proven guilty and so forth, I don’t really see the person who would consider such a thing as evil. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-men-and-women-would-you-say-are-capable-of-premeditated-murder/528727.md?page=1)