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I was taking into account the human factor; most people are simply not willing to kill another human being in cold blood, whether it's sheer empathy or the risk

I was taking into account the human factor; most people are simply not willing to kill another human being in cold blood, whether it's sheer empathy or the risk of getting caught.

jstarfish 8y ago
Empathy is not a consideration in the mind of a hungry man.
- eitland 8y ago
  This has been proven wrong by many a hungry man.
jandrese 8y ago
I think simple human empathy would be a problem for anybody considering a career in contract killing. A bigger problem might be that it's not as easy to for sure kill someone as most people think, especially if you want to avoid leaving any evidence at all. It only takes one error to kill your career. It also doesn't help that the public's image of assassins (super professional bald guys with enormous resources) is pretty much completely wrong. Actual assassins are much more likely to be drug addicted flat broke bums.
- naasking 8y ago
  > It only takes one error to kill your career I think this overstates the case. Up to 40% of murders go unsolved in any given year. Most murders are committed by people the victims know, that's why they're "easy" to solve. If you don't know your victims, there's virtually no way for the police to link you to the crime unless you make a colossal mistake, like divulging our identity or your contact info to the person who hired you, as the police will be looking at them closely. DNA and fingerprints, unless you're already a criminal where those are registered, would only establish you as serial murderer whose identity is unknown.
  - jandrese 8y ago
    Or someone's camera-doorbell catches you walking down the street at the time of the shooting and they match your face up at the airport... Or a cop happens to be sitting one street over and hears a gunshot and gets to the scene just as you're stepping out of the building. Or the victim is paranoid and has an itchy trigger finger. Or the cops are investigating the victim's family and associates and notice a weird pattern in their bank account. There's a lot of ways a killing can go wrong. Even if the odds of any one killing going bad are small, the cumulative chance of an error creeps up with each job. Worse, it's hard to jack up your prices really high to reduce the number of jobs you have to do because the more money moves around the more scrutiny it receives.
    - naasking 8y ago
      Every circumstance you described is clearly exceptional and not representative of the norm, which don't seem to change the points I've made. Simple precautions would handle most of them too. Interesting that you assume an assassin's preferred method of execution is a gun or other violent means of execution. That seems like the last resort of anyone competent to me.

I was taking into account the human factor; most people are simply not willing to kill another human being in cold blood, whether it's sheer empathy or the risk of getting caught.

jstarfish 8y ago

Empathy is not a consideration in the mind of a hungry man.

eitland 8y ago
This has been proven wrong by many a hungry man.

jandrese 8y ago

I think simple human empathy would be a problem for anybody considering a career in contract killing. A bigger problem might be that it's not as easy to for sure kill someone as most people think, especially if you want to avoid leaving any evidence at all. It only takes one error to kill your career. It also doesn't help that the public's image of assassins (super professional bald guys with enormous resources) is pretty much completely wrong. Actual assassins are much more likely to be drug addicted flat broke bums.

naasking 8y ago
> It only takes one error to kill your career I think this overstates the case. Up to 40% of murders go unsolved in any given year. Most murders are committed by people the victims know, that's why they're "easy" to solve. If you don't know your victims, there's virtually no way for the police to link you to the crime unless you make a colossal mistake, like divulging our identity or your contact info to the person who hired you, as the police will be looking at them closely. DNA and fingerprints, unless you're already a criminal where those are registered, would only establish you as serial murderer whose identity is unknown.
- jandrese 8y ago
  Or someone's camera-doorbell catches you walking down the street at the time of the shooting and they match your face up at the airport... Or a cop happens to be sitting one street over and hears a gunshot and gets to the scene just as you're stepping out of the building. Or the victim is paranoid and has an itchy trigger finger. Or the cops are investigating the victim's family and associates and notice a weird pattern in their bank account. There's a lot of ways a killing can go wrong. Even if the odds of any one killing going bad are small, the cumulative chance of an error creeps up with each job. Worse, it's hard to jack up your prices really high to reduce the number of jobs you have to do because the more money moves around the more scrutiny it receives.
  - naasking 8y ago
    Every circumstance you described is clearly exceptional and not representative of the norm, which don't seem to change the points I've made. Simple precautions would handle most of them too. Interesting that you assume an assassin's preferred method of execution is a gun or other violent means of execution. That seems like the last resort of anyone competent to me.