4 ms·

Are you really so lacking in perspective that you don't understand how guns lower the bar of "badly wishing to kill another" significantly?

• aaronem 13y ago
  Would that the human urge to kill were so tractable! I find your optimism refreshing.
  • vacri 13y ago
    It actually is that tractable. Plenty of murders are 'heat of the moment' things, where a lowered bar is significant. You seem intent on casting all gun violence as serenely premeditated. It very much isn't.
    • aaronem 13y ago
      Nor need it be for my point to stand; unpremeditated murder of the sort you describe is precisely the sort in which the nature of the weapon employed is of least significance, and the difference between a firearm and, say, an improvised bludgeon, has only to do with the amount of effort required on the part of the murderer to satisfy the urge which drives him.
      • thenmar 13y ago
        Am I the only one who thinks it's a little distracting how artificially formal this guy is? Anyway, it's freakin obvious how much easier it is to pull a trigger with only a little hesitation than to get a brick out and beat somebody to death. I don't understand how you don't see that. It's like you've already made your decision and no matter what anyone says, you're 100% confident you can explain it away before you even see it.
        • benched 13y ago
          No. I have the urge to tag every post of his with 'Congratulations on talking so pretty," but I don't want to be banned.
          • aaronem 13y ago
            Why, you flatter me, sir! I am just a half-bright reader of old books who feels himself moved to imitate, however poorly, the gracious use of language he finds therein -- but I thank you very kindly, all the same.
        • aaronem 13y ago
          I do delight in the use of formal language, and thank you for the compliment inherent in the adverb you chose; the best things in life, after all, are the result of artifice. It's obvious enough that killing someone with a firearm is easier than doing likewise with a brick. For a civilized, i.e. domesticated, human, acting upon the urge to kill at all is harder than either; a large part of what we call "civilization" consists in overcoming our murderous heritage. (Or did you think we humans have ended up our entire planet's uncontested apex predator, so much so that many of us never even have to hunt, because we're just so nice?) And have you considered the possibility that, once you've clobbered somebody in the head with a brick the first time, your perspective on the matter might change? God forfend I should ever find myself in such a position! But I think it reasonable to imagine that, once there, it might seem at least as sensible to keep going as to stop. "Escalation of commitment," I think it's called.
      • vacri 13y ago
        "amount of effort required" is not the insignificant thing you make it out to be.