Dana, you're free to consider it fucked up, but that's how I feel. I don't care why you murder people. I don't care about your reasons. I don't care about your mental state. I don't care if you were aware of what you were doing. I don't care if you are insane, on drugs, mentally retarded, or hormonal.

If you murder people, you've got to die. End of story.

But isn't the person killing the killer also a killer?

No, executioner.

What you're suggesting there, is that motive and circumstance are irrelevant. I can understand that perspective. Except that you've already made clear that actually motive and circumstance do matter to you. You consider it more offensive for a mother to kill her child than a father. If circumstance and motive are irrelevent, then it shouldn't matter whether it's the mother or the father, it should offend you no more or less.

Correct

Personally I think circumstance and motive are very relevant. It might not be relevant for the person who died. But then again the justice system (as indeed our burial rites) are not there for the dead, they're there for the living, us. Some murders are both a fatal attack on an individual, and a violent attack against a larger group, or against the things we as a society hold dear. Hence 'hate crimes'. Matters not one jot to the person who dies that they were killed for the colour of their skin, but it matters to us. To our society. The actual murder is not different. It's more like there's also an auxillary, more general crime against wider society.

From what he's argued, I gather that Radar doesn't think it matters why someone kills, only that they have killed. I think it matters why. A crime of passion is not the same as a sociopathic murder, nor a political assassination, nor a murder for financial gain. All those things are different.

By that logic some murders are more offensive than others. Personally, I am far less 'offended' by the father who kills his child out of a misguided but altruistic desire to save that child from something. The ones who have decided to kill themselves and think it kinder to take the family with them. They're utterly tragic. Usually not in a sane state of mind. That to me is deeply sad. But it doesn't offend me the way the jealous father does. The one that kills his children to punish his estranged wife, for instance. The one that kills his family because if he can't have them, nobody can.

It's not about the gender of the killer. It's about motives and reason. But the figures seem to suggest that the parent murdering purely for selfish concerns is more likely to be male. Mothers who kill are usually mentally disturbed. A parent (male or female) who knowngly and logically plans and carries out the murder of their own child is far more offensive to me than someone who lost the plot and did something terrible whilst they were not mentally competant.

Thats where you part ways. Its easier to just say "You take a life = you die." That reduces the excuses and all. I know it gets complicated in other ways, but in theory.
Its not about the motives at all - its about the act.


*note OMG - am I defending radar here? Shit I'm scaring myself now.

Which is why you will never hold an elected office and fail to understand human nature. You fail.

You take a life by accident (ex: car wreck)? You take a life defending yourself? You take a life defending your family? You take a life defending our citizens?

Then you should die, no matter the circumstances under which it happened.

Over. Out.

You'll have to ask radar that one, mtp.

You agreed with him. You can't defend your own opinion?

I think you're point is a very stupid one. I can defend myself just fine thanks. I've been doing it here for longer than you've been around - mmmkay?

My point is: why should I ask Radar specifically when you agreed with him? You don't know what you agreed to or why? I was asking you, and you don't have an answer to the question? If you can defend yourself, why aren't you? Did you just realize your point is stupid and am now attacking me, to pull attention away from your stupid narrow minded post?

How is her point stupid? You made a statement and when she responded to it you refuse to defend it. Hell I should start agreeing with some extremely ridiculous statements and then when someone beats me in argument I can just say it was someone else's argument, talk to them. If you don't want to defend yourself, don't post something.