Correction

[avevale_intelligencer]

In the previous post I said that the only thing that mattered about Jared Lee Loughner and Timothy McVeigh was that they wanted to kill.

I was wrong. I'm sure many people have moments when they want to kill, and then they move on. So the *other* thing that mattered about them, that maybe mattered *more*, was that they saw no (EDIT: sufficient) reason not to.

Christians, and Jews, and Muslims, and atheists, and agnostics, and Hindus, and Buddhists (especially Buddhists, perhaps) all see (EDIT: sufficient) reasons not to kill. ()EDIT: as do pagans, of course, and worshippers of the Spaghetti Monster and anyone else I hadn't thought of.) Some reasons are given in religious scriptures, some arise naturally from the consensus codes of morality by which we live, some are deeply personal. They're all good.

Let me be very, very precise about this: nothing justifies murder. No political ideology, no sacred precept, no failure of justice, no crime, no iniquity, nothing. Murder is never justified. Not even in those rare cases where it becomes necessary, when even I would admit that there was no other choice. Never.

To see no (EDIT: sufficient) reason not to kill is to see no reason. It is to be lost. It is to be pitiable and dangerous at the same time. And it is true of too many people.

EDIT YET AGAIN: and just in case anyone was wondering, I do not believe abortion or contraception are murder.

Comments

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

If someone is pointing what looks like a gun at me, and expresses an intention to use it to kill me in the immediate future, I think I'm justified in going for a pre-emptive strike. If circumstances mean that the only pre-emptive strike I can make is by using the gun in my hand (reality intervention: I don't have one, and wouldn't know what to do with it if I had) to render them incapable of attacking me, then such is life, and if they didn't want it to happen, they shouldn't have made the threat.
I gather that the British police force agree with me. (Not that that means they're right, or I'm right, but it's a possibly useful standard of comparison.)

[keristor.livejournal.com]

That's basically my position. Again with the caveat that I too don't have a gun, and am not likely to do so in any future which seems likely.