Blogger Stabbed To Death After Internet Abuse Seminar (theguardian.com) 449
A prominent Japanese blogger has been stabbed to death minutes after giving a seminar on how to resolve personal disputes on the internet. The Guardian reports: Media reports said Kenichiro Okamoto, better known by his blogger name Hagex, died on Sunday evening after reportedly being attacked by a man he had argued with online. The suspect, Hidemitsu Matsumoto, allegedly followed Okamoto into the toilets after he had ended his talk at a venue in the south-western city of Fukuoka.
Okamoto was stabbed several times before staggering out of the toilets after his assailant, who fled on a bicycle, according to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper. Okamoto, who sustained stab wounds to the chest and neck, was taken to hospital where he was confirmed dead. His attacker reportedly handed himself in almost three hours after the attack.
Okamoto was stabbed several times before staggering out of the toilets after his assailant, who fled on a bicycle, according to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper. Okamoto, who sustained stab wounds to the chest and neck, was taken to hospital where he was confirmed dead. His attacker reportedly handed himself in almost three hours after the attack.
Probably not a good product he was selling... (Score:2)
Or maybe some cutting-edge research on how to improve his product was the problem?
I must have read this right when it came out. (Score:5, Insightful)
stabbed to death minutes after giving a seminar on how to resolve personal disputes on the internet.
Not to be snarky here, but my first thought after reading this was "So I guess that's exactly NOT what you should do, huh?" (Sorry to be morbid.)
At least the guy turned himself in soon afterwards. But he bothered the guy online, even kept making new IDs to hassle the guy after the previous one was disabled.
What the hell is wrong with people? "Someone's wrong on the internet / in life and it's my duty / job / addiction to permanently correct them? Get over yourself and come up with a better argument. Make them come over to your side instead. Hell, maybe you'll even learn something yourself.
Winston Churchill: A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
Re:I must have read this right when it came out. (Score:5, Interesting)
Could just be a twist on the classic stalker, who thinks he didn't get the attention he deserved from his target. Less about the concrete difference of opinions, but the fact that he thought he deserved replies.
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What is wrong with people?
They don't have meaningful goals driving their life decisions, combined with too much free time (that isn't being used towards meaningful goals).
Rather than invest in relationships with family and friends, they decide to hate.
Rather than try to make the world a better place by volunteering or something similar, they decide to hate.
Rather than work on a hobby or project (learn instruments, write stories, even just play games), they decide to hate.
Rather than worry about their own pr
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When enough people get together to hate they can be globally influential.
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True that, I was referring to individuals and personal motivations. These can, and are, certainly influenced by the wider society around us.
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I also dropped the price...
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> When you feel like everyone is hating on you, pushing and hating them back harder is your only defense.
Bullshit.
A weak man fights back. An enlightened man surrenders to the wisdom of: "What you resist, persists." i.e. There are bigger Wars to worry about then one Battle.
The ONLY way to overcome Hate is with Forgiveness -- that is, repaying Evil with Good. It is (partially) what makes us humane -- something that we STILL need to learn from the animals: Unconditional Love.
Violence is NEVER the solutio
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stabbed to death minutes after giving a seminar on how to resolve personal disputes on the internet.
Not to be snarky here, but my first thought after reading this was "So I guess that's exactly NOT what you should do, huh?" (Sorry to be morbid.) At least the guy turned himself in soon afterwards. But he bothered the guy online, even kept making new IDs to hassle the guy after the previous one was disabled. What the hell is wrong with people? "Someone's wrong on the internet / in life and it's my duty / job / addiction to permanently correct them? Get over yourself and come up with a better argument. Make them come over to your side instead. Hell, maybe you'll even learn something yourself. Winston Churchill: A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
I know, right?
They need to look at our progressive American way of doing things instead: throw people out of your restaurant, get them fired, and gather in mobs outside their house.
Re:I must have read this right when it came out. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Believing that someone is an asshole gets you nothing. You have no right to harass someone, even someone you think is an asshole.
Re:I must have read this right when it came out. (Score:4, Insightful)
They need to look at our progressive American way of doing things instead: throw people out of your restaurant, get them fired, and gather in mobs outside their house.
Or the conservative American way of doing things, throw people out of your bakery or restaurant, get them fired, gather in mobs outside their house, shoot them at church, firebomb their business....
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Or the conservative American way of doing things, throw people out of your bakery or restaurant, get them fired, gather in mobs outside their house, shoot them at church, firebomb their business....
You forgot enslave them for 246 years; drag them behind first horses, then wagons, and finally pick-em-up trucks; burn crosses on their lawns and burn their churches for good measure; hang them by the neck for any crime at all, including imagined ones; massacre natives, and students, and veterans, and asians, and brown people... To be fair, I suppose we could just go on forever.
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You realize multiple doctors who provide abortions have been murdered, right?
That a church was recently shot up?
That the Secret Service had to investigate a lot more threats from 2008 to 2016 than previous administrations?
If you are just now fearing political violence in the US, your ideological agreement has provided excellent blinders.
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Comparing this administration to Nazi's is effectively holocaust denial.
Comparing that comparison to holocaust denial is sucking this administration off with vigor. You'll refuse to see what's happening right up until you're toting a rifle in South America and murdering people for being brown.
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You are embodying the path that leads to genocide. You are attempting to "unpeople" those who you don't like,
Point to the place where I did that.
and calling for violence against them.
I didn't do that either, although there is precisely one time at which it is warranted to use violence, and that is to prevent violence. The Trump administration is doing violence, and these people are willfully aiding and abetting that violence.
Using violence to stop Nazis is one of the most warranted cases that there ever has been, to the point that it is literally the canonical example in the western world.
Re:I must have read this right when it came out. (Score:5, Insightful)
There aren't so many Nazis still running around. They've mostly aged out. So you're not talking about Nazis, you're talking about "people who I don't like, and so label Nazis so I'm free to advocate violence against them". Don't do that.
He's not. He's talking about people marching around with RaHoWa banners and torches, chanting "Blood and soil! Blood and Soil!"
And like most intelligent people, he's decided that people who look like Nazis, act like Nazis, and talk like Nazis are, for all practical purposes, Nazis.
You are either a sympathiser or incredibly naïve to interpret it otherwise. Which is it?
(That's a rhetorical question; it's pretty obvious from your sig that you are in fact an apologist for such types.)
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What the hell is wrong with people?
Knives.
Re:I must have read this right when it came out. (Score:4, Interesting)
What the hell is wrong with people? "Someone's wrong on the internet / in life and it's my duty / job / addiction to permanently correct them? Get over yourself and come up with a better argument. Make them come over to your side instead. Hell, maybe you'll even learn something yourself.
Scott Adams has theorized that you simply can't reason with any human being and get them to change their mind on anything because all decisions are made on emotions, not facts. While I don't agree with him and have a differing theory, I can't at this time disprove his theory.
I have a different theory that I'm not sure I want to fully go into here, but I'll summarize. I suspect that about 10% of the population sees everything in black and white terms. According to my theory, you simply can't reason with such people because they don't see anything in terms of gray and even worse, they don't understand that the way they see the world isn't how the vast majority of humans see it. So when you try to reason with them on anything they have a different opinion on, they think you are crazy because they think you have access to the exact same information they do and see the universe in the exact same way they do so thus you are stubbornly refusing to go along with reality by having a different point of view. They are truly incapable of understanding a different point of view on a subject.
It could also simply be that the killer is mentally ill and none of the above applies. And in reply to another comment elsewhere, all I can say is killing someone you disagree with and then turning yourself in to the police and is a very Asian and in particular a very Japanese thing to do.
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You might find the concept of the Philosophical Zombie [wikipedia.org] interesting, if you're not already aware of it.
Robert J. Sawyer has an excellent piece of fiction exploring the idea called Quantum Night.
Re:I must have read this right when it came out. (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a different theory that I'm not sure I want to fully go into here, but I'll summarize. I suspect that about 10% of the population sees everything in black and white terms.
In a more or less recent conversation here about bad cops, someone brought up a possibly apocryphal but plausible-sounding anecdote about a cop suggesting that there's about 15% good cops, 15% bad cops, and the rest are followers who will just go along with whatever is happening. We could argue about the percentages (both in policing, and the general population) but I think a similar effect is at work in simply thinking. About 15% of people think, about 15% of people refuse to think, and the rest just go along with whatever is happening around them. If the people around them are thinking, they will give it a go. If the people around them aren't, they won't.
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stabbed to death minutes after giving a seminar on how to resolve personal disputes on the internet.
Not to be snarky here, but my first thought after reading this was "So I guess that's exactly NOT what you should do, huh?" (Sorry to be morbid.)
At least the guy turned himself in soon afterwards. But he bothered the guy online, even kept making new IDs to hassle the guy after the previous one was disabled.
What the hell is wrong with people? "Someone's wrong on the internet / in life and it's my duty / job / addiction to permanently correct them? Get over yourself and come up with a better argument. Make them come over to your side instead.
Hell, maybe you'll even learn something yourself.
Winston Churchill: A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
I hope that the attendees of the lecture got their money back, as clearly the presenter's technique doesn't work.
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Some people want to be incorrect, but they still believe they're right. These people have emotional baggage that it's not your job or competency to fix and your time and attention can do far more good with the other seven billion people.
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Not to be snarky here, but my first thought after reading this was "So I guess that's exactly NOT what you should do, huh?"
It's like the George Costanza method of dispute resolution.
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then what the hell is wrong with blocking?
If people sincerely believe things you think are dangerous or evil (as opposed to actual trolling: pretending such beliefs to get a rise out of you), perhaps you have a moral duty to attempt to convince them otherwise.
Words and violence are our only choices for dispute resolution. I prefer words.
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seminar on resolving internet issues? (Score:3)
Seems to me that he either didn't practice what he lectured on, or his lecture probably wasn't worth attending....
That said, I have to wonder what drove his attacker to (a) kill him, then (b) turn himself in within a few hours (but not immediately)....
Re:seminar on resolving internet issues? (Score:4, Interesting)
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That I understand. What I don't understand is the three hour delay. If you assume you're going to be caught quickly, why not
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It might be a bit spur of the moment kind of attack (on the other hand, he got whatever he used to stab with from somewhere) and he had things he wanted to handle before going to prison.
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That I understand. What I don't understand is the three hour delay. If you assume you're going to be caught quickly, why not just stab the crap out of whomever, then just stand there waiting for the police to show up?
Hookers and coke.
If I was an internet troll, and probably still a virgin, that's what I would do if I knew I was going to spend the next 10+ years in prison.
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You seem to be of the impression that killing a human being (or any animal) for the first time was somehow easy.
Have you ever had a near-hit? Or an actual accident? There is such a thing called shock.
Circumstances make me believe that this was premeditated, however planning to do something and even really wanting to do it is something entirely different than standing before the result.
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Not so much leniency as avoiding a life sentence or the death penalty.
We don't know the details but maybe he didn't even intend to kill the guy. He ran off before he was dead. Maybe once he realized he was facing murder charges and dying in jail he decided to hand himself in and hope for 10-15 years for cooperation and good behaviour.
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Yeah, because if a person who doesn't take on information from his murder victim's lecture, it's because the lecture wasn't worth listening, or because his victim didn't do a good enough job conveying his argument...
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It's not the fault of GP if morons mod it (up) as anything other but 'funny' or maybe 'underrated'.
Re:seminar on resolving internet issues? (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, I have to wonder what drove his attacker to (a) kill him, then (b) turn himself in within a few hours (but not immediately)....
That's not uncommon, actually.
People do the crime out of high emotion, then a little reason kicks back in afterward and they realize their situation is hopeless and they will be hunted down anyway.
I actually know someone who did that (though he turned himself in in a couple of days, not hours).
Worst argument ever? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because an argument that lead to one of the parties getting to pissed off they decided to find the other in meatspace so that could stab them to death can't have ended particularly well...
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So I guess we can safely assume that he wasn't as great at resolving internet arguments as he thought he was?
You really cannot say that based on a single incident, and not knowing more about this specific issue (assuming you don't know more than I do).
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So I guess we can safely assume that he wasn't as great at resolving internet arguments as he thought he was? Because an argument that lead to one of the parties getting to pissed off they decided to find the other in meatspace so that could stab them to death can't have ended particularly well...
There are always a few people out there who will resist any reasonable attempt to resolve differences, no matter how well done.
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He was probably thinking about securing online accounts and avoiding doxing... Which maybe he did, because the guy didn't go to his house or workplace, he had to wait for him to attend a public event to get near him. Avoiding murder was probably a bit beyond the scope of his talk.
Re:Worst argument ever? (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you resolve an argument with a deranged person? That's a different type of negotiating skill
The tally is up to 3 now... (Score:5, Funny)
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Relevant XKCD [xkcd.com]
Holy crap, a 50% increase in death by blogging!
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Point proven? (Score:2)
APK (Score:3)
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Lunatics on world stage (Score:5, Interesting)
There is also the case of the guy that flew from New Zealand to the US to attack teenage girl, and was shot.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/wor... [bbc.co.uk]
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Where the difference between dead victim and barely surviving assailant was that in the US you are allowed means to defend yourself.
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However if the attacker had also been from the USA, he would have brought a gun to the gun fight.
s/would/might/
If you had a point to stand on, then every single assault in the USA would be committed with a firearm, which is not the case. Logic? You fail it!
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If you can't come up with ways to defend yourself without a firearm handy, then maybe you're just... too stupid to live?
Right, so please tell me what are my chances against a roided-out thug if both of us have knives. With a gun, physical strength hardly matters.
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If you can't come up with ways to defend yourself without a firearm handy, then maybe you're just... too stupid to live?
Right, so please tell me what are my chances against a roided-out thug if both of us have knives. With a gun, physical strength hardly matters.
Not just that, but you can be smart enough to know how to use a knife in combat and still get shot by someone dumb enough to whip out a gun and shoot you with it.
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If you can't come up with ways to defend yourself without a firearm handy, then maybe you're just... too stupid to live?
What shape is your grandmother in? Does she seem likely to succeed in defending herself without an equalizer?
Hey ladies! (Score:5, Funny)
For your information, I give seminars on how to avoid crazy sex with multiple gorgeous women.
Hint hint...
Re:Hey ladies! (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately, your are still getting stabbed. The only thing changes is by whom.
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There goes Roscoe again, out to get Crazy Cooter.
Wrong assumption (Score:5, Insightful)
Additionally, Internet is unlike person-to-person communication in a way that you don't screen your audience for sanity and you don't get non-verbal clues giving you an early warning that someone is about to blow the lid.
More so, once people made up their mind it is virtually impossible to change their mind with logic. People change their behavior and convictions due to pain (social or otherwise) and not due to being convinced by evidence and reason.
As such, the only rational approach to online and social media discourse is to act pseudonymously and acrimoniously.
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As such, the only rational approach to online and social media discourse is to act pseudonymously and acrimoniously.
The latter might not be a good idea if you can't absolutely ensure the former. Doxing is a thing.
you don't screen your audience for sanity and you don't get non-verbal clues giving you an early warning
You don't from sociopaths either. Or was that psychopaths? I always get them mixed up. Either way, I'm not going to rely on my amateur psychology skills to keep myself safe.
Re:Wrong assumption (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, doxing is a thing regardless of how you behave. There are plenty of rational, civil, and well-meaning people that were dragged by a social mob. It is almost arbitrary on who gets targeted and why.
Acting rationally and civilly is a handicap if your goal is to advance your ideas. Slogans and soundbites, shaming and insulting, and marginalization and uncharitable vilification of opposing views is by far more effective.
This isn't how it should be, but this is how it is. Our society and norms are not designed for instant, global, and non-individual communication.
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First, right and wrong are not always binary or universal. It might not even be possible to know what is right for some situations. Instead, we ought to look at epistemology of one's beliefs. How well-justified one belief ought to determine its validity.
Second, people might be committed to a certain beliefs in more than intellectual way. It could be part of their personal and group identity. It might be part of their upbringing.
Really (Score:2)
Reminds me of a local murder case decades ago, where a teen had been murdered in a store robbery where he worked, having given a speech in class earlier that week about how to talk one's way out of being murdered in a robbery.
Non clickbaity details (Score:3)
Civilized Society (Score:2)
Re: Okamoto Killed in Fukuoka (Score:2, Funny)
You see that Alanis? That's irony.
YOU HAD ONE JOB (Score:2)
You had one job...
https://twitter.com/RomulusJoh... [twitter.com]
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Anonymous Coward on 06-27-18 8:10 (#56853702)
And Another Gun Worshiper spreads his Gospel.
Is everything in Your life about Guns?
And another coward fails to stand up and be counted, as he lacks strength of conviction. Is everything in your life about cowardice?
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If they didn't when SWATtting became a thing they won't now.
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Online discourse is very complex.
In general you have the power to speak your mind, and often without any real consequences, as you are in general separated from the people who disagree with your argument. This separation also prevents proper discourse, undoubtedly for most arguments they are issues and factors that are not taken into account. This is the point of proper discourse, to expand the views given, not necessary change them, but to give a more complete picture.
So side one giving their opinion with
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No amount of self-defence training and no guns can save you from someone who wants to kill you. If you have a gun, the guy will find out and shoot you before you can even think 'oops'. If somebody wants to kill you, the only thing that might prevent it is that person's stupidity, lack of dedication to killing you, or a bunch of highly trained bodyguards. Even the latter will probably not stop that person, unless you can afford the best of the best.
That being said, almost all self-defence situations have not
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No amount of self-defence training and no guns can save you from someone who wants to kill you.
And yet guns (with and without owners seriously trained in self defense strategies, tactics, and legalities) are legally and constructively used hundreds of thousands of times every year to prevent violent assault or to mitigate one in progress. Guns have saved the lives of countless people that someone else wanted to kill. You seem to think that most violent assaults that end in someone's murder are all carried out by rational movie hit-men who spent the previous scene flipping through a folder of photos
Re:The illusion of safety (Score:4, Informative)
That's because you've shifted the goalpost from "someone is out there to kill you" to "preventing violence".
You seem to be suggesting that because the average person isn't likely to be able to stop a carefully planned murder that, therefore, all of those people who DO defend themselves should just give up and let their attackers have their way.
No, I do not seem to be suggesting that. Learn how to read & understand texts!
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No amount of self-defence training and no guns can save you from someone who wants to kill you.
Security is non-binary. No security is perfect, yet it still has value. No plan can 100% always protect you, but effective self-defense sure helps.
That being said, almost all self-defence situations have nothing to do with somebody trying to kill you.
Words mean what I want them to mean!
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not real thrilled with the choices, but given what it i
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Something which is easy to do in anger, or accidentally, or just out of annoyance....not to get at the people who are determined to kill you no matter what. It's to get at the people who don't, but who with a gun might kill you anyway.
Gun laws don't stop those kinds of crimes because those people obtain guns legally.
FYI: Take Baltimore city, for example [baltimoresun.com]. Most of the gun crime in the country is committed by individuals who:
* Went out of their way to get a gun illegally ahead of time
* Were already criminals
* Had a plan in mind before they even obtained the gun
* Were committing gang violence
Re:The illusion of safety (Score:4, Informative)
Killing somebody in anger is only "easy' if you're a psychopath. It's hard to imagine a non-psychopath saying such a thing. Who's anger raises to the level of murderousness? That's serious mental illness - which is the real violence problem in society.
I'll tell you who does want to kill you though - Mao, Stalin, Pol-Pot, Leopold II, and Hitler. They are empirically far more dangerous.
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Killing somebody in anger is only "easy' if you're a psychopath.
Have you been outside lately? Done any driving? How many people have been in your lane coming around a blind corner? Every one of those people was at minimum a sociopath, and more likely a psychopath. They're willfully assaulting you with a deadly weapon which weighs over a ton.
Re:The illusion of safety (Score:5, Insightful)
Killing somebody in anger is only "easy' if you're a psychopath. It's hard to imagine a non-psychopath saying such a thing. Who's anger raises to the level of murderousness? That's serious mental illness - which is the real violence problem in society.
I'll tell you who does want to kill you though - Mao, Stalin, Pol-Pot, Leopold II, and Hitler. They are empirically far more dangerous.
Killing someone in anger *is* easy. That's a crime of passion, and it happens all the time, around the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
You don't have to be a psychopath, nor a sociopath for that, you only need to recognize that humans are prone to fits of extremes. In fact, being a psychopath is the absolute opposite of killing someone in anger. It's killing someone without feeling anything. I think I'm probably a psychopath; but I haven't killed enough people to tell.
I said all that to say this - human life is cheap. There are more of us every day. There haven't even been any significant wars or depopulation events in living memory to make us feel fragile as a species. There are plenty of people who can look around themselves and see that no one is particularly important. Taking a life is socially repugnant, but ultimately irrelevant.
If you've seen the movie "Punisher" or movies like it and thought, "Those men deserved to die," you're closer to the latter. If you refuse to watch it, or have seen it and thought, "He has no right to kill those men" you're closer to the former. In the context of this article, I treat everyone with respect - even people I hate, and it amazes me every time I see someone provoke another intentionally to rage - because you never know who might be ready to justify killing you - ranging from that blind rage crime of passion, to the coldly calculated, "I can make the world a little better for their absence."
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The point of gun legislation is not to get at the people who are determined to kill you no matter what. It's to get at the people who don't, but who with a gun might kill you anyway.
That is noble and all, but I will take the Freedom to act over the supposed safety provided by being prohibited to act. In this case, it is about guns. I will take the Freedom to use a gun over the supposed safety provided by the regulation/prohibition of guns.
There is no middle ground. You can either have Freedom, or you can have complications that tend to encourage safety, but do not guarantee safety.
I choose Freedom.
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Looking at statistics on death from violence, "Freedom" means "Freedom to be killed violently".
That's part of what it means, and it will always be part of what it means.
I'll give that up in a heartbeat.
That's why you deserve neither liberty nor security.
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Yet I have both.
You think you have both, when you have precious little of either, and both of them are slipping away from you. When anyone is deprived of their human rights, then yours are also threatened... unless, of course, you aren't human.
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Looking at statistics on death from violence, "Freedom" means "Freedom to be killed violently".
I'll give that up in a heartbeat
Those who would surrender freedom for safety deserve neither, and get neither. Do you think prisons are safer? Less violence there?
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Generally, yes. Prisons in most Western countries are very safe. Among the safest places you can be.
But as with so many other things, the US is the exception. There is enormous amounts of violence in US society, and much of it is lethal, and that can be seen in prisons as well. And apparently this is a desired state of affairs, which to me is nothing short of insane.
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Doesn't seem like removing freedom helped much then.
Of course, once you surrender your freedom, you lose the power to resist being sent into violent situations. Chained to the bench in the war galley; sent to clear a minefield the easy way; forced to fight on the front lines, but not given a gun. History is replete with such examples.
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Doesn't mean I will take up arms against you. After all, the hobby isn't worth a human life.
If you think the right to bear arms is about a hobby, hush.
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That's very touching and all, but there are obviously a lot of people who have no such reservations. Thanks for playing!
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Yeah, if the attacker had had a gun, I'm sure he could have at least gotten two or three other folks as collateral damage.
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When the time is right.
A generalized gun confiscation would probably make it happen. A coup against the elected gov't might, too.
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It would be a horror. Millions dead. You wouldn't enjoy it. We are doing everything we can to avoid it.
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Silly Slashdot poster. This tyrannical government is doing what gun owners want!
Re:How Could This Happen... (Score:5, Insightful)
When are you guys going to start a revolution with your pea-shooters? I heard that is why you need them: to protect us from a tyrannical government. So...when?
If it's ever necessary, it will happen the same way it did last time. Citizens with guns, mostly ex-military and led by ex-military, will take military armories on the first day of the war. Military bases are gun-free zones, after all. (Yes, really, a soldier can't even carry his own personal gun on base.)
Half the militia that fought the British troops in the Battles of Lexington and Concord were exactly the cliche - bunches of dumb, poorly trained hicks all related to one another. But half weren't, and they accomplished something.
If you don't know US history, it might surprise you that the war started when the governor sent troops to confiscate military-style weapons from the populace. Didn't work out well for him, in the end.
Re:He was good, but... (Score:5, Funny)
...his opponent's technique was cutting edge.
Stop being a hack: any way you slice it, it's too soon for using a sharp wit to mock his death.
Obligatory Mortal Kombat (Score:2)
FATALITY