Va. Tech Shooting

[divcurl0]

Society wouldn't become a jungle -- it would become very, very polite, as people learned better than to threaten anyone else.
A wise man has said that "an armed society is a polite society". I'll bear witness to that: I once stopped with a friend to buy groceries for camping, and was wearing my Ruger .357 on my hip, openly. When I came back out of the store, a group of people were being loud and rowdy, but as I got near they got quiet and the group began to break up. At the car, my friend told me some of them had been pushing and shoving others, and a few punches were thrown, and he'd been wondering if he should call the cops... but then I appeared, they saw my gun, and everything quieted down.
Think about it: just the presence of my visible weapon restored peace to a group of people! I didn't have to intervene; I wasn't even aware of the effect I'd had.

I was talking about killing someone pre-emptivly. Pre-emptive self defence ["Kill him if he 'looks' like a rapist/terrorist/murderer.."] is a ridiculous concept. I have explained why (explicitly) twice. Your belief that guns can deter crimes: Look, I understand what you are saying about people being able to get hold of guns, but again, not everyone possesses guns (nor can you force them to) so this power disparity will always exist, it will only be eliminated when each and every single person possesses a gun.

The concept of the gun as a deterrent ultimatly doesn't work for this very reason; that rowdy bunch would have wrought terror elsewhere. If you force people to act in a certain way, ofcourse they will stop doing so, but will restart it as soon as your back is turned. Surely the solution is stop people from feeling the need to be anti-social? Build youth centres, etc, etc.

As regards the rape, and excuse my explicitness, but when the act of rape is taking place, the man has totally overpowered the victim (he's literally on her). Her shouting "I have a gun" won't help. To prevent a rape from happening, I would advocate pepper spray or other products which can incapicitate (but not kill) the would-be attacker. As an aside, I was reading about a product called "rapex", an anti rape 'femidom' (what ever that is). This incapacitates the rapist causing him excrutiating as soon as he enters the victim. I would also advocate this product, but have some reservations.

 

[divcurl0]

Welcome to the internet... you'll be surprised what all is offensive here..

Inoffensive stereotypes of people from different nationalities is funny, almost as funny people being offended by them. Using a word in the same class as "N*gger" or "f*ggot", as a 'comeback' is not.

What do you expect against a bad argument regarding "appaling crimes"? Oh, and what did Lincoln do so bad?.

erm the institution of slavery for one. slavery is wrong now, it'll be wrong in 1000 years, and it was wrong in the past. If you dismiss this as 'moral absolutism' and all its other trite variants, you *are* an apologist for appalling crimes.

Yes, within a functioning democracy... we have those. .

No you don't. The American corporate controlled media is a propaganda machine, and politics is reduced to verbal bitch slapping. Pertinent, real issues are never talked about.

Of course, those we have tend to focus on the society of today to criticize, as opposed to retroactively criticizing Jefferson and Lincoln. But, help yourself to historical absolute moralism.

You can bitch about "liberals" and "conservatives" all you want (which is funny cos both parties have virtually the same policies), but sometimes it pays to intelligently analyse politics in a historical context, if only to avoid events like 9-11. Ever heard of the concept of "Wilsonian Idealism"? This is an expression idea that America must carry out its "noble and high minded mission" of conquering 'barbarians' for their own good, and this is deeply ingrained in American political culture (democratic and republican). Is this world view not an relic of its colonial past?

 

[smelter]

Yeah, I've thought about this some more and still can't see myself agreeing.

Quite a while ago there was a thread discussing options to defend kids from school shooters:

In the wake of recent school shootings, a candidate for Oklahoma state superintendent of education has announced a bold new proposal to keep kids safe without spending more on school security. Republican Bill Crozier suggests that students can defend themselves from school shooters by using textbooks to stop bullets fired at them. "If elected" he promises that thick used textbooks will be placed at the ready under every school desk.

How Bush missed this guy to head Homeland Security remains a mystery to me!

 

[divcurl0]

So Lincoln is responsible for the institution of slavery? btw, that is moral absolutism;

It is morally axiomatic that if something is wrong for you, its wrong for others ('do unto others as you do have them do unto you'). Slavery most certainly not an exception to this rule. Call this what you will, it is trivially obvious what it means.

you can look at history with condemnation all you want, humanity's inhumanity against itself is obvious, but objectivity has its place..

I will repeat the point I was making: The way America conducts its business both domestically and internationally is demonstably connected to its unpleasant past, in terms of the national psyche if nothing else.

Do you even have an idea why slavery is being mentioned in a thread regarding the Virginia Tech shooting? What argument are
you pursuing that's like on-topic?

See point above. The legacy of the romaticised frontier gives you the highest number of gun deaths in the West. Do the numbers not even worry you a little bit? Normally solutions to tough problems are found by considering all dimensions; or is this thinking too outside the box for you?

That is an overly simplistic and utterly unrealistic depiction---one can criticize easily the state of politics in the US, but your absolutism can be just as easily criticized.

Now, I know you hate wasting E paper (even tho it doesnt kill any trees) so I'll keep this short: you can criticise politicians all you want, but it doesn't mean you can change anything. Eg. Most Americans want universal healthcare, but most politicians cower under drug corporations and can't even float the idea for fear of loosing their jobs. The fact of the matter is, and I'm not saying this - emminent American intellectuals are - that America is by international standards what you call a "weak democracy". You can test it out for yourself: ask yourself where the presidential candidate of your choice stands on issues worthy of intelligent debate.

It just seems to be some out-of-control stereotypical, baseless anti-Americanism.

Now, isnt that a great discussion stifler.

 

[radical matt]

divercul0:

I think what Ico means about Lincoln is that Lincoln was president of the United States, the Union or "the North" during the Civil war. The North had abolished slavery, and there was a delicate ballance of power in the Congress where each time a new state was added in the North or the South of the Mason-Dixon line (A horizontal line around Missouri/Tennesee, ect, states north were "free", having had abolished slavery, and states to the south still allowed slavery as an integral part of their agrarian ecconomies.)

Well, when a state south of that line (Nebraska or California...?) achieved statehood as a FREE state, the South ceeded from the United States/Union. Although it was somewhat more complicated than this, of course. Lincoln, President of the North, the FREE states, decided to go to war with the South to "preserve the Union." He also signed the emancipation proclimation, a law saying that ALL slaves be freed by an upcoming date.

At the end of the war, the South having been defeated, Lincoln was actually going to go easy on them (though he was intent on freeing the slaves by this point, since if nothing else, it was a campaign promise he made during the war to rally and support...and back then, apparently politicians and presidents kept their promises), but he was assasinated by Boothe (John Wilkes sp?), and this ended up having the South go through a FAR more painful reconstruction.


...what Ico is saying is that, historically, you cannot say that the man who was President of the FREE part of the US, and who signed the emancipation proclimation, essentially the man singlely responsibile for the freedom of the slaves in the United States, was RESPONSIBLE for slavery in the US.

I'm guessing that you don't have that detailed of US history classes in schools though (understandable, other than Britian, we don't go much into world histories like that either here), but that's what he means. He wasn't saying that slavery isn't wrong, just that you're accusing the man who FREED the slaves of ENSLAVING them. Just a historical "point of order", thing.



As for the democracy in the US being a "weak democracy", I agree totally. This was partly what the Founders intended (at the time, the common person wasn't believed to have the capacity to understand wise leadership decisions...in fact, the early Senate was elected, not by the people, but by the state legislatures...which were elected by the people. Though this can be excused if you consider that the Founders came from the mindset of Europe at the time, which had a strongly aristocratic political scene.) But at the same time, the Founders also intended far more choice.

See, in the early US, it wasn't uncommon for there to be 5-10 candidates in elections, and it was for this reason the electorial college system was initiated (the man who proposed it said himself that he didn't expect it to get used more often than once in every hundred years because he NEVER foresaw an election with fewer than 5 candidates, and said that it would be a one-time-only-per-centruy fluke if there were only two candidates.) The two party system here REALLY is the cause of it. The Republicans and Democrats agree on all but a very few key issues, but none of it is really what the American people want.

The weakness of our democracy is largely due to the two party system and how it's not so expensive to run for office that there's something of an artificial aristocracy just due to that. The combination of these lowers voter turnout and discourages active participation by citizens, especially younger adults who are even further removed, both ecconomically and intellectually/idologically, from the political scene. And because of all that, there isn't really much interest or participation, which only further reduces the the power of individual citizens in government. And, again, participation isn't really encouraged other than "get out the vote" efforts, which ARE targeted at citizens and young people, but once the politicians get elected, they'd rather us just forget about politics for the next 2/4/6 years until they're up for election again.

...overall, not a good state of affairs. And it's no wonder the nation, laws, and policies (war being just one of them) don't seem to be following after the will of the people.

 

[radical matt]

I think it was inevitable that this thread would include a robust discussion about guns. Having looked back over the entire thread, I note that most of the posters’ suggestions to prevent situations like the VT incident have a direct or indirect relation to guns. These suggestions include a wide range of approaches and no doubt reflect similar discussions taking place in the US and elsewhere.

Nonetheless, a number of comments within this thread suggest solutions involving issues such as social norms and how they influence personal behavior, mental health treatment, judicial intervention, substance abuse, harsher legal penalties as a means of deterrence, public surveillance, and individual privacy.

I don’t think any of us should automatically assume that a point of discussion is irrelevant to the larger topic in a thread as complex as this.

Actually, read what I quoted before saying that. He was playing off what someone (I think me) had said, and I was saying that his own argument was just as meaningless to the larger discussion...as it is, his arguments so far have been more plays for attention than important discussions. That the Second Ammendment was originally meant for citizens who just happened to be largely white (I'm not sure if they had an age/landowner/male only restriction to the laws at the time...but those are the LAWS of individual states or Congress, NOT the Second Amendment itself) doesn't say anything about it being a racial issue...then OR now. And it shouldn't be discarded because it's "racist", after all, NOW, anyone over 18/21 (depending on, again, LOCAL LAWS...and some federal laws, NOT the 2nd Amendment), anyone, of any race, of either gender, can buy/carry guns...within the limits of those laws.

It is thus not a racial issue at all, so his saying that it's a racial issue is meaningless (in addition to being unimportant, since the original intention was for self-protection of citizens by citizens, not for persecution of slaves/native Americans), and his conclusion that it should be repealed (due to civil rights laws and non-descrimination of minors [you can discriminate against whites all you want, it seems...afirmative action included]) because of that has no meaning.

Yeah, I've thought about this some more and still can't see myself agreeing.

Yeah, I can understand that. A lot of people are worried about what other people would do with freedom. My general thing is that MOST people, if free to do whatever, won't go out of their way to hurt other people. And the minority that DO would be stopped by the majority that would stand up to defend their fellows. Of course, perhaps the defenders aren't a majority, but that's my own mindset, so that's the way I see other people, I guess...

no it dosn't if the law were tighter before he wouldn't of had the guns which he purchases through legal channels only in the past few years

Yes, but stop and think about it: It was LEGAL for him to buy the gun...

...HOWEVER, it was illegal for ANYONE to have a gun on campus. There was a law that banned guns from campus (which includes housing, just like where I live here on my campus.)


So there was a 100% restrictive law: NO guns on campus.

But, he got a gun from off campus and "smuggled" it onto camps.

If anything, this shows the weakness of a ban on guns UNLESS (as I've said) ALL guns in the world are removed from existence. If you'd like to continue deabting this, we can, but I don't think there's really a question here. Just like illegal drugs being smuggled across the border, if you ban guns, they'll just be smuggled into the country too unless you manage to get rid of (or get control of) all guns in the world; both of which are impossible.

 

[radical matt]

I understand what you are trying to say Matt. Whilst I'm sure you and your dad are good people capable of exercising self restraint, when faced with a threatening situation you would act in a reckless way. Its not about how Americans' think, its about human nature. Guns over-empower people, as I have said many times before, because they are the ultimate form of power.

Actually, they aren't really. There are greater forms of power, such as intellect and indominable spirit. Guns are merely tools. Whether a person has a hammer, a screwdriver, a piece of wood, or a rock, they can hammer nails. One of them is just more efficient at it. It's possible to kill a person while you are completely unarmed, naked even. It's just EASIER with a gun.

As far as how I'll act in a tense situation, it depends on the situation and how I judge it. If I think my inaction will cost people lives that action could save, then I'll act. If I think that action would only increase the danger to lives, then I would refrain. How reakless I will act also is a product of my will, youth, wisdom, knowledge, intelligence, feeling/wellbeing at the time (if I'm sick with the flu, there's less chance of action, simply due to inability), and how I judge the situation. Take note, my action or inactino, reckless or not, would/will be a product of me as a person, not whether I have a gun. Even if I'm unarmed, I might try attacking someone with a gun if I knew they were going to kill other people and kill me anyway. I'd likely die, but maybe I'd buy time for someone else to escape death. The only difference having a gun would make is that if I DID have a gun, I would have a much greater chance of not dieing. If I can defend life, whether I'm armed or not, I will. Laws preventing me from havig a gun only decrease the chance that I'll be able to save people, they have no bearing on me trying to do so or not.

The Milgram experiment showed that when individuals were given the power to do something up to a point X, over 90% exercised their power to that point X. Is it any wonder why you have so many unneccessary deaths resulting from guns?

Again, this is human nature, not guns. If you remove guns, they'll do it with knives. If you remove knives, they'll do it with their fists. Are you going to remove their fists too?

This issue needs to disambiguated. On a global level, disarming depends of geopolitical realities. States aren't moral agents, and by their very nature act in their own selfish interests, so youd expect conflicts to arise every now and again.

BUT 'postmodern' states, who know better than to exploit or interfere with other states, can resolve conflict without resorting to violence (like its inconceivable European states would war with each other). So for the US, the question of disarming is meaningless if its pillaging other countries (thats a bit like serial killer giving charity). The US needs guns because it knows that it is opening itself to attack with its current foreign policies.

This only supports my point since it's saying that nations do and will go to war with each other periodically. Because their leaders are selfish and inherently distrust each other, no nation will ever disarm it's military. As long as those guns exist, however, they can find their way into the hands of citizens, whether or not the government is attempting to disarm them. And you have to think about it, a person with a .22 or a BB gun isn't going to be as dangerous as that same person managing to get a military grade weapon. Giving your people freedom to buy CERTAIN TYPES of guns allows you to control what they are allowed to have, giving them access to weaker weapons than they'd have if they were reduced to stealing them from the military.

On a local level, I understand what you are saying about there being a power gap as guns can be illegally acquired by "evil" people. But what I am saying is that the power gap will be smaller if guns are banned. We can analyse who these "evil" people are. They are either a)irrational people (psychopaths) b)rational people, eg. gang members, burglars, etc. Unfortunatly, you can't stop people like Cho, no matter what firearm legislation you have (what with our reaction times and all).

Okay, here is where we have some MAJOR disagreements. First, the first thing in bold. Did you read my three scenarios on page...8 was it? As I QUALITATIVELY described by the outcomes, the fewer guns there are, the LARGER the power gap is. Stop and think about it. If you have an gun and I have a gun, there is a power gap due to the reaction time, but all things being equal, if you know I'm going to shoot you to kill you, you can shoot me to kill/injure me first. This means that we are roughly on even footing.

However, let's take your logic and say that the power gap is smaller with fewer guns to the test.

Suppose I have a gun and you do not. If I pull it out to shoot you, and you're more than about five feet away, you have no chance of stopping me. I shoot, you die, and you had no even footing with which to attack me (even with my own speed and martial training, I can't see it being easy for me to make it out alive if our situations were reversed in this case.)

So what is the implication of these min-scenarios? It's that the fewer guns there are, the larger, not smaller, the power gap is...UNLESS you get rid of ALL guns. In which case you have scenario 3, where we are both unarmed, then it's a combination of strength, skill, training, and tactics that decide the victor, but neither of us will have a clearly devistating advantage. The point is, the power gap is at a local minimum when we're both equiped with the same weapons (either guns, swords, or unarmed), and the power gap is largest when only one of us has a weapon (gun, sword, or unarmed, but with martial training.)

This is one of the misconceptions I listed in a post above; fewer guns increases, not decreases, the power gap...until you manage to get it to 0 guns. In fact, the power gap is largest if there is only ONE gun in existance. The more guns there are, the more even the playing field is.

The second thing I put in bold in your quote above is also important. You're basically saying that it's impossible to keep bad people who are intent on harming others from getting guns. On this we totally agree. So my view is, if we can't stop criminals who will wantonly break the law from getting guns, we need to allow law abiding citizens to have them such that they will be on even footing and the power gap will be minimized. Your view seems to be that the law abiding need not to have guns, because even though they are law abiding (and thus "good" people), they will suddenly become evil and...I dunno, join the evil person? I'm not sure, your logic is somewhat baffling to me (and this is, again, one of the misconceptions I dealt with above.) But by the law abiding not having guns, it means that the power gap is maximized, meaning that the criminal/killer has a much greater chance of succeeding in causing harm and that the law abiding, good people, will be unable to stop them.

I have to say, your logic here is baffling to me...maybe I'm just not understanding you...?

I have always maintained that you can kill someone if you are sure, on the balance of probabilities, that you yourself, or others around you will be killed by that person but if you posses a gun, your will likely surpass this minimum threshold for tje reason I gave above. Ofcourse everyone has a right to feel safe, so you can, for example, initiate "Neighbourhood Watch programmes" which are very successful in keep nasty people away from an area.

Okay, here again we have a problem, so let's examine this, because I HAVE to be misunderstanding you here.

Me and you are in a room with, say, ten other people. I have a gun and am the criminal in this scenario. You have a gun. The other ten people are unarmed.

I pull out my gun, anounce my attention to kill you all. You pull out your gun and shoot me (thus meeting the minimum threshold.) According to you, you would them want to surpass this minimum threshold...which I can only assume means that you would then turn on the ten disarmed people in the room and start indiscriminately shooting them.

...once again, this logic is baffling to me. I would think once you had killed/injured me, you would simply keep your gun pointed at me and await the police, not start shooting at all the other people in the room (which is the only way I can think of that you would be "surpassing" the "minimum threshold" in this scenario.)

So...maybe you could clear this up for me? Because this obviously can't be what you mean, can it?

that sounds really weird. TBH, and sorry to sound crass about it, but the rapist would not feel the same strength of negative emotions you felt during and after your ordeal, infact I think a rapist would enjoy being 'raped' by his victim and it would be painful for the victim to relive her experience in such a way. So its not quite eye for an eye; you can't quantify a 'wrong' just as much as you can't quantify 'love'.

and

This is inconsistent with your eye for an eye doctrine.

I wasn't saying this is the way things should be done, I was just saying that's what justice is. I'm generally a person for showing compassion and forgiveness, even if that is just to let a person have a painless death when they deserve far worse.

Justice is when you are forced to spend night and day thinking about what you did wrong.

Actually, no, that's a form of vengence. Justice would be having to pay back, in some quantifiable way, the person that you wronged. The difficulty here is that some things, such as rape and murder, are difficult to quantify. Rotting in jail doesn't actually help anyone, and it doesn't "repay" the victims or their families who were harmed by your actions.

It is, therefore, vengence/revenge, not justice, to put people in jail. You're just under the "Batman" mentality ("I'd rather you pay for what you did then get away with an easy death!"), but that's vengence, not justice. Justice is repayment/redressing of wrongs, vengence is making people "remember" and "rot" for their crimes...with no word of repaying those who were actually WRONGED by their actions.

Trust me, it's a fine line, and one that a lot of people don't seem to understand. I can clarify this if you like, but just consider this;

If a person stole stole $100.00 from you, justice would be them paying you $100.00 back. Vengence would be you beating them up or them going to jail for a month. Now stop and think, which is more beneficial to you as the victim? The getting paid your money back is the most, getting to beat them up is second most (gets you over the victim mentality), seeing them go to jail is not beneficial to you at all. It MIGHT be beneficial to society (and might not), but it isn't beneficial to the victim, thus it is not justice, it's...something else.

Palestinian suicide bombers kill themselves, because they feel it is the only constructive thing they can to win freedom for their fellow people. There goal isn't to hurt Israeli people per se, but to make a defient statement against their continued subjugation through the only mean available to them. The still have their sanity intact before killing themselves; infact when you are really dedicated to a cause you believe in, you are prepared to die for it (Dr Martin Luther King was prepared to die for his Noble Cause, and he felt liberated when he realised he was).

No, its nothing to do with humans being fallible; US foreign policy decisions on th whole are cold and calculated. When you use white phosphorous wantonly, you know that peoples skin will literally melt down to their bones; when you drop a bomb in a concentrated area of civilians, you know that children will die; when you block aid convoys carrying food and medication, you know that you will causes immense misery. Do you think it is right to accrue "some political/economic/power gains" through such cold, heartless, inhumane means? If other countries did any of those things to you, how would you react?

I think you misunderstand. I'm not justifying these actions, only saying that that is the motivation. I will never condone hurting people for political/economic/or power gains.

As for the Palistinians, I was only saying they don't have the capacity (or don't believe they do) to fight in any other way. So that's how they act.

US's aid budget is only 0.2% of its GNP (compared to 0.7% in the EU), and much of those goes to propping up repressive dictatorships, like that of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and Turkey. The biggest recipient has consistently been Israel, a supposedly democractic first world country which as I said, loves to oppress the people it occupies). Also the US (more precisly the IMF, which is a basically an extension of the US Treasury) loans to vile, brutal kleptocrats (like Suharto of Indonesia) who make become filthy rich, and take their wealth back to the US, leaving the starving people, deprived of basic things like health and education, to socialise the debt plus interest (which oftentimes double or treble the original debt)! It is literally stealing from the poor, only poor here is unimaginably poor. I sometimes wonder, does the US have no shame?

Again, this is politics and ecconomics, not the will of the poople, that are leading these actions. You also have to consider the difference in GNP between the US and the EU...

Ofcourse the good people of America, are generous in some regards, but as I said in my earlier post about private charity, Americans are oblivious of worldwide human suffering, and given how little air time serious crises get in the mainstream media, a cynical person would say Americans just don't care. (you are only interested in news that interest you and maybe that why media outlets would rather report on Britney Spears or Paris Hilton rather than the real tragedies like mass starvation in Sudan)

Not so much oblivious as it is that we A) don't think we can save them all, B) expect that other nations/peoples (like the EU) will help too, and C) their nations/leaders don't allow private charity to enter the nation (for instance, they will confiscate all intended charity, which is only then further emporing such governments.)

Why it gets little air time is the fault of the media, NOT the American people. Oh GAWD...I hope you don't judge us by our media. Our media are puppets of the two political parties (the Dems get TV, the Reps have radio), but they don't at all represent the views/wishes of the average American citizen.

Ah, but colonialsm also works by proxy, infact its more efficient to set up puppets to do your bidding. If you read about the new oil laws, you'll see that all of Iraq's Oil wealth, won't be staying in Iraq, but will be going to America. No goverment in the right mind would allow that to happen, and I challenge you to say otherwise. If people still think America would still have invaded Iraq if it had bananas instead of Oil, they must be truly deluded. I mean, its really beyond parody how blatently the US can get away such War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.

Oh, the US would have invaded Iraq if they didn't have oil. We just might have left by now if they didn't have oil. Tis not dilusion, you have to consider the reasons Bush wanted to go in in the first place. They were not oil related. However, that there is oil in Iraq both is the source of the strife between the factions there (they all want to live apart, but they don't want to split up the country because they all want the oil rich sections) and need for us to be there (to keep the oilfilds from simply burning in the desert...again.)

No one has an axe to grind with Europe, so the "European are wimps" argument simply doesnt hold water. Look, I don't judge people by what they think, I judge people by what they do: would you agree that this is fair? People do have a serious axe to grind with the US for its inhumane foreign policies. Looking at what the US has done, I would say it is by far the most "evil" country in the world today.

Be careful, evil is often difficult to quantify. Also, there are other reasons for being hated other than "inhumane foreign policies" (for instance, jelousy for economic/political/military power or anger at a country for its tretires and agreements with other nations which are "inconvenient" for the party that is doing the hating.) So you have to be careful with that. You also have to consider that there are nations where the leaders are dictators who deprive, torture, and rape their own people. The US may be responsible for supporting some of these nations out in the world, however, it does not do these things itself to its own people. That they support these other nations is a definate bad thing, however, it doesn't show the same kind of vile evil that killing, torturing, and raping your own people does show.

I ask you again: why does the US need "defend" itself in other countries, what "force" did these other countries use against the US? I challenge you to give me atleast 1 example.

Again, that's a complicated issue. If you consider Al-Queda is dangerous to the US, then attacking people that are harboring and aiding Al-Queda is an act of defending your own people (from another 9-11, for instance.) In the case of Iraq, both in the 90s and in the 00s, it's the danger that its leader posed to other countries in the area and that the US went in for their intrests (Kuwait, Israel...) rather than our own. The UN and NATO do this from time to time, so this isn't a phenomena unique to the US, nor is it inherently evil (although it does piss villians off when you actually stop them from preying on their innocent neighbors.)

So as I said, it's a complicated issue, and not fair to oversimply it in the way that you're trying to do here.



Whew...that's a lot... ^_^;