Ethical Questions: Kill or let die

[Kael]

Kill or Let Die?

 

While walking through your local park one evening, you see at distance a man standing over a young girl. As you watch, he draws a gun, shouts obscenities, and is about to shoot the girl.

By coincidence, you too are carrying a gun and are an excellent shot.

Is it right for you to kill the man to prevent him killing the young girl? Why or why not?

 

Would your answer be different if the positions were reversed, and the girl (about five years old) was holding the gun and was about to shoot the man?

 

Would your answer be different if the girl was your daughter?

 

Would your answer be any different if the man was about to kill two young children?

 

Here's my take on it;

Is it right for me to kill the man? No, not normally, but if I were really in this situation and had to decide at that moment to choose who lives or dies. I say it becomes right to kill the man and prevent the murder of the young girl. I think the mans intention to kill a young child in a park in the first place, let alone a girl is enough to warrant him being shot. I couldn't handle standing idly by and watching as a young defenceless girl is murdered. There are so many people who get away with crimes agaisnt children, children who have a hope and a dream, children who haven't experienced life.. How is fair to let them be killed so casually? Children are our future, they are the ones that will continue after us, furthering and bettering society. One would hope that anyway. We need to protect them at all costs even if it takes us putting down our reputation, sometimes our friends, it may even cost putting down our lives for their sake. Is it not worth it, to help secure and change the grim future of this planet?

 

Would my view be different if the positions were reversed? Of course it would. If the girl had the gun pointing at the man I would like to think that I would be able to reason with the child. I don't have a problem with shooting the man, but I do when it comes to women and children. Besides how likely is a 5 year old girl to fatally kill the man? A loaded gun in the hands of the child would be too heavy to aim at a vital location for starters, not to mention the gun jamming from not being held appropriately. I don't believe such a young child could comprehend murder or aspire to murder someone. It would just be a freak accident.

 

If it was my daughter, I would act brutally, I think I would lose control and open fire (with a Mark XIX .50ae Desert Eagle) on the man and keep firing until I ran out of ammo. I think i would just lose it outright and get drowned in rage and adreneline.

 

And If it were two children instead of one, I believe I would act the same as I would in the first scenario.

[Madz]

a)I'd shoot to injure or disable. It's not ethical to take one life to save another. Who are you to decide who should live and who should die? I think preserving the life of all parties, if possible is the better option.

 

b)If the girl was holding the gun, I'd tell her off or if she was about to fire, I'd shoot her hand (I'm an excellent shot, apparently). So she loses some fingers, better than having a homicide hanging over her for the rest of her life.

 

c & d) I agree with.

[Pakage]

a)I'd shoot to injure or disable.

 

Yep, i agree. It is not for us to judge. I sincerely hope i get through this life without killing another human, even if only accidentally.

 

In these types of scenarios however, there is no absolute right and wrong answer. What if you shoot and disable the man and the girl then presses a button on her watch and she blows up killing like 300 people coz she was a suicide bomber? What if that girl just murdered the mans family? Who knows.. but if it were happening to anyone who was simply an innocent bystander (man, woman or child), of course you'd to your best to avoid tragedy. Just as you would pray that someone would help you if you were the one having the gun pointed at you.

 

Children have killed people before. Just because theyre small doesnt mean that you cannot rule out their intention for bloodshed.

 

If a child were pointing a gun at you screaming "dont fucking move or ill shoot" do you think you'd just blow it off as something not serious simply because theyre a child? I think you'd "not fucking move".. i know i wouldnt move a muscle.

 

Just after the columbine school shootings, a 6 year old boy shot one of his friends in the head with a revolver during class.. Admittedly he wouldnt have realised the reprocussions of his actions but it still didnt stop him doing it. Its like when your a kid and you fuck around with something you dont understand and it ends up fucking you up. To an adult, the outcome may seem obvious, and the actions ridiculous, but to a child, sometimes they simply dont know any better and so they make the wrong choices.

 

this next part is where it gets a bit hazey between ethics, and emotion..

 

If it were my daughter, since shes family and therefore undoubtedly want to protect her, id kill the dude if it were a possibility he was going to kill her. I wouldnt fuck around with trying to disable him, because what if you miss and he shoots her? what if you hit him, but he still shoots her? better just to go for 1 in the head, 2 in the chest if its your own flesh and blood. Protecting your own is a basic instinct ingrained in us all.. When emotions are involved however, ethics usually go right out the window.. As they have with my answer right here.. Emotions can blur even the clearest peoples vision.

 

Debates about ethincs are very interesting. There is such a small area of black and white answers and an increasingly large grey area. Dont take any of this to heart, im just putting some ideas out there, nothing more.

 

interested to hear what other views people have when they get the time.

 

[thecharmed01]

Kill or Let Die?

Depends on the situation.

Everyone should have the right to life, no matter what they do, have done or intend to do.

How good the quality of their life should be is a far more important question to be asking!!

 

I personally however, lump anyone who hurts children in any way as inhuman, so they dont count for anything!

 

While walking through your local park one evening, you see at distance a man standing over a young girl. As you watch, he draws a gun, shouts obscenities, and is about to shoot the girl.

By coincidence, you too are carrying a gun and are an excellent shot.

Is it right for you to kill the man to prevent him killing the young girl? Why or why not?

 

I would hesitate - albeit only slightly from a lethal shot.

I would be inclined to aim for disabling initially until I could get close enough to acertain more about the situation.

1 in his gun arm and one in each kneecap from close range would do me nicely.

I have my own motives, but in the situation where I could see that a woman was unarmed and attempting to defend/protect herself, I would be in protection mode if I was so equipped to do so.

If on closer inspection he deserved it I would probably take a close range shot in a particular direction

I took the girl in this situation to be old enough to have enough coping skills (with a good counsellor) to recover her life from an incident like this.....

 

Would your answer be different if the positions were reversed, and the girl (about five years old) was holding the gun and was about to shoot the man?

 

No 5 year old girl would have a gun in their hands pointed at an adult unless that child has been hurt so badly that it was her only defence mechanism left and she got lucky with the opportunity to get hold of the gun.

I would shoot the adult without hesitation.

I would definitely shoot to kill.

 

pACKAGe:

You cannot generalise about children, as the mental difference between a 5 year old and a 6 year old are so vast it is impossible to even comprehend without being a parent and seeing it first hand.

5 year olds are still so undeveloped that everything they do is still all about learning.

Around 6 they are starting to develop more ego and starting to realise they know things.....

It's quite a difference.

It is hard to compare your thoughts as you havent specified in your example whether that 6 year old made a concious decision to shoot someone out of malice or spite, or whether it was a child 'playing' with a gun when it went off unexpectedly.

Also the situation of a 6 year old who has obviously developed in an environment where he could manage to get a gun to school without any parent raising any suspicion makes it doubtful as to whether that child was emotionally undamaged in the first place.

A spiteful or malicious shooting by any child under the age of 10 is a scream for help.

 

Would your answer be different if the girl was your daughter?

 

Absolutely not.

My maternal instinct is strong but I would treat any child the same as I would treat my own daughter.

If my daughter had a gun pointed at anyone, the only difference would be that I would be an even better aim, and I would make damned sure they went through as much agony as I could inflict before they couldnt feel any more pain.

 

Would your answer be any different if the man was about to kill two young children?

 

One child or two is irrelvant.

Either way you look at it, children cannot defend themselves, they rely on adults to protect them.

They usually dont have the emotional skills and motor skills to look after themselves.

[kritical]

Depends on my mood at the time..

 

Ever heard the term "Going postal"?

 

Try "Going tech support"

[Nato]

I wouldn't have a gun so I'd probably throw a stick. Given my lack of throwing practice of late, other than throwing soft spongy balls and such around the office, (which nearly always ends in me being schooled by a bunch of 25-40 year old women) I would most certainly hit the child.

[Teret]

no ethical dilemma for me here. the man bag is home to many gadgets which could deal with this dilemma in a peaceful manner. god forbid did i not have the man bag. id probably just flash the 'bat' torch.

 

*what kind of sick forum is this...no batman emoticon<*

[thereseq]

May God help anyone in who finds themself in that situation, :armata_pdt_10: .

 

There is always the option of calling the man's attention and hoping that this will be enough to make him stop. That would be the easiest to justify it seems but then if he shoots you, you won't be of any use to the girl unless others who can do more are alerted by the gunshot (your death or injury).

 

It's hard to generalise from an isolated or definitively contained example. Its probably a good thing not to be certain about what would do in such a hypothetical situation - incompleteness of understanding is probably a sign that you couldn't be responsible for such a situation.

 

On the other hand, if you took the individuals involved as figures for values, ways of life, discourses or archives etc. (I should expand but time prevents, sorry) I think you could come up with a justification for 'shooting' the man. From this perspective though, the 'gun' and 'death' or 'injury' should also be taken to represent, say, a capacity and the effects of its application. I would take the gun as the ability to hold the man accountable for what he is doing and the result if he continues on his present course of action, and firing it (and the result for the man) to represent a way of constraining the man from continuing on his course of action that is imposed rather than say the use of conscience by a reasonable person to regulate their own actions).

 

Kant would say that with respect to human beings, the Ends (of humanity) never justifies the means of securing of defending those Ends (ie. humane existence), and I would tend to agree. That's why any intervention must itself be consistent with the objective of the intervention and that objective by justifiable or acceptable to everyone equally.

 

You could also approach the local scene 'in the park' as a model of a bigger (all-encompassing) situation and its resoution as a template for the completion of a situation that everyone is in whether they are aware of it or not. That would open up the way that you define what is going on and what the options of response are. That would take you away from the modifications of the scenario that are considered, although I would think that if the 5 year old girl were holding the gun she wouldn't have (or be claiming) the same kind of intent or power to act and so couldn't be considered responsible in the same way. That doesn't mean that the man, if innocent, wouldn't have the same right to be helped though.

 

I'd like to continue the discussion when I have more time, its an interesting example. Nice one!