An Armed Society is a Polite Society...

[nyrifleman]

I will probably catch a lot of flack for this one. I don't know that the moderators will even agree this belongs on a firearms forum. I think it does. Please read to the very end before reacting.

As many of you may have heard, a man went on a workplace rampage yesterday, killing 8 people and himself:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcon...ootings_04nat.ART.State.Edition1.355c642.html

According to several sources, racial harrassment played at least a part in pushing him to do this (he was black, and one of only two black employees at this firm). I'm sure it wasn't the only thing. He apparently had a number of problems in his life. But it certainly played a part.

I'm trying very hard to express myself without sounding callous towards the victims (because I do not feel callous towards the victims). This is a terrible tragedy. Everyone so far, including the killer, has been described as a nice person, and I believe that they were. Many families, children, wives, girlfriends have been hurt very deeply by this.

I guess my point is:

"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life." -- Robert A. Heinlein

We live in an armed society. For God's sake, don't call someone a n****r, a s**c, a f*g, a k**e, any other term that can only cause offense! YOU may be asked to back up your acts with YOUR life. What's worse is that you may also be backing up your acts with the lives of your friends, your family, your friends' families, and also the lives of your target and your target's families.

Who knows, maybe if Omar Thornton had heard the N-word but a few times less, 9 people would be alive today. Maybe not, because of course, there were many, many things weighing on his mind. But maybe. At least, I can't see any harm being a little nicer could have done.

 

[SharpsDressedMan]

Who knows? Maybe his co-workers taunted him because he acted nuts. Maybe he WAS nuts. We'll probably never hear the whole story.

 

[Joe Demko]

An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life." -- Robert A. Heinlein

This was bee-ess when Heinlein wrote it and it still is today.

 

[rbernie]

Are we now on a level where the notion of shootin' folk over name-calling is considered rational?

Here's a hint - it's NOT.

Being nicer to your fellow humans is always a good idea. But to suggest that name-calling is a justification for shooting others is simply not legally or intellectually or morally defensible.

This was bee-ess when Heinlein wrote it and it still is today.

Pretty much so. I don't know ANYONE who actually believes that personal insults are best settled with gunplay. If I did, I would strongly consider them sociopathic.

 

[rbernie]

I received this via PM and it's worth annotating to this thread:

Hi,
I wanted to respond to your post in the thread, but you closed that, so I decided to PM:

Are we now on a level where the notion of shootin' folk over name-calling is considered rational?

Here's a hint - it's NOT.

Being nicer to your fellow humans is always a good idea. But to suggest that name-calling is a justification for shooting others is simply not legally or intellectually or morally defensible.

I did not say that shooting people over name-calling is rational. I don't think that's what Robert Heinlein meant either with his quote. However, it is a reality that there will always be crazies who WILL shoot people over name-calling. So the rest of us, as rational beings, shouldn't call crazies names. Hence polite society.

I wasn't making a moralizing judgement on the shooter's action. What he did was wrong and irrational, by any measure. I was saying that this is the reality of what is meant by the quote "An armed society is..."

I would appreciate if I were given the opportunity to add this information to the thread.

Done.