Hmm... interesting. In other words, the gun is not the murderer, it is the device (tool) that the murderer used. Interesting. I still stand by my philosophy though as the assassin as a thinking being capable of making their own choices while a gun is not.
Thank you! I like this debate. It's not often I get a good philosophical think in!
Query: So - in war, is the killing murder? If not, why not? If so, are the soldiers to be considered a tool or do they have free will and the folks that order the murderers? How high up can the "following orders" thing be taken (in the States for example: As the ultimate decision maker (?) and lead of the armed forces, does it ultimately end up with the President - or, because he/she cannot act without impugnity, does it rest on the shoulders of Congress that authorized the action in the first place.
Understand that I am using the Judeo/Christian definition of killing from "Thou Shalt Not Kill", a rather periodical statement.
I would be interested in your take.
Have you heard of their is a law in America that they keep guns? Or the incident with the Batman cinema killings? Have you also heard their are weapons in all around Tamriel? All these link with weapons, the gun is not the murderer but the person carrying it, guns are neither murdering tools or saving tools. They are are just tools that are quite incipient to the human mind or brain such as these can be used for their own purposes such as murder or killing and their is a difference or you can use the gun for saving, though do you see Batman using a gun? It's up to the brain how it defines the tool. Your body is also a tool, a tool to do for your own purposes as well.
When you are in war, you are not murdering though however if your definition murder could imply to World war II because of the propaganda has brought people has led to believe that it is not worth dying for your country, some or most even believing the propaganda was a lie and theer sheer number deaths but in today's I don't believe this. Militaristic of the government.The military are soldiers. Soldiers to be used as ''tools'' for example the commander says you are going to be a troop and flank the enemy while you are going to blah blah, and the military is trained to kill including both sides. Lets look at the definitions of ''murder'' and ''kill''. Murder is when is you force to kill someone against their will or intentions against of the other party, I would not say self defense is ''murder'' because the other party has now the intention of killing you in response to your attack and might be willing to die
if by the situation it a possibility however ''kill'' is when you don't murder someone if their killed or life is gone like the phrase the strongest survive and the weak perish is a survival statement and because you are so called surviving than it would not count as murder because you must kill in order to survive, the military as we said is trained to kill and is willing to die, despite how empty I sound, if one military is attacked by another military than they must be willing or ready to face the consequences or possibility of dying. If you join the military and thinking and think you are going to survive than you are naive. So they are just treated as tools by their superiors like the President however if they are told to do some sort of operation than its not up to the President how these ''tools'' think because at the end of the day they still are humans so have you ever heard of someone disobeying orders or somehow changing the plan? Its up to you to use the tools and its up to you how you use them. Here's a media aspect of this, if a President sended Soldiers to kill innocent people than you are strictly going to say the President killed or rather murdered the innocent because he was the catalyst and decided he was going send a pair of guns to kill people. Here's another example, one of the Prime ministers (no disrespect) sended a couple of soldiers (very few) to Iraq and they died, who was to blame? Arguably the Prime minister because he made that decision.
So killing someone, means how you used your brain because at the end of the day despite the tools you used, it was you that made that decision. (Their could of been a extra sentences on here but I forgot what I was going to write)
And all this is coming from a 16 year old.