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Could you kill someone?

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Reebok Trotter
aaron_bwfc
Sluffy
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1Could you kill someone? Empty Could you kill someone? Wed Jan 25 2012, 11:57

Sluffy

Sluffy
Admin

Don't think I could but if it meant saving my wife or daughter - well maybe I would - and think about things afterwards?

Anyway an interesting article in the news today -



A young cowboy from Texas who joined the elite US Navy Seals became the most deadly sniper in American history. In a book published this month he provides an unusual insight into the psychology of a soldier who waits, watches and kills.

As US forces surged into Iraq in 2003, Chris Kyle was handed a sniper rifle and told to watch as his marine battalion entered an Iraqi town.

A crowd had come out to greet them. Through the scope he saw a woman, with a child close by, approaching his troops. She had a grenade ready to detonate in her hand.

"This was the first time I was going to have to kill someone. I didn't know whether I was going to be able to do it, man, woman or whatever," he says.

"You're running everything through your mind. This is a woman, first of all. Second of all, am I clear to do this, is this right, is it justified? And after I do this, am I going to be fried back home? Are the lawyers going to come after me saying, 'You killed a woman, you're going to prison'?"

But he didn't have much time to debate these questions.

"She made the decision for me, it was either my fellow Americans die or I take her out."

He pulled the trigger.

Could you kill someone? _58044867_kyle_fallujah

Kyle remained in Iraq until 2009. According to official Pentagon figures, he killed 160 people, the most career sniper kills in the history of the US military. His own estimate is much higher, at 255 kills.

According to army intelligence, he was christened "The Devil" by Iraqi insurgents, who put a $20,000 (£13,000) bounty on his head.

Married with two children, he has now retired from the military and has published a book in which he claims to have no regrets, referring to the people he killed as "savages".

Job satisfaction

But a study into snipers in Israel has shown that, snipers are much less likely than other soldiers to dehumanise their enemy in this way.

Part of the reason for this may be that snipers can see their targets with great clarity and sometimes must observe them for hours or even days.

"It's killing that is very distant but also very personal," says anthropologist Neta Bar. "I would even say intimate."

She studied attitudes to killing among 30 Israeli snipers who served in the Palestinian territories from 2000 to 2003, to examine whether killing is unnatural or traumatic for human beings.

She chose snipers in particular because, unlike pilots or tank drivers who shoot at big targets like buildings, the sniper picks off individual people.

What she found was that while many Israeli soldiers would refer to Palestinian militants as "terrorists", snipers generally referred to them as human beings.

"The Hebrew word for human being is Son of Adam and this was the word they used by far more than any other when they talked about the people that they killed," she says.

Snipers almost never referred to the men they killed as targets, or used animal or machine metaphors. Some interviewees even said that their victims were legitimate warriors.

"Here is someone whose friends love him and I am sure he is a good person because he does this out of ideology," said one sniper who watched through his scope as a family mourned the man he had just shot. "But we from our side have prevented the killing of innocents, so we are not sorry about it."

This justification - which was supported by friends, family and wider Israeli society - could be one reason why the snipers didn't report any trauma after killing, she suggests.

"Being prepared for all those things that might crack their conviction, actually enabled them to kill without suffering too much."

She also noted that the snipers she studied were rational and intelligent young men.

In most military forces, snipers are subject to rigorous testing and training and are chosen for aptitude. In the UK, they

The US marine sniper course is one of the hardest training courses in the military, with a failure rate of more than 60% and a long list of prerequisites for recruits, including "a high degree of maturity, equanimity and common sense".

Research in Canada has also found that snipers tend to score lower on tests for post-traumatic stress and higher on tests for job satisfaction than the average soldier.

"By and large, they are very healthy, well-adjusted young men," says Peter Bradley at the Royal Military College of Canada, who is studying 150 snipers in Afghanistan. "When you meet them you're taken by how sensible and level-headed they are."

Don't tell your wife

But both the Israeli and the Canadian studies only spoke to snipers who were still on active duty. Neta Bar suspects many of them could experience problems in years to come, after they return to normal society.

When former Soviet sniper Ilya Abishev fought in Afghanistan in 1988 he was immersed in Soviet propaganda and was convinced what he was doing was right.

Regret came much later. "We believed we were defending the Afghan people," he says. "Now I am not proud, I am ashamed of my behaviour."

For police snipers, who operate within normal society rather than a war zone, doubts, or even trauma, can arise much sooner.

Brian Sain, a sniper and deputy at the sheriff's department in Texas, says many police and army snipers struggle with having killed in such an intimate way.

"It's not something you can tell your wife, it's not something you can tell your pastor," says Mr Sain, a member of Spotter, an American association that supports traumatised snipers. "Only another sniper understands how that feels."

But for the US's deadliest sniper, remorse does not seem to be an issue.

"It is a weird feeling," he admits. "Seeing an actual dead body... knowing that you're the one that caused it now to no longer move."

But that is as far as he goes.

"Every person I killed I strongly believe that they were bad," he says. "When I do go face God there is going to be lots of things I will have to account for but killing any of those people is not one of them."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16544490

2Could you kill someone? Empty Re: Could you kill someone? Wed Jan 25 2012, 12:15

aaron_bwfc

aaron_bwfc
Moderator
Moderator

Through the scope he saw a woman, with a child close by, approaching his troops. She had a grenade ready to detonate in her hand.


If I was in that situation I would pull the trigger I think.



Easy to say it without being in that situation though so you never know until your there.

3Could you kill someone? Empty Re: Could you kill someone? Wed Jan 25 2012, 13:01

Reebok Trotter

Reebok Trotter
Nat Lofthouse
Nat Lofthouse

A very interesting article. I don't think everyone would be cut out to be a sniper. Those Japanese snipers were the worst. They never blinked an eyelid while polishing people off. Inscrutable bastards.

P.S. I would have no hesitation in shooting a thieving magpie through the kneecaps.

4Could you kill someone? Empty Re: Could you kill someone? Wed Jan 25 2012, 15:44

Natasha Whittam

Natasha Whittam
Nat Lofthouse
Nat Lofthouse

I really do think I have the potential to become a serial killer.

The first one would be difficult, but after that I reckon I'd get a taste for it. I often dream about being a "Dexter" type serial killer who kills off the scum of society.

So be nice to me.

5Could you kill someone? Empty Re: Could you kill someone? Wed Jan 25 2012, 15:55

Guest


Guest

i could kill my son and his gay friends, all in there 20's but act like kids and they spend way to much time in his bedroom with the lights off

6Could you kill someone? Empty Re: Could you kill someone? Wed Jan 25 2012, 16:28

Hipster_Nebula

Hipster_Nebula
Nat Lofthouse
Nat Lofthouse

Sir Nut's Dad wrote:i could kill my son and his gay friends, all in there 20's but act like kids and they spend way to much time in his bedroom with the lights off

I don't believe you're sir nuts dad.

Anyway, could i kill someone, yes, if i had to.

7Could you kill someone? Empty Re: Could you kill someone? Wed Jan 25 2012, 17:04

Guest


Guest

i dont beleeve your name is hipster.

8Could you kill someone? Empty Re: Could you kill someone? Wed Jan 25 2012, 21:29

Banks of the Croal

Banks of the Croal
Frank Worthington
Frank Worthington

Good question, don't think i could, with my bare hands anyway.

What about when we used to Hang people, could anybody do that.

Albert Pierrepoint did.


Among the notable people he hanged:
A total of 202 German war criminals executed between 1945 and 1949, following a series of war trials e.g. the Hamburg Ravensbrück Trials. The list of condemned includes Irma Grese, the youngest concentration camp guard to be executed for crimes at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and Auschwitz (aged 22), Elisabeth Volkenrath (Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz), and Juana Bormann (Auschwitz), plus another 10 men including Josef Kramer (Camp Commandant at Belsen) and Fritz Klein. All 13 were condemned at the Belsen Trial and subsequently executed at Hamelin Prison on 13 December 1945 at half-hour intervals. The women were hanged individually, the men in pairs. Executing a large number of war criminals in a single day was not unusual for Pierrepoint. For example, he performed the following 11 executions at Hamelin Prison on 8 October 1946,[14] which resulted from the Neuengamme War Crimes Trial earlier the same year:
Max Pauly
SS Dr Bruno Kitt
Anton Thumann
Johann Reese
Willy Warnke
SS Dr Alfred Trzebinski
Heinrich Ruge
Wilhem Bahr
Andreas Brems
Wilhelm Dreimann
Adolf Speck
Bruno Tesch, co-inventor of the insecticide Zyklon B used in the Holocaust. Convicted of the crime of complicity in the murder of interned allied civilians by means of poison gas by a British military tribunal at the Curiohaus in Rotherbaum, Hamburg. Executed on May 16, 1946 in Hamelin Prison.
John Amery, son of wartime Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery, and the first person to plead guilty to treason in an English court since Summerset Fox in May 1654. He was described by Pierrepoint as "the bravest man I ever hanged". According to the official prison record of the execution, later released and now stored in the National Archives, Amery greeted his executioner with the words "Oh! Pierrepoint", but the executioner took the proffered hand only to put the pinioning strap on, making no reply. However, this account is disputed, as Pierrepoint himself later stated in interview that the two men spoke at length and he felt that he had known Amery 'all his life', and there is a story that Amery greeted Pierrepoint with "Mr Pierrepoint, I've always wanted to meet you. Though not, of course, under these circumstances!". Hanged at Wandsworth Prison, London, 19 December 1945.[15]
"Lord Haw-Haw", William Joyce, convicted as a traitor and executed at Wandsworth, 3 January 1946.
John George Haigh, the "Acid-bath murderer" executed at Wandsworth on 10 August 1949.
Derek Bentley, executed at Wandsworth on 28 January 1953 for his part in the death of Police Constable Miles. The execution was carried out despite pleas for clemency by large numbers of people including 200 Members of Parliament, the widow of Miles, and the recommendation of the jury in the trial. An article written by Pierrepoint for The Guardian, but withheld until the pardon was granted, dispelled the myth that Bentley had cried on his way to the scaffold. Right until the last, he believed he would be reprieved. After a 45-year long campaign, Bentley received a posthumous pardon in July 1998, when the Court of Appeal ruled that Bentley's conviction was "unsafe" and quashed it.
Timothy John Evans, hanged at Pentonville Prison on 9 March 1950 for the murder of his daughter (he was also suspected of having murdered his wife). It was subsequently discovered that Evans' neighbour, John Reginald Christie, was a serial killer. He was executed by Pierrepoint on 15 July 1953 at Pentonville. Timothy Evans received a posthumous pardon in 1966 for the murder of his daughter.
Michael Manning, on 20 April 1954 the last person to be executed in the Republic of Ireland.
Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, on 13 July 1955, for shooting her lover. Pierrepoint had no regrets about her execution; it was one of the few times he spoke publicly about one of his charges and he made it clear he felt she deserved no less.
James Inglis, the fastest hanging on record – a total of seven seconds elapsed from the time that Pierrepoint entered the Condemned Cell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Pierrepoint

9Could you kill someone? Empty Re: Could you kill someone? Wed Jan 25 2012, 21:43

Reebok Trotter

Reebok Trotter
Nat Lofthouse
Nat Lofthouse

I'm sure I read somewhere that Assassin Albert was from Cheshire ?

10Could you kill someone? Empty Re: Could you kill someone? Wed Jan 25 2012, 22:54

Banks of the Croal

Banks of the Croal
Frank Worthington
Frank Worthington

Don't have nightmares.

Sorry about that, a bit too upsetting for some, maybe.

11Could you kill someone? Empty Re: Could you kill someone? Thu Jan 26 2012, 15:35

Angry Dad

Angry Dad
Youri Djorkaeff
Youri Djorkaeff

Yes.I would torture the scum first until i got bored .

12Could you kill someone? Empty Re: Could you kill someone? Thu Jan 26 2012, 22:47

Angry Dad

Angry Dad
Youri Djorkaeff
Youri Djorkaeff

Especially women and child killers it would be a pleasure to secure them to a wooden foor with a nail gun and then pick up the lump hammer.........

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