A social media influencer stalked and murdered on camera leaves Bill Whittle wondering if our society encourages deranged predators, or simply fails to stop them. Zo Rachel engages with Bill on moral issues of our day twice weekly, thanks to our Members. Join them now using the big green button above.
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29 replies on “Stopping Predators: Does Our Society Encourage Murderers, or Simply Fail to Deter Them?”
Bill, sociopaths are expert at convincing people they are normal.
Zoe’s idea of the unregulated sale of goods because private property is the reason we have laws like these in the first place. Aside from deviant persons selling snake oil products, or using the same excuse for selling booze to minors or automobiles to 14 year olds, you WILL have the problem with selling these lethal items to a Face, a person that dedicates their charisma, looks and ability of persuasion, to handle deals on behalf of a third party.
As good as you might consider yourself a good judge of character, even you can be fooled by professional con artists, and there would be no way for you to even touch the effectiveness of federal background checks (when they are working as they are intended).
We understand your frustration about some mental health issues from your youth, and I’m overjoyed that you have gotten over the criticism of firearm ownership, as something opposed to the assurances and trust in provenance. Good responsible people having the ability to defend themselves and their community is always a good thing. Why don’t you try appealing to the governor to expunge this instead of messing with a system that is working. It’s something I heard about, but I have no idea how one would go about it.
Now, aside from that, who are these perverts and wife beaters you keep speaking and are so fixated about? It comes up so often, and with so much passion that you all must insist is so provable, but refuse to explain who exactly is denying the fact and all the evidence.. is it hunter Biden? Epstein? Who would even bother to debate you l on that here? So, if not them then who?
So … we don’t have a gun problem, we have a human predator problem.
Good way of looking at it. The question becomes, WHY do we have MORE of a human predator problem than we used to have just 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago, and why, over time, has it gotten worse?
Yeah, the number is very small. It used to be smaller.
What have we changed over the last half-decade? And what such change have we accelerated?
If you ask me … I think it is the rise of … or rather, the discarding of the idea of God. God is Dead. What does that mean?
Even Nietzsche understood it. Without right and wrong being woven into the fabric of the Universe – there is no coherent moral frame of reference that applies to everyone. We’re all just complex conglomerations of atoms and there’s no reason at all for us. None whatsoever.
So now right and wrong have been yanked out from under people. It’s right for ME, and that’s all that matters, right? Who are YOU to tell me what I want to do … or what I do … is WRONG?
So say I want to go shoot up a 4th of July parade. Kill a bunch of people. What’s WRONG … without any universal moral frame of reference, with that? Am I not just one complex collection of molecules disrupting other complex collections of molecules to the point where they are no longer related the same way? How is that different from two heavenly bodies colliding? I mean it’s all just deterministic laws of physics and interactions between atomic and sub-atomic structures …. right?
Then we … and by “we” I mean the new prevalence in our society of armchair-atheists who haven’t REALLY thought about this … substitute little pieces of what has been produced by thousands of years of a consistent moral framework that people put a LOT of thought into over the years … we substitute these little pieces, distorted and out of context, and tell them that going along with THOSE things is what makes you a “good person”. It’s all about eliminating oppression and suffering. (and why is THAT “good” from the deterministic materialists’ viewpoint? What is the ultimate justification for judging it “good”?)
That’s where “woke” came from. Now the only people you can judge are people who are trying to preserve the long-established moral frame of reference.
But that’s a bit of a digression.
The point is we had less of this kind of thing when more people were raised with a well-grounded consistent moral framework that was ALSO consistent across a wide swath of society – and it produced … a greater percentage of stable people across society.
I never thought about Adam and Eve being the first murder-suicide pact but it really is true. And we are all paying the price for that pact.
When I get the “pro-life/death penalty” question my response is this: The death penalty is limited to capital offenses, which includes first degree murder. This means you deliberately and with forethought consciously chose to deprive someone of their life. We believe ALL life is so precious that when you choose to take someone else’s life that you must forfeit yours. Society cannot exist with people willing to take the life of another.
I point out that the inconsistent position is those who fight the death penalty for murderers while supporting abortion, which takes the life of the most innocent of all life, the unborn.
That argument about “pro-life/death penalty” is a false equivalency. That unborn baby didn’t murder anyone through malice. My answer to it is simply …
“You show me an unborn baby that murdered another human being on purpose in malice and I’ll support the death penalty for that particular little murderer the same as I would for any other murderer.”
What’s frighteningly and gruesomely weird is that they could even entertain the thought that an innocent child who not only never hurt anyone but who hasn’t even had the opportunity to do so — Is the equivalence of a murdering psychopath/sociopath adult who killed one or many for his own foul reasons.
The Left doesn’t seem to be able to grasp that those two are not the same things. Which makes them disgusting.
Don’t miss an opportunity to shame them for their moral lack while you’re at it.
You guys keep returning to godlessness, entitlement and a lack of accountability. But a table has four legs and you haven’t spent a lot of time on the fourth one. In fact it seems to fall into a bit of a secular blind spot.
Tolerance has a universal constant. It’s quite simple, it’s based on a hardwired human survival mechanism: The willingness anyone has to tolerate those they place in the other category is based on their trust that those in the other category will self moderate.
The enemy hasn’t forgotten the universal constant of tolerance. In fact, the enemy has used it to devise weapons to attack us with. Such as:
Common core, twerking feminists, critical theory, pride events, people who can be manipulated into January sixth events and, those who commit bulk murder suicides. You may argue that the people involved felt entitled, but it’s just as true that they were indoctrinated in the mentality that they shouldn’t have to hold back. Or think more deeply than a tweet.
My advice, if you are serious about breaking into the culture, is to draw on the 1980’s He-Man a bit.
By the Power of Grayskull? 🙂
One problem is the rise of “gun-free zones”. There is a deterrent involved in the risk that someone might be able to stop you. This is missing in what can be called a “target-rich environment”. No mass shooting ever happened in a police station.
I have said many times that for the shooter to be put down, even if it happens before he shoots a single person, is still a failure.
Success is when he looks at the odds and decides not to try it in the first place.
When there is “rot in your basement”, you must attend to it. The building of the US has a strong foundation, its Constitution. When something is obviously standing out as contrary to that foundation, such as slavery or abortion, there are consequences to the structure of the edifice. We’ve had a couple of generations with little respect for human life because of Roe v. Wade. We’ve had a couple of generations who left God and the church. Some churches, even Catholic churches, are actively pro-abortion. Don’t think that this hasn’t had an untoward affect. Getting back to “one nation under God” will help. Man is flawed and mass killings won’t go away, so there’s that. Re-introducing a moral foundation is the ‘elephant in the room’ in any of these discussions.
Good for you, Bill, for declaring that you don’t hate the Left; however, I do hate the leftist ideology and all those who adhere to it in contradiction of facts (i.e., the willfully ignorant who cannot be persuaded as you suggest). I consider the leftists to be the same sort of reprehensible creatures as serial killers, because they adhere to Leftism, which has killed more than a hundred million people last century alone. “What?” you ask. Consider the fact that communism, socialism and fascism are constructs of the Left — not the Right as so many have been brainwashed to believe. Like those well-known isms, the Left, through fear and force, promotes collectivism and subjugation of opponents and citizens.
Leftism is an evil foisted upon humanity by those who would control the world and all its inhabitants. If that is not worth our hatred, then I don’t know what is.
This may have been recorded before the Jose Alba story broke in NY , assault VICTIM is arrested and given $500k bail for stabbing his attacker , a career criminal. The attack is on tape .
I saw that, and it is a reprehensible breach of justice.
I particularly liked the following commentary by Matt Christiansen: https://youtu.be/ma_sE0C_vwI
Anarchy is coming. These tyrannical prosecutors, judges, and law enforcement officers are accelerating its rise. When there is no equal application of law for all citizens, there will be no law for any citizens.
I think I’d prefer anarchy to a FBI full of wanna be directors hoping to win an Oscar for the next January 6th. With those treasonous fools giving the appearance of preferring to direct useful idiots for maximum political impact over catching killers and rapists, we are better off without them.
I’m not sure if Bill moved the Highland Park shooter to LA or if there was a second 6 victim shooting within a day of the July 4 parade Hitman wanna-be shooting.
You mentioned how responsibility for most things belonged to the people, but this was taken from them for good or other by authority. Now acting can and will get you in trouble, so sitting on your hands doing nothing is the result, the required result it seems authority sought.
Zo’s outstanding idea of the gun shop owner’s right to decide who to sell their weapons to was attacked by the Masterpiece Cake Shop case forcing Jack Phillips to perform his artistry for the perverts.
If you do that, then wouldn’t it introduce legal culpability to the gun store owner if someone ‘wrong’ slips through?
Holy carp, you just found a use for the ATF! Too bad the enemy tries to sue everyone anyway.
(???) A gun shop owner isn’t acting as a publisher of the guns he sells (a la Fascist Book’s censorship). Also, if a food fight breaks out at a wedding reception, I don’t see anybody getting very far with a demand that the cake baker reimbursement his dry cleaning bill. 🙂 (Although, nowadays, who knows?) :/
Not saying it SHOULD
I think Zo’s idea would work if everyone else was a interested in good communities. We’ve seen enough people sell things that were not in their best interest that there is a saying that people would sell the rope to their enemies that they would use to hang them.
As it is, since there are enough street dealers providing weapons to the criminals out on no bail that it would just mean a little less paperwork for the honest merchants… or maybe more with the extra work they would have to do. The Highland Park punk was visited by the cops a few times in examples of how red flag laws don’t work when your family won’t report you, and as long as you don’t commit a felony you won’t get flagged in a background check anyway.
The danger of red flag laws is that the ewer rat Leftists consider DECENT people as a terrorist threat.
Yeah, that’s the other half of it, probably the more dangerous half.
(That’s “sewer rat” Leftists. I often “fat-finger” my typing. This time I must have skinny-fingered it– but I couldn’t figure out how to edit my correction. The little wheel didn’t show up. :/)
You can only edit a comment up until the point where someone posts a reply to it. After that it’s locked and the little wheel won’t show up.
Thanks. I guess that’s a good thing. I thought it was just my computer illiteracy. 🙂
There’s also a topic in the forum for technical issues and things like you’re talking about fall under that category. I haven’t looked at it lately so I don’t know how active it is.
I just happened to see your comment so I could help you solve this particular issue.
Locking the comment when someone replies gives you time to edit it, which I do a lot because I find typos and things that I didn’t make as clear as they should be. So you’ll see that “Last edited …” tag on a lot of what I post.
After someone replies, locking the comment prevents people from going back and changing the thing that was replied to. So yeah, I think that’s a good policy.