Is shooting somebody less heinous than beheading? How come?

[raccoon]

:wtf:

The victim is just as dead either way.

[cali]

1. I suppose it depends. Having your head sawed off

would definitely be more painful than being shot through the head. Having your head swifly chopped off in one stroke would be less painful than being shot in the gut and left to die. I think there's also a psychological and cultural aspect involved.

[Happyhippychick]

2. I think it's more removed to shoot somebody than to stab them, don't know if it's less heinous.

The distance makes the act less intimate.

[sharp_stick]

3. The death is death

argument is probably right in that once it's over the result is the same. The only difference is in degrees of getting to the desired result. If you shoot someone in the head it's over fast, same thing, probably, if you use a guillotine or, if done right, a sword.

If you gut-shoot someone and then just let them expire it's probably equivalent to the method of beheading carried out by the nut-jobs right now where they hold the poor bugger down and saw their head off with a knife.

The end result is the same in all cases but the degree of savagery to get there is the difference IMO.

[kentuck]

4. How about dropping a bomb on a small unidentified baby and ...

blowing it's head 200 feet from its body?? Is that more cruel than a beheading? Or is that considered something else?

[havocmom]

6. WORD!

[raccoon]

8. I believe that lots of people consider the perp in that case to be less culpable,

because of the distance from the victims.

[kentuck]

11. I would say...

that it is because it is not videotaped. It is the pictures that are shocking. If we simply say that 50 women and children were killed by a 500-lb bomb, it does not have the impact of showing someone being beheaded although the violence and graphics of the bomb would be much more shocking if we could see it...

[virginia mountainman]

5. I saw the video of Danial Pearl, having his head sawed off...

Yes, Sawed off, the screaming, and gurgling will always be with me.

Some deaths are worse than others...

[raccoon]

7. I saw a video of beheading which was clearly fake.

Head was sawed off, and where was the blood? You know it would have been awfully bloody.

On edit: I believe it was the Nick Berg video I saw.

[virginia mountainman]

9. Now that I think about it, it was not Mr Pearl,

It was someone else, I cannot really remember, it has been a long time, but the screams are still with me.

Could be fake....I really do not know..

HERE IT IS, not for the weak of stomach

http://www.annoy.com/sectionless/beheading.wmv

[Politicalboi]

17. I don't think it was fake

Looked pretty real to me, right down the squealing. He is really dead. I think being shot in the head would be an easier death than laying there and someone cutting your head off.

[Occam Bandage]

10. Often.

A person shot on a battlefield has been killed according to the rules of war. A person who is beheaded represents a profound violation of the rights of the captured (captured people, after all, are generally harmless and so may not be killed). It's the same reason why a gitmo inmate who has been tortured represents a greater human-rights violation than if we had simply shot him during a firefight in Afghanistan.

[GreenArrow]

12. Each springs from the same source.

A barbarism refined is no less a barbarism.

[Annces]

13. which one would you rather have

that is the difference.

[peace13]

14. Interesting take.

What people forget about the Americans beheaded and dragged through the streets is that it was retaliation for our troops raping a young girl in front of her parents and then killing the entire family with a gun. I would take the beheading before seeing my child raped and killed any day. Guess it is a different perspective. Peace, Kim

[Javaman]

15. it saves on space. one box as opposed to two boxed.

whatever. To quote the tv show LOST, "dead is dead".

[aikoaiko]

16. Beheading with knife? yes. Guillotine, maybe not do different.

If given a choice, I'd prefer a shot to the head than have my head sawed off.

[BuyingThyme]

18. Because moron America has been brainwashed into thinking that

there's something civilized about owning a device which kills at the push of a button.