Why shouldn't we kill the bad guy after defeating him

[Janx]

A new topic, ripped straight from TV, where the bad guy who was previously captured, escaped and caused mayhem and has now been caught again.

Why shouldn't you put a bullet in his head right then and there?

As usual, consider the topic from the Real Life angle and the Fictional/Gaming angle.

In real life, I'm pretty sure there's some laws saying you can't plug the bad guy after you stop and knock him out. You might be able to get creative with the crime scene, but that's dicey. In actuality, it's a lot easier to kill a guy in a fight than it is to disable and neutralize. So your best practical bet is to "try to kill him right back" during the fight and leave things where they lie for the cops. The law mostly supports proportional response to hostile action, so if the bad guy is trying to kill you, you should be good to go.

In comics, they've made their coin on repeated thrashings of the Joker by Batman. But keep in mind, with all the violence going on, there's a surprisingly low death rate amongst villain/heroes. With all the shrapnel, bullets and batarangs flying, more people should be hurt and dying from a bullet to the nose.

In gaming, I'm pretty sure Sun Tzu would agree that whacking the bandit leader would prevent future crime and problems by him. You're just as likely to cheeze off his family/fans/friends by capturing him as killing him, so that's not really a reason.

As to the final responce echoed to children through out all hero stories "if I kill him, I'll be just as bad as he is." Nonsense. Joker just killed a thousand people with his latest attack. Batman could just kill the 1 guy who just killed a thousand people with his latest attack and will likely do it again, just as he has before.

I'm pretty sure Batman will sleep well enough knowing that he doesn't have to fight Joker yet again. I'm pretty sure the people of Gotham would sleep well enough knowing that the Joker won't be killing them by the thousands AGAIN.

I think most PCs already fall into the "let's just kill him and be done with it" camp.

Even Ender's Game taught us that lesson. Fight your battles once.

So, what are compelling reason to NOT kill the bad guy.

 

[jonesy]

So, what are compelling reason to NOT kill the bad guy.

After defeating him? For starters if there was a chance that there were witnesses around, or the circumstances were iffy, you might have a hard time convincing anyone that he was the one attacking you, and not the other way around. Making you the bad guy. It's easier to prove that you were defending yourself when you've subdued the guy instead of killing him. Killing someone in self-defense is sometimes still ruled as manslaughter.

 

[El Mahdi]

So, what are compelling reason to NOT kill the bad guy.

First, because Humans are not prescient. Nobody knows what someone will or won't do in the Future.

And Second, because it's not as easy a thing as you might think.

I'm pretty sure Batman will sleep well enough knowing that he doesn't have to fight Joker yet again. I'm pretty sure the people of Gotham would sleep well enough knowing that the Joker won't be killing them by the thousands AGAIN.

This maybe true for a fictional character. And in real life is also likely true for the masses who didn't actually participate in the killing (like the people of Gotham). But for the person who does this in real life, it is not that simple.

Killing someone changes you, even when justified or in self defense. Ask any cop or soldier who's ever had to kill someone and they'll tell you, they do not just go home and sleep well. They may understand logically that it was something that had to be done, but it stays with you and weighs upon you, and never really completely goes away...ever.

Taking a life is a monumental thing. You're not just killing them in the moment, you are killing them in the future. Everything they would have been is now gone. And no matter how unemotional a person may be or seem, unless one is a true psychopath, it's virtually impossible to not feel an involuntary empathy for the person they just killed. You see it in the dying persons eyes. You see the end of thought, personality, character, being...LIFE...in those eyes. And in that moment, justified or not, necessary or not, self defense or not, it is an extremely hard thing to see, and impossible to forget. Once the adrenaline is gone, once the rage or fear has faded, the true impact is always felt and cannot be escaped.

There is always a price.

 

[RangerWickett]

Context. Unknown elements. The possibility of redemption and reform.

If you stop a villain, consider the cost of keeping him alive and imprisoned as opposed to the cost of killing him. Keeping him alive means that perhaps he might one day become a productive member of society. Killing him means that people who learn of the execution might come to feel, even slightly, that killing is more easily justified. Multiply that by millions of human beings, and perhaps it leads to far more suffering.

 

[Crothian]

In real life we don't have the Joker so you need a better example. So, why don't we just kill the serial killer? Well, plenty of states do have death row. And the ones that don't put him away for life.

When you capture these guys if it is known that they are just going to get shot in the head and killed then they are not going to want to get captured. So, you'll place a lot of lives at risk trying to capture someone who is fighting for his life. It would make the job of policemen much harder and more dangerous.

Also, where do you draw the line? If he killed two people you let the courts handle it but if he killed three you just shot him. Or maybe something different. Then you come to the difficult part of knowing who he killed. What if you are wrong and you kill the wrong person?

For a comics example just look at the Punisher. He does kill the bad guys, it doesn't always work out for him.

 

[Relique du Madde]

I'm going to say yes. Hell yes but only in fiction and games.

In Last Exile: Fam Fam the Silver Wing, the characters just learned the hard way what would happen if you don't.

Long story short, the eldest female in several blood lines are able to call down colonial space ships which could essentially nuke entire nations. The bad guys were doing this during a war to conquer the entire world. The main character who is an idiot pacifist decided to call a cease fire for the world's 6 year old queen. During the peace summit, the princess who was calling down the ships was killed during an assassination attempt against the BBeG. Her death was justified since she willfully helped commit genocide on the "Russians*" and the her own people.

The Child Queen had every nation complete the peace agreement and everyone went into mourning in honor of the memory of the dead genocidal princess. The good guy who assassinated the princess was arrested. However the BBeG was still allowed to walk unmolested by order of the child queen. So what does he do?

He kills her guardian and kidnaps her because she can control an other colony ship which has a BFG >9K mega death ray. He then has his loyalists break the peace agreement and he nukes the fleets of his allies and his enemies AND the city where the peace treaty was just signed. Why? Because there are too many humans and the population needs to be reduced since there is no way the planet Earth can substain a population larger then it was in the series.

So yeah, kill the badguy cause if you defeated him then act like he did nothing wrong he will KILL EVERYONE.

Also, 6 year old children should never be the ruler of the entire world.


* They spoke Russian.

-Sent via Tapatalk

 

[delericho]

A new topic, ripped straight from TV, where the bad guy who was previously captured, escaped and caused mayhem and has now been caught again.

Why shouldn't you put a bullet in his head right then and there?

As usual, consider the topic from the Real Life angle and the Fictional/Gaming angle.

In real life, we have a rule of law, and it is incredibly important to maintain that. The moment we allow for any abuse, we open the door for any abuse.

In fiction, the moment someone escapes and reoffends, the god guys should indeed bullet him. There's justification for giving him one second chance, but after that it starts to look an awful lot like negligence.

And this is even more true if the bad guy is superpowered, so only the heroes of the piece are able to bring him down, and even more true if they themselves were almost unable to do so.

Besides, in fiction it gets tedious when the writers just keep recycling the same threats over and over again. That's one of the blessings of all these superhero movies being built as trilogies - there are enough bad guys to do three movies without repeating themselves.

 

[Janx]

When you capture these guys if it is known that they are just going to get shot in the head and killed then they are not going to want to get captured. So, you'll place a lot of lives at risk trying to capture someone who is fighting for his life. It would make the job of policemen much harder and more dangerous.

I like this answer. No fuzzy fluffy emotional "you'll feel bad if you do." just cold hard logic. I'm going to ignore this point Crothian makes, but I think it is an excellent reason.

Though I might counter that this MIGHT sway some people from committing crime in the first place. It will also greatly reduce the total population of criminals, thereby reducing the crime rate (which in America, isn't all that high for other reasons). The bad guy may get away with a few attacks, but eventually he will be plugged. Problem solved. His victims will be martyrs in the war on crime. There's cultures now that see that as OK.

Also, where do you draw the line? If he killed two people you let the courts handle it but if he killed three you just shot him. Or maybe something different. Then you come to the difficult part of knowing who he killed. What if you are wrong and you kill the wrong person?

i think the line is drawn under the rules of engagement for an immediate hostile event. Bad guy attacks you, you get to kill him. If you hear about a bad guy six blocks away, you do not get to kill him because you did not personally witness the crime being perpetrated by the bad guy.

I differentiate the two because as the direct and immediate victim you are more qualified to act as judge, jury and executioner than anybody else on the planet. To anybody else, the bad guy "allegedly" did the crime, but technically it could have been his evil twin or some other mistaken identity (which happens to real people who are in jail right now for crimes they did not commit).

Whereas, having just been almost shot by the bad guy and successfully thwarted that attack and have a clean LOS to his noggin, there is no doubt, short of super-fantastic quantum reality shifting going on, that the guy in front of you is guilty.

I will offer my own counter to my "It's OK to shoot bad guys" idea.

Abuse of the system.

I suspect that's why the legal system exists. It's not about the obvious cases of "bad guy held up a convenience store and Apu wrested the gun away and shot him on tape." While I'm OK with the initiator of a violent crime getting the axe, that's not really the problem. Let Apu win in those cases, the jury should vote by their conciense and let Apu walk.

The problem is when the cops get a 911 call from a wife who claims her husband attacked her with a 9mm but she managed to dodge and run through the house to shoot him with a .38 she kept by the bed. If the cop didn't call in TVland's CSI team to do their magic, the wife could have faked that scene well enough to seem plausible.

Basically, people could abuse the "defensive homicde" rule to hide murders. That seems like a decent reason to discourage allowing them, so as to remove that tool from bad guys' belt of evil tricks.

 

[Janx]

Context. Unknown elements. The possibility of redemption and reform.

If you stop a villain, consider the cost of keeping him alive and imprisoned as opposed to the cost of killing him. Keeping him alive means that perhaps he might one day become a productive member of society. Killing him means that people who learn of the execution might come to feel, even slightly, that killing is more easily justified. Multiply that by millions of human beings, and perhaps it leads to far more suffering.

An object in motion tends to stay in motion.

A guy on the path of wrong doing, will tend to stay on that path. Unless acted upon by another force.

Sure, it's possible that the bad guy may change his stripes, but the probability of that is low.

There's also the consideration that there are 7 billion people on this planet. We don't have a shortage. Ex-cons are seldom able to get higher paying jobs because of their record. As such the contribution to society isn't that great. Keeping them alive because of the remote possibility that one of them might achieve more is like insisting the lottery is a good investment strategy. A dead bad guy means more food and resources for the law-abiding of society.

Bear in mind, I'm not actually considering the prison system in this. That's whole 'nother bucket of worms (which probably gets political). So bad guys who surrender, or are caught beyond the crime scene (and thus not stoped and killed at the crime scene) would go through the criminal justice system as normal.

So, I suspect the number of bad guys actually put down at the crime scene would be small.

 

[MarkB]

This topic provides a good illustration of one of the reasons it doesn't always pay to recycle villains, either in fiction or RPGs. By having the bad guy routinely escape to commit more carnage, you're essentially laying a degree of responsibility for those future crimes upon the protagonists who had a chance to stop him for good.

In fiction, that can impact upon how people view their heroes, and in RPGs it can impact upon how people play their heroes.

Sometimes - even often - the measures the heroes and the society they're defending take to contain such villains humanely should actually be effective. That allows the viewer/reader or player to retain some faith in that society, and also highlights the danger and competence of the rare few antagonists who do manage to escape.