Father vows to kill son's murderer if released

[Waldo Frey]

And people are STILL making this argument. :bang:

Jesus. And I thought this thread had jumped the shark several pages back. Clearly there is still plenty more stupid to be shat into it.

I am not advocating the prison justice. But violence in prison does exist. Jeffery Dahmer and John Geoghan died a violent death in prison. Maybe the movies distort our views about the American penal system. My statement "Twelve years could have a lot of things happen in prison." inferred Michael Woodmansee could have die of health reason in the next twelve years, but how that comes to be I would never know and I really don't care.

[Lord O' Bones]

Ladies and gentlemen of the thread! The time has come for an end to this madness!

Let us link arms and step aside so that Ser Possum and Eurytus can charge forth, unimpeded,

and by whatever force that fuels their outrage with discussion!

Let them needs suffer no one they deem fools gladly and may they rage, rage, rage! into the night.

Our hearts rend as we may never see them again...

Such is our fate and our loss, yet even our gain.

[awesome possum]

Of course possum is also speaking from a position where he's guessing that it isn't. I'm sure that concerns you as well.

I'm not guessing at anything. I'm speaking my opinion. If people disagree or don't like what my opinion happens to be, that's their right. It doesn't change my opinion or belief.

[kuroishi]

I don't have a child, but I have heard from enough people who have that their love for their child is unlike any previous emotional bond in their lives. Especially so for mothers.

Given that I am childless I would not presume to tell them otherwise.

And how many of them had the experience of raising a child beforehand?

I also happen to have a big sister, who happens to have two children, and she didn't feel a difference between what she felt for my brother (for whom she did a lot when he was a baby) and what she feels for my nephew and niece...

In fact, to come back to the OP, she's actually said to me that if a sex offender had ever laid a hand on my brother, she likely would have gone crazy and try to kill him, and that she felt the same for her children.

Eh, but what does she know?

[awesome possum]

Ladies and gentlemen of the thread! The time has come for an end to this madness!

Let us link arms and step aside so that Ser Possum and Eurytus can charge forth, unimpeded,

and by whatever force that fuels their outrage with discussion!

Let them needs suffer no one they deem fools gladly and may they rage, rage, rage! into the night.

Our hearts rend as we may never see them again...

Such is our fate and our loss, yet even our gain.

Feel better now?

[Ixodes]

How would you react if it was not the father of the child that was declaring his intention to kill but, say, the father's next-door neighbour?

Interesting.

To be honest it probably wouldn't make that much of a difference to me considering the neighbor was also traumatized by the event. If something like this happened to a kid in my neighborhood, I would feel a tremendous amount of horror, sadness, and rage. I'm not saying I would become a vigilante but I could understand the feelings that would bring someone to that point. Woodmansee would be a fool to move back to the same area or neighborhood on his release.

To take it a bit further, what would I do if I was the only witness to the father shooting Woodmansee? I would shrug my shoulders and say I didn't see a thing. If it were the neighbor who killed him, I still probably wouldn't cooperate with any investigation.

[mormont]

I just don't understand why in every discussion someone has to come forward and compare two completely unrelated situations and link them together as to make a point.

It's called an analogy, and while I do agree it's a much overused and abused method of argument on this board, it does sometimes have a purpose. In this case, I think the purpose was supposed to be to try to get people to look at the arguments in a way that reduced the overriding effect of the emotional reaction.

I don't think that's what I said at all. Just that it seemed to me that the vast majority of those so quick to condemn emotional reactions were childless, in which case they simply don't understand.

Apologies, but that's not a fair reflection of what you said. You said

You'd have to be a parent to understand, and for those who are calling others barbarians or condemning anyone who supports the idea of vigilante justice for a murdered child, I feel sorry for you. Because you have apparently never known the total love and devotion that a child has for you. The complete and utter dedication and trust they have that you'll keep them safe. That you will be there for them.

The implication of that is that parents would agree with your position, and that those who disagree with you must be doing so because they're childless. That goes further than you're saying: that's suggesting that your parental feelings give you a unique insight, and that anybody who shared that insight would agree with you. You then said

If you're a parent and believe you would be OK with your child's murderer serving less than a decade more time than some marijuana growers get, that's on you.

Which I can't see any other way of reading than 'if you think this, you're a bad parent'. (It's an inaccurate caricature of the opposing position also, but that's pretty typical in this thread.)

If you really didn't mean to denigrate parents on the other side of the issue, you made a very bad job of expressing yourself.

[Lord O' Bones]

Feel better now?

Quite. I just had some delicious pasta and thank you for asking!

[awesome possum]

The implication of that is that parents would agree with your position, and that those who disagree with you must be doing so because they're childless. That goes further than you're saying: that's suggesting that your parental feelings give you a unique insight, and that anybody who shared that insight would agree with you. You then said

Which I can't see any other way of reading than 'if you think this, you're a bad parent'. (It's an inaccurate caricature of the opposing position also, but that's pretty typical in this thread.)

If you really didn't mean to denigrate parents on the other side of the issue, you made a very bad job of expressing yourself.

Maybe I did, but my opinion hasn't changed.

[Insert Edit]

Problem with emotional arguments is you can always find exceptions.

So as a father, yes, the bond between me and my daughter is very strong. However I personally know guys who have fathered children that rarely see them, and provide little to no support - financial or emotional to their children.

Since we're discussing horrible stories of violence to children, we had an awful case here in Calgary where an Asian exchange student got caught up in the party lifestyle, alone and lonely living by herself; was too ashamed to even tell her family (Hong Kong I think) that she was pregnant, and had a child here in Canada.

She decided to leave her infant in a playpen, and went on a weekend long bender with her boyfriend, and the baby died from dehydration.

So, no there is no necessary bond between child and parent. The newswires have stories about kids abused, kids killed by parents every day. Social workers will tell you stories that will make you cry.