Damn straight I'm focused on definitions, and I'll do that whenever someone waltzes in and tries to change one out of his own ignorance or just because the reality doesn't fit his game plan...
Nobody was trying to change definitions.
Rather, multiple posters here (myself included) invoked the image of breaking and entering, as a kindred substitute for trespassing and entering, in a strictly legal sense.
It is the 'entering' part which is most significant - traversing the property by stealth and then entering into a structure erected on the premises which stores valuables of one kind or another... close enough, as a discussion baseline.
Not really. The shooter is going to get off scot-free and the idiot student will be forgotten soon enough.
...Same question to you as to Skull -- how do you know this kid was an "idiot"? Did you know him? Is that how you know from here what his intent was?
By virtue of the fact that he engaged in criminal activity in a strange country reknowned for its armed and hair-trigger citizenry.
That tells us all we need to know about his idiocy - his lack of common sense.
As to his intent, his companion has confessed to authorities that they were engaged in 'garage hopping', which is defined as intrusion into private garages and stealing contents.
Assuming that the reports are true - and that the confession is legitimate - then that tells us all we need to know about his motives, as well.
No personal knowledge of the principals is required in order to formulate and serve-up an evidence-based opinion on the subject.
Thank you for taking my bait...
What bait would that be?
The bait of asking a colleague for an honest answer?
You are a little more transparent and predictable than you would like to think.
Knowing that an attempt to spring a trap was in the works, I chose to serve-up an honest answer, regardless; secure in the knowledge that the trap was made of tissue paper, and would not hold.
Truth be told, there is no prejudice to a metaphorical judgment of 'idiocy' attributable to a lack of personal knowledge.
If it flaps like a duck, and waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, and smells like a duck and looks like a duck, then chances are very, very good that it is, indeed, a duck.
If a foreign exchange student engages in criminal trespass and burglary in a foreign country in which he is a guest, in light of that country's world-reknown for an armed citizenry and a hair-trigger, then the metaphorical epithet of 'idiot' is quite defensible.
Some trap you set for me there.
...What you've just laid out (and I'm sure Skull would have done the same thing) is this same elitism that sees an under-caste...
Sorry. I stepped away from the bong and laid-aside my Chairman Mao Little Red Book eons ago; leaving the Sixties well behind me.
...The dichotomy-think that declares everything is black and white, good and evil, cops and robbers...
Isn't this fun, pretending that you know the intellectual capacity and the analytic and judgmental abilities of your entire range of opposites in such matters, and indulging in the pleasant delusion that they all think in the way that you want to believe they do?
...So you don't know this kid, neither does SkullPilot -- you guys just cram him into a preconceived box based on an article and a message board thread and say "good riddance"...
If it waddles like a duck and flaps like a duck and quacks like a duck and smells like a duck and looks like a duck, then I don't need to
know the beastie, to reach the reasonable conclusion that it is quite probably a duck.
...That's the same kind of box I spoke of earlier today. It's not reality. It's a crutch used to avoid reality...
No. The reality is, the Perp is now pushing up daisies in Germany.
...The truth is there are always two sides to every story...
Ya learn sumfin' new every day...
...and if this kid had been simply arrested for trespassing (or whatever crime) he would be given the opportunity to state his side in court. Just as the shooter is going to get to tell his side...
And if that idiot-kid and his idiot-buddy had not invaded the space of others and set the stage to commit a burglary - a felony - he would not now be pushing-up daisies in Germany; unable to tell his story due to his own fatal foolishness.
...Of course only one of them lives to see that day in court, because of dichotomous thinking...
Yes.
Dichotomous thinking.
The shooter and his family are alive.
The idiot kid is dead.
It doesn't get much more dichotomous than that, does it?
Nature has de-selected him.
The shooter gets off scot-free ( in
Montana, no less!
)
The dead idiot-kid is soon forgotten.
Next slide, please.
...The fact is you don't know Diren Dede was "an idiot"; SkullPilot doesn't know he was "a piece of shit", and Katzendogz and the rest of the rabid killer crowd don't know Dede deserved his vigilante death penalty...
Metaphorically speaking, he was an Idiot, and was responsible for his own demise.
...This is also reflective of this culture's disregard for human life that puts these Internet Tough Guy posts up and pulls the trigger on Kaarma's shotgun. They're not people; they're dehumanized "pieces of shit". We "don't know" and we don't WANT to know...
In a home-defense context, there is no excuse for invasion. None. Fools who put themselves into harms' way in this visceral context oftentimes come to really bad endings, as this fool did.
...That's the root of the problem right there.
No. The root of the problem is the idiots who invade the homes and properties of others.
