Assassin's

[Katongo]

Are the to blame for the deaths of the people the Kill or though's who hire them? just had an argument with a friend and just taught to get other opinions

His argument Hire's are to Blame:Point 1 = The source are those who hire assassin's and provide funds for them

Point 2= Those who hire are responsible because the want the desire action hence assassin's are a mere tool.

Point 3= If there no hire's, no assassin's

My argument Both are to Blame:Point 1= assassin's choose to kill regardless of who the are told, innocent or not for their own gain

Point 2= So many other job's, downside is that the pay will be low

Point 3= No assassin hence no hire's, if no one chooses to be an assassin

Point 4= A tool is something that can't make it's own decision but an assassin can

[lemmingllama]

Assassins are responsible based on their peerceptions of what they are doing. If they see themselves as tools, then sure they arent fully responsible. Really its just degrees of responsibility that we would argue at this point

[Dan Den]

I have to agree with you friend, in my prospective they are just hired guns like your friend said the one's to blame are those who hired them. Take this for example, do you oil miners for the pollution of the world or do you blame the one's who hired them? (first example that pooped into my head) It's about the same principle, you can't blame the assassins cause they are just told what to do for the money it doesn't matter to them but the guys who hired them.

[Leviathan87]

i would assassinate the bad people in us. lol

[Trend]

I agree with you, both are responsible, the one who hires knows full well the consequences of hiring a trained killer while on the other hand the assassin has complete control over his actions unlike a tool. I believe they are both responsible. It's all about supply and demand as long as there are people hiring there will be those to do the job.

[Bluenoser]

Both. The one doing the hiring is obvious, and the assassin has trained for the specific job of killing people, and trying to equate that to other types of jobs overlooks the sentient awareness aspect of being human IMHO. The assassin KNOWS that they are training to kill other human beings, therefore they are assuming part of the responsibility (aka blame) involved in doing so, you cannot just claim they are tools without any responsibility at all, because bottom line tools have no free will while humans do. It really *IS* that simple IMHO. The example used by another regarding blaming an oil engineer for pollution was to my mind also wrong, because the oil engineer does share in that responsibility, however the degree/amount of responsibility is another matter, the engineers is so much less than many other players in the chain of actors and deciders throughout the chain that creates the pollution, while with the question at hand there are essentially only a couple of players in the entire chain, the hirer and assassin(s) making their respective values of responsibility so much higher, and another factor is that an oil engineer has skills that can be translated into other areas, the assassin's skill sets are far more limiting in their transferability which in turn makes their awareness of the conscious choice they have made to be a killer that much more of a factor which cannot be overlook/excused with the "they are tools" argument/approach.

That's my view on the question.

[† Mute point]

Both are responsible, but the primary blame should fall on the one who hired the assassin, or hitman, or whatever you want to call them. If the hired killer wasn't around, the one who hired them would find another way to kill the person.