Are these people Jewish? If not, I don't think Jewish Laws about murder would apply to them. Anyway capital punishment can only be applied by a Sanhedrin in EY. If they are Gentiles outside EY, Noahide Code applies to them. And the laws about the requirements of witneses for Noahides is slightly different. Anyway, there is no Noahide binding court now either. So Torah penalties won't be applied to them.
You're right. I'm just questioning hypothetically. My brother and I were arguing about this last night, about who is morally responsible for this. I really wasn't completely convinced about this situation. Usually what I do when I'm trying to find stable moral grounds to base an opinion, is look to the Torah. Whether or not Torah law is applicable is not really my point. The Torah is more than just a legal code, in my opinion. To me at least, it is a light in the darkness. When I don't know where I'm going (philosophically) I look to it.
Putting a stumbling block before the blind is i'm sure about trying to fool somebody.
Selling goods at low prices is not doing so.
It's not about removing things that can provide a temptation for bad. We don't force women to cover themselves head to toe.
We don't do as the arabs and blame the woman for getting raped.
Are you suggesting that my saying that Walmart bears some of the responsibility for this is morally equivalent to muslims saying that women are responsible for getting raped because of what they were wearing?
It is logically equivalent. And it's immoral.
Not morally equivalent.. It's morally rather different
But it's still morally wrong to blame the woman or the shop.
There is a big difference morally between a woman dressing revealingly, and getting raped. And a shop selling goods cheaply and having a thieving stampede barge in. The woman has suffered more. (the woman has gone against G-d in dressing revealingly, but I wouldn't consider her even partly responsible for what the rapist does). The shop though has just priced good cheaply. That is not a crime in jewish law (unless it under-prices goods at a loss to knock out competition). The shop did nothing wrong there. So in that sense, it's even worse to blame the shop than to blame the woman! In the other sense of who was harmed more, it's worse to blame the woman.
It's bad to blame the shop or the woman.
It is not logically equivalent. The victim of the muslim rapist is the woman. The victim in this case is the man who was trampled to death, not the store. Walmart was the location of the event, not the victim of the event. If I had said that the clerk who was trampled brought it on himself by working there, then you could make that comparison. If Walmart bears some responsibility for this, it is not because they priced their goods cheaply, it is because they created an unsafe situation at the door. That situation at the door could have been easily rectified ahead of time, (See my reply to Lisa on how). I don't think that Walmart was criminally negligent, but somebody getting trampled to death was foreseeable and preventable. Walmart will be held responsible in a civil suit, I'm sure.
hmm.. I read that it occurred in an area full of blacks, and they barged in like that, I figured that like last time, they were stealing..
so you blame them for not forseeing that and having no crowd control facilities in place.
I don't think it was foreseeable. We rarely hear of human stampedes in the west.. For many, the first time we heard of it was a few years ago involving arabs and the kabba in mecca, a stampede is probably an annual problem there. At that time nobody had heard of a human stampede!!! The reaction in the west was amazement.
Another time I heard of it was the blacks in new orleans that wanted to go on a rampage there after the hurricane.
I'm sure that big shops in america have done sales many times, for years, without any problems like that. (and without turnstyles. Just regular doors)
British Football stadiums indeed put measures in, like turnstyles.. And Teenage Music Concerts probably do too. That may be largely to ensure nobody pushes in without buying a ticket. Alot of the time you have somebody at the turnstyle and you insert the ticket in there. It may be largely for that. Though it -may- have the secondary effect of preventing a stampede. But crowds there are often drinking and are more rowdy.
note- do you think this crowd would have formed an orderly queue at a turnstyle? they may have stampeded towards the turnstyle, even jumped over it.
One doesn't expect a human stampede at a shop. Sale or not.