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Disposable Bad Guys

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There's been a discussion on one of my chat groups concerning the casual killing of "bad guys" in movies and books. There are two schools of thought. First, it's escapist fiction, so it's supposed to by over-the-top. I enjoy the characters in NCIS-LA, but in almost every episode there is a scene where they blow away everyone who might be a bad guy.    No one ever investigates afterward. Nobody gets put on administrative leave until it's determined the shooting was "righteous."    No foreign government demands the U.S. answer for agents who shot up a whole neighborhood. If they even make a peep, someone, usually Henrietta, "handles" it. The question of whether all those deaths were warranted is ignored.   The assumption is the good guys are the good guys, so they get to kill bad guys. Period. The opposing arguments hold that indiscriminate killing sends the wrong message, in fact, a whole bunch of wrong messages.    Shoot first