Originally posted by: Go-Mer-Tonic
Well I appreciate why Lucas felt he needed to clarify that Greedo was intending to kill Han.

If the big guy is pointing a gun at you, and telling you that the idea is to see you dead, I think that's justification enough.

But I can also see how that point could be lost on people who don't bother reading subtitles. Without the subtitles, Greedo might just be taking Han in, not intending to kill him.

Alas, so it all come back to this. I can see now much more depth in this silly debate. To people like Gomer and Lucas, this whole Greedo thing is a matter of integrity. Han couldn't so much as consider killing Greedo with out becoming the bad guy. I have no right to attack the brute in the bar who is saying that in five minutes or so he is going to turn around and shove a pull cue up my rectum and kill me. I have to wait for the first neck breaking blow to come to me before I can throw the first punch. In the real world, that is a wee bit late.

What if Greedo had been a better shot? Han would have been dead. Luke would have had to get a ride to Alderaan from some other pilot, and the Death Star would have destroyed the rebel strong hold.

The whole idea of only attacking in retaliation is a very foolish one. The man at the bar analogy was a bit of a dumb one, because you are in a public place and there are others all around. Nobody would just shoot some big guy in the bar because he was threatening with words. However, let try another analogy, A man breaks into you home, he has a gun, he wakes you and your family up asks for some breakfast and threats to rape your daughter if you don't make it for him. You too have a gun, must you wait for him to shoot your wife or one of your children before you put a bullet into his head?

By your logic, he shoots at your son, misses, and you shoot him while still holding onto your precious integrity. Because we do, in fact live in a perfect world where all bad men are as bad of shots as Mr. Greedo was. I am sure if America ever was nailed by an ICBM, it would miss us and go into the ocean, then we would have every right to attack. But only then? We don't live in a perfect world. That ICBM would land right in the middle of the most populated territory of America, that man who broke into you house would have killed your son. In either case the damage is done.

We fall into this ignorant soft hearted sensitivity. It is not good to go around shooting all potential threats, but there are threats that pose a clear and present. There is the man who calls you on the phone at three in the morning and tells you how much he would like to violate your wife and daughter. Do you just hang up on him and go back to sleep? No. You take action. You don't wait on him to act first, you call the police. Maybe he is just trying to scare you, can you risk it? Now we are looking at this thing from a larger level, on a planetary scale, who are the police that can be called when somebody calls up at 3 am and threatens to hurt America?

Imagine you lived a hundred years ago, a settler perhaps, living out in an obscure area. Somebody threatens to hurt your family. What do you do then? Wait around for it to happen? In this case there are no police to call. By your logic you would do nothing. By mine I would kill the guy first chance I got. You should not go around making threats and not expect anybody to take you seriously. I guess in our overly sensitive age we consider all threats idle threats. Threats are not something to be taken lightly. Neither by the giver or the reciever.