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Comment by SonicSoul | Hacker News Reader

this is incredibly sad. could loneliness be a contributing factor? This reminds of This American Life episode about a man who got off his medication and felt like there were trained assassins after him. He ended up causing a lot of damage, attacking cops, and being shot in the process (not deadly). Luckily we do have medication that can help with such conditions.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/579/m...

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>being shot in the process (not deadly)

Being shot is always deadly, I think you meant to say he was not fatally shot.

EDIT: This is not a point of idle pedanticism, it's a very common misconception that there are 'safe' places to shoot a human body such as the shoulder. There are no safe places to shoot somebody, all shots taken by police are shots to kill.

https://www.pfoa.co.uk/110/shooting-to-wound

An interesting observation. Obvious, on the face of it, but then you consider: what if they'd been shot in the little finger. Very unlikely to cause death (where prompt medical help is available). People have died from biting their nails (at least, from complications caused from subsequent infection when the skin was broken) but you'd hardly call nail biting a "deadly habit". They both lay along a scale of deadliness. I wonder how probable an action has to be of causing death before it can safely be called deadly?

Huh? I think you may be confused. Being shot mean being struck by a bullet. Inanimate objects can be shot. Whether it's deadly/fatal is a consequence of the injury.

Merriam Webster definition of 'deadly':

1: likely to cause or capable of producing death <deadly poison>

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deadly

I see what you mean, but when people use "deadly" in retrospect, it's typically synonymous with "fatal". It would be one thing if there were potential for confusion, but here, there's really not.

Always appreciate feedback considering English is not my first language, but considering the past tense wouldn't it be ok to say the shot was not deadly? That is not to say the intent wasn't

Perhaps "not fatally" would be a better way of indicating that the outcome was not death, regardless of the intent :)

Ah, the old practice of using a word that comes from French to give some nuance when a Germanic word once worked. The Miriam-Webster dictionary says SonicSoul’s usage was correct, meaning “in a manner to cause death,” but now is archaic.

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