How important does somebody have to be before they are assassinated?

Question

rather than murdered...

Answer 1

If you're killed for a personal reason or no reason at all you have been murdered. If you're killed because of your political or religious views or to stop you you from performing some action then you have been assassinated. Murder is personal, assassination is business.

Answer 2

Drat. I was going to ask that question! :-)

Anyway, the distinction does seem to be rather blurry. We can safely assume that assassination is used for important government holders, leaders of major political or cultural movements, etc. Thus both Kennedys were assassinated, Martin Luther King was assassinated, Gandhi, Huey Long, Franz Ferdinand, Lincoln, etc. However, was John Lennon assassinated? Selena? Congressman Ryan (Jim Jones victim)? Those are tough ones.

Also, even if the killer is an assassin, I don't necessarily count that as automatic assassination. A guy paying an assassin to kill his wife is hardly in the same category as a lone nut taking pot shots at the President.

Regardless of how you slice it, the end result tends to be the same, no matter what some media guy calls it.

Answer 3

It is the same thing, its just the higher end (usually politicians as mentioned) get the better term for it. Assassinated makes it sound professional and for a point while murder just sounds horrendous and by an amateur. I dont think its as much "importance" as it is who important hates you (as I believe the 1st guy said). I mean if a president is murdered its always an "assassination", or the leader of a country or someone of that stature. Where as if even someone like a top musician/actor/athlete gets murdered its just murder. It takes a whole hell of a lot of planning to assassinate someone b/c you have to get by alot of obstacles and such...

Answer 4

I'd say on the international scale designated by Assassins Anonymous that when a person gain notoriety in the following fields they are assassinated and not murdered:-

1. Politics
2. Music
3. Sport
4. Religion
5. History

If I were an assassin (which I'm not) then category 5 would be my favourite *grins*

Answer 5

Assassination is a matter of intent.

For example,

A homeless person is the sole witness to a crime. The person on trial pays someone to kill him. That is an assassination.

A major politician is killed during an armed robbery. That is not an assassination.

Answer 6

assasination is just a posh name for murder
sometimes its done by politicians or states to prentend its good and proper (eg intelligence agencies assainating enemies of the state)
sometimes its gangsters taking out the opposition
some dilletantes claim its elegant and refined and not coarse) - who cares its still death at the hands of soemone else.

I think assassainantion has an element of premeditation and probably, but not neccesarily, planning. which I supopose marks it out from just plain and simple murder. Thinkt of it as a subset of 'normal' murder where someone has gone out deliberatley to kill someone else.

so the shooting of somebody because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or were mistakenly identified are probably assassainated (call it preplanned murder if you will), where as somebody who gets shot in the course of a criminal act by the perpetrators is just a plain simple murder.

Answer 7

I think the term assassinated is usually used when they are killed for some political end...

Answer 8

not very important, if they are killed by an assassin, then its not murder.
If the person is important enough to be killed, the person hiring the killer will probably be the important one

Answer 9

It all depends upon the popularity of the guy to be assasinated

Answer 10

Not the importance, but the motive.