[ghostbrainalpha]

It's a very interesting gradient that you bring up.

Most of us probably have no issue with the baker who sold Hitler his daily loaf of bread.

But many of us do have problems with Hugo Boss for designing Nazi uniforms, even though the design work would have been before most of the Nazi war crimes had occurred.

Does not resisting to the fullest of your ability constitute enabling evil?

Would you take Pablo Escobar's donation to build a children's orphanage?

Should gun store owners share the blame when a gun purchased in their business is used in a mass shooting? If you say no, what about if the gun is used in a mass shooting within 30 minutes of the sale and the shooter comes across as under distress, and the gun store owner is worried enough to call in a warning to the authorities.

[sorokod]

A gradient is a gradient, mapping it's multiple values to just two: blame/no blame, will be problematic. In your gun store owner example, the blame itself has a gradient.

[vixen99]

As for the donation, who is going to disagree with the idea of getting money out of bad hands and into good ones. What do you want to do otherwise, burn it? And that's got nothing to do with removing the Escobars of this world.

[ghostbrainalpha]

Plenty of people have issues with taking money from bad people.

Why did Bernie Sanders have to return Martin Shkreli's donation? Even if the donation doesn't buy any influence or soft power it allows the "bad" actor to clean their reputation.

[dagw]

Why did Bernie Sanders have to return Martin Shkreli's donation?

From a political perspective there is also the reputation cost to consider. Even if you're morally fine with taking "bad" peoples money, having to answer "why is Shkreli funding you campaign" all the time has a pretty big political cost, even if you have a perfectly legitimate answer.