If no one has free will. That one is not free to make choices in life. That everything one does is merely a preconditioned programmed response
This is a common misconception. "If I'm not free, I must be a slave (just a program)." Look at your use of the word "response". What are you responding against? Is it not, whatever it is, also responding to you? If I knock a pitch out of the park with my bat, most will say the ball "responded" to my bat by flying away. But my bat also responded to the ball! The ball knocked my bat off its course -- of course in much less dramatic fashion (which is why it's rarely talked about).
Now, humans, of course, aren't bats and balls but
fundamentally there is no difference. This is where people screw up. Did the ball have a "choice" whether it flew out of the park or not? No, it had to. It did its best to knock the bat out of its way, but the bat was stronger. Similarly, every time you "make a choice" you enter into an exchange with... everything around you. Every decision, every action, everything you do or see around you is the result of a confluence of forces -- in your example, the glock, the bullets, my daughters brain, the gunman, his car etc. are all factors which are plugged into the equation of existence, and out pops the necessary result: my daughter's brain is splattered all over the sidewalk. Which brings me to...
Then no one can be held responsible for their actions. Do you hold responsible the Glock 22 that just pumped six 230 grain Hydro-Shoks into your daughter's brain? Maybe you do? Some do in fact?
Saying nothing is absolutely free from outside influence is quite different from saying no one has free will. Being influenced by outside forces or not still implies conscious choices.
I can hold whoever I want "responsible" for whichever "action" I want. I would go amiss if I said that the shooter here was SOLELY responsible for blowing my daughter's brains out. He pulled the trigger, but what was behind that pull? Well, of course a "decision" made by him. But what was behind that decision? If I said "nothing but his own free will" I would be dead wrong. Behind his decision was a lifetime of interactions, and ultimately, the whole history of existence. Countless forces battling it out over countless billions of years led up to that point, and led to that necessary result. I could blame him, and him alone, but that would be to the discredit of an infinity of other factors which led to this situation.
Of course I'll be furious at this outcome, but what can I do? Dismantle all of existence? Of course not. So I blame him. But I am smart enough to realize that this blame is simply... my preference. I have anger and I want to act on it... so I choose to take it out on the gunman, knowing full well things couldn't have been any different...
But this is a bit beside the point. If you believe in wills (and how can you not) you must understand that they are not free. Wills battle against wills, and the strongest prevails. It might be my will that I bench press 500 lbs tomorrow, but the weight will crush me, and so my will yields. It might be that the gunman wants to shoot my daughter, but I see him first and shoot him, so my will prevails, and his yields.
These examples, you will argue, deal with "outside influences" though and not "decision making". Well, in the end, it just takes a more subtle eye to see how there is no difference between the two. Why did I make the decision to attack the gunman? Is it not because he was threatening my daughter? Therefore I am responding to him. I might have walked past him on the street every day prior and, without knowing he was a threat, done nothing. And this goes back to the ball and bat example. We always try to separate things... but there is no separating them! We say "i chose" not "i reacted" but what is the difference between a choice and a reaction? Every action has a reaction. We call it a "choice" if the action originates with our will, and a "reaction" if it doesn't -- but there is no fundamental difference between the two. Every meeting (every clashing) of two wills yields a result. Who "chooses," who "reacts" etc. is all interpretation.
To say we have free will is to say our will is not a part of this world, is not something which struggles against (and therefore can be influenced by) the rest of the world. People believe their thoughts pop out of nothing into their head, that their decisions are their work alone, but this is never the case. Nothing that exists does so alone.
