: : : Serious criminals like first degree murderers should be executed--they won't cause ANY problems after that.We kill murderers to prevent more murder? Ok, so what do we do to drug dealers? Get them stoned? What should we do to the rapists?
: Don: If there is doubt, they shouldn't be exacuted. In most cases, there isn't any doubt. I don't care if it is humane or not. Murders who are exacuted will never prey upon society again. They will never escape, or get parole, or kill guards.
The problem is that there is almost always doubt. The US justice system is set up so that wealthy people can buy reasonable doubt, through hiring top-notch attourneys, whereas the poor are generally assumed to be guilty until proven innocent. This is particularly true of minorities and social activists; Mummia, for instance, or Peltier. Both are imprisoned on less than convincing evidence, and Mummia is facing death very soon. The evidence on which he was convicted is, at best, pretty questionable. The evidence against Peltier is equally weak. These men were convicted of being minorities that refused to shut up when white cops told them to.
You say that murderers who are executed will never prey on people again, well innocent people who are executed will never be free. Is it worth killing even a single innocent person in orderto insure that the guilty folks die?
In addition, implementing the death penalty is actually more expensive than life imprisonment. You should check out handgun control's website for details.
There are also numerous methodological problems with Lott and Mustard's study, and the Violence Policy Center suggest that John Lott is not an objective researcher.
Admitedly, VPC, Amnesty, and handgun Control are also biased, but their data can't be ignored.
It should also be noted that many law enforcement societies support limits on private ownership of weapons, and that countries with strong firearms legislations have lower rates of gun-related crime, as the UN Crime and Justice Information Network shows.
Whatever your opinion of the gun issue, these figures can't be simply ignored. Lott and Mustard aren'tthe only folks ever to gather statistics about guns. They're just the only ones to have come to their peculiar conclusion.
-Floyd
