Correlation between Anti-Gun v Anti Death Penalty Views

It's not necessary to kill people to stop them shooting people. That's what jails are for.

Do you have a passport?

It was the second such event and got a lot of publicity over here. It was reported in a way which was similar to reports of floggings and stonings in less developed countries. I was wondering how Americans thought about it and whether they even knew.The 'problems' have been caused because the US got its drugs from the EU who have now banned their sale to states that use them in inhuman ways. They are now experimenting with new drugs and getting it wrong.

Not that cost should be a consideration but: Report of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice (2008)"The additional cost of confining an inmate to death row, as compared to the maximum security prisons where those sentenced to life without possibility of parole ordinarily serve their sentences, is $90,000 per year per inmate. With California's current death row population of 670, that accounts for $63.3 million annually." Los Angeles Times Study Finds California Spends $250 Million per Execution (2005)Key Points:The California death penalty system costs taxpayers more than $114 million a year beyond the cost of simply keeping the convicts locked up for life. (This figure does not take into account additional court costs for post-conviction hearings in state and federal courts, estimated to exceed several million dollars.)With 11 executions spread over 27 years, on a per execution basis, California and federal taxpayers have paid more than $250 million for each execution.It costs approximately $90,000 more a year to house an inmate on death row, than in the general prison population or $57.5 million annually.The Attorney General devotes about 15% of his budget, or $11 million annually to death penalty cases.The California Supreme Court spends $11.8 million on appointed counsel for death row inmates.The Office of the State Public Defender and the Habeas Corpus Resource Center spend a total of $22.3 million on defense for indigent defendants facing death.The federal court system spends approximately $12 million on defending death row inmates in federal court.No figures were given for the amount spent by the offices of County District Attorneys on the prosecution of capital cases, however these expenses are presumed to be in the tens of millions of dollars each year.Source: Tempest, Rone, "Death Row Often Means a Long Life", Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2005.Page not found - Death Penalty FocusEdited by Tangle, : No reason given.

For laws to be legitimate, they have to reflect the views and morality of the society they are intended to control. It's difficult for extreme laws to continue in a democracy without support from its electorate.It seems likely to me that a society that supports the barbarity of the death sentence - and, I suppose, the usefulness of torture and the holding of prisoners in countries outside the rules of their own jurisdiction - has normalised the kind of views that most of the rest of the modern, civilised world has discarded as brutal and brutalising.The USA must be proud to be amongst this elite group. Death Penalty PermittedAfghanistan
Antigua and Barbuda
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belize
Botswana
Chad
China (People's Republic)
Comoros
Congo (Democratic Republic)
Cuba
Dominica
Egypt
Equatorial Guinea
Ethiopia
Guatemala
Guinea
Guyana
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kuwait
Lebanon
Lesotho
Libya
Malaysia
Mongolia
Nigeria
North Korea
Oman
Pakistan
Palestinian Authority
Qatar
St. Kitts and Nevis
St. Lucia
St. Vincent and the Grenadines
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
Somalia
South Sudan
Sudan
Syria
Taiwan
Thailand
Trinidad and Tobago
Uganda
United Arab Emirates
United States
Vietnam
Yemen
Zimbabwe

In a modern, advanced democracy with significant human rights legislature, it is difficult, yes - it's a massive outlier.There are extremes in American culture that the rest of Western democracies find inexplicable; from bizzare and primitive religious beliefs, to gun culture, to extreme punitiveness (not just the death penalty, the US prison population is enormous).They're all irrational - in the sense that those that believe in such things do it against the evidence. It's a puzzle. And sadly it's quite contageous, some of it travels the Atlatic.

Feel free not to read uncomfortable facts. This is a bizarre and uniquely American paranoia. No-one in the rest of the developed world worries that their democratically elected government is about to enslave them (and if they did they wouldn't believe that ownership of handguns could make a blind bit of difference against a modern army.) Another absolutely crazy idea. I've happily protected my family from the non-existent threat of armed home invasion for many years. Living with your kind of fear is something I wouldn't want to have to do. Your means of protection is the thing that you are killing each-other with. It's crazy.

Well before we get into whether those statistics are ridiculous or not we have to deal with your misrepresentation of them.Firstly you'll see that I said that I had no fear of "ARMED home invasion" - which is relevant to the topic. Secondly, you'll see from your stats that the UK is 13th in EUROPE for homicide with a rate of 1.49. Thirdly you *accidentally* missed the US's homicide rate in your 'analysis' which is 4.7 ie 3 times higher.Finally, I have also said that US's overtly punitive and aggressive culture is contagious and seems to be seeping into UK culture - although guns and capital punishment will never be allowed here again.If you're going to make these arguments, spend a little time and thought on them. And, like they told you in school, read the question before answering.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Oh great, the troll is back.

They used to hang people for stealing sheep, but sheep were still stolen, probably less than otherwise I suppose. Pretty much all the evidence though is that increasing the severity of of a sentence doesn't deter, it just clogs up the prisons and makes 'bad people worse'.Not that politicians care about doing the right thing, they'd rather pretend they're tough.

For God's sake Faith - empire was nothing about Christianity it was entirely about power, wealth and acquisition like every other empire there's ever been..

Oh he's not totally stupid, he knows exactly how to wind everybody up hereabouts.He's a pretty average troll, dropping in every couple of months, trailing rubby dubby and watching evrybody get all hot and bothered then buggering off for a while. It's just a question of who's the dumbest, us or him.

Disagree.Both the death penalty and the 'might-as-well-be-dead' penalty does not allow for forgiveness, change and redemption. It also brings the criminal justice system and the society that supports such extreme punitiveness down, to the level of the murderer.I object to the death penalty on a subjective basis - it's abhorrent; it's convenient to know that the evidence shows that it's also not a deterrent.