Aurora Colorado Violence

(cough) gun control (cough)I thought I'd just drop it in; you never know it may just be a minor contributing factor. Possibly.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

You know, this is quite, quite insane. Assault rifle, bump firing, banana magazine....it's all an incomprehensible euphemism and pedantry.Why would any civilised society allow these sort of weapons to be legally owned by its citizens? And why fein surprise when a fruit-loop uses them for their intended purpose?

I have a problem with this.The deal we have with the state is that we hand over the punishment of crimes against us to the state on the understanding that they will independently and objectively deal with the offence.One reason we do this is to prevent knee jerk and violent retribution by those who are understandably distraught by their loss. It seems to me to be an abrogation of the state's role in playing out their disinterested role of justice to ask the victims families how they should proceed.How many finger nails should we pull out before we flay him, 1, 3, 7 or 10?

Well of course you can see it any way you like, but the fact is that the state is consulting with the victims about whether to execute him or not. That is not likely to result in an objective assessment and is never done for any other situation. You don't think perhaps this might just possibly be political PR? Well now you don't seem to want to take the wishes of the victims family into consideration at all, you want to do what you want to do. But what if the victim's family wanted to cut small pieces off him for a month or so? Why make the options only death or life imprisonment? And suppose the victims family were all nice liberals and didn't want the death penalty but the rest of society insisted on it? What then?