ChatterBank0 min ago
Anyone On The Fence About Capital Punishment?
I have traditionally been in favour of capital punishment though I sometimes waver. Those against it often do impress me with their reasoning and I get persuaded that maybe the state should never execute it's own citizens. Then a case like this comes along and I start to think that sometimes there are such depraved humans that it's a case of disposal of a pathogen rather than execution. No doubt AH will tell me that it's emotive and we should ignore the circumstances. Your Thoughts......
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No best answer has yet been selected by ToraToraTora. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.naomi - //
//Dogs are not human beings though, are they.//
Neither are the creatures we're talking about. //
That's a very cold attitude, to dismiss the life of a human being, regardless of their crime.
That's the sort of response that makes me pleased we do not have Capital Punishment - far too many people would relish the death of a stranger.
//I don't like hanging as the method. If I had to chose I'd rather face the firing squad, - a manly death: and to hell with the blindfold!//
Apparently, when Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad, it took him 20 seconds to die despite been shot in the heart by 5 bullets. Not always the quickest way that we think.
Khandro - // I don't like hanging as the method. If I had to chose I'd rather face the firing squad, - a manly death: and to hell with the blindfold! //
I'm not sure a violent death at the hands of the state can be 'manly', except in the mind of the subject, but if it floats your proverbial boat.
I remember the execution scene in The Scarlet Pimpernel, when Anthony Andrews is offered a blindfold. The way he scans it with his pince nez and wafts it away in disgust is priceless.
naomi - // The question is where did you get the 'regardless of their crime' bit from? No one has suggested that - except you. //
I get it from the belief that killing someone is inhuman, regardless of who does it, a criminal, or the state.
If people are operating a sliding scale ot self-righteousness, the more heinous the crime, the more they delight in the death of the criminal, and the more keen they would be to participate in it, then that underlines my original argument - that laws must be created and operated from a dispassionate point of view.
We don't want to start a raft of punishments based on the outrage of the public for the offence in question - starting with fingernails being removed and ending with flaying alive.
It's not the way civilised societies conduct the punishments necessary to maintain law and order.
And neither is killing people.
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