Nobody wants rats in the house but no one wants to be the rat catcher.
Yes we’re all so clever and classless and free, saints aint in it.
Its a good job that there others prepared to do your dirty work for the good of YOUR society.
The L.E.O.s and the people in the armed services.
Without them all of your mealy mouthed protestations about how caring you are, and how much you love humanity, and how you couldn’t even bring yourselves to harm the hairs on the head of someone, anyone even if they’d raped, tortured and murdered your entire families …
All this would come to nothing because you’d have no society in which to express your sacred views.
The ferals out there would be invading your homes, mugging you, assaulting you .
and basically pissing all over you.
But luckily we DO have people who are prepared to stick their necks out for all of the saints who have posted in this thread.
Who are prepared to do the dangerous and the unpleasant jobs while you can all sit back in self congratulatory, smug self satisfaction and tell yourselves and each other how truly deep down GOOD you are.
Are you listening god?
Have you already booked me my place in heaven because I’ve told you and everyone else that I’m not prepared to get my hands dirty?
That when the fight starts I’m the one who leaves the room ?
So none of its my fault…
Though I and my loved ones benefit from it.
But I never asked them to to do it on my behalf…
Though you’re bloody glad that we did do it even if you wouldn’t say it this side of the grave.
Give me a bucket somebody I can’t take all of this saintliness.
Just because you catch a rat doesn’t mean you have to kill it. There is no need to execute people, and it has been demonstrated that executions are psychologically harmful to the executioners. (But a word to the wise: Don’t break into my house. Just saying.)
How does this work? If it costs $50k/year to keep a prisoner on death row, and you kill that prisoner, you’ve saved $50k in the following year. The ridiculous amount of appeals filed in many cases are simply to prolong the profit of lawyers working for the defense. I’m sure there are plenty of cases where the condemned did it, admitted it, and were sentenced for their crime. Start by executing those. The savings will start piling up.
Yeah, in all likelihood. Maybe I’m just a little sociopathic though.
Better bring a couple extra for all the bullshit you’re slogging.
If I were to say “Yeee haw! I loves to see me some executed felons! Wut? Kill 'em myself? Awww, no, I don’t wanna do that…”, then maybe you’d start to approach a point.
“Killing is wrong, no matter who is doing the killing” doesn’t fit the model of hypocrisy that you’re trying to game in here.
Well that’s one angsty little poem you’ve written there!
My response to the OP:
No, I can’t kill another person. I’m not a saint, and it’s probably more fault than anything but I can’t purposely kill someone as a punishment. If I was in immediate danger for harm perhaps the answer would change.
I am against the death penalty simply because it’s so incredibly flawed and because it’s no different than keeping a person locked up for life. The money spent on execution is higher than what it costs to feed them for life, so the only real benefit is satisfying blood lust revenge. It’s not that I value human life so much as I am disgusted by blood lust. I can’t be a part of it, it’s just not in me.
One small part of me, however, thinks, “Dang that sure is a lot of money though!”
If you execute the healthy ones of those, you could even recover organs. Say you could only recover both kidneys—bam, two people get to live. And you don’t have to keep one of them in a cage.
I think given the criminal justice system’s status in our country today that I could only do it if I could get into a room alone with the perp (and maybe his lawyer), and have him tell me that yes, he did it, and no, he wasn’t coerced into confessing. Just accepting random results from the justice system? I’m not even willing to risk a 10% chance I pulled the trigger on an innocent man.
Crafter_Man also raises a good damn point–I’d have to think long and hard about how it would affect me and my emotional well-being.
I’m in favor of the death penalty in the abstract, and I would be willing to put my money where my mouth is (as I think it’s unethical as well to support the death penalty and not be willing to take one’s turn as executioner) if I thought it was 100% certain the perp was guilty of rape or murder. Given the current state of the system, I’m practically speaking against the death penalty as currently implemented anyway.
Well, considering that almost every condemned prisoner is poor and has a substandard defense, I don’t think that’s true.
I’m not in favor of the death penalty at all, in any circumstances that may exist in reality, but the way things currently work just makes it way too easy to find valid reasons to object to it. If it REALLY WAS reserved for the “worst of the worst” as is sometimes claimed, well then I’d have a harder time being quite so opposed. Some people ARE evil and do evil things that ruin or take the lives of decent people. Unfortunately, many of those evil people don’t get sentenced to death and many people with some shred of humanity do. It has a lot less to do with who deserves it, and more to do with socioeconomic class, race of defendant and victim, etc.
You think lawyers are getting rich by appealing death penalty cases? Well, granted, I am no expert. If you know of any such cases, I would appreciate if you could tell me about them so I could research them.
I hate to keep bringing up the case of Wanda Jean, but it’s just so convenient for anyone to look into, and so typical in many way, so I’ll bring it up one more time. Who is getting rich there? Do you think her appeals were seriously considered? Did anyone on the appeals board even PRETEND to listen to anything that was said on her behalf, in your opinion?
I don’t feel there is some intrinsic greatness to life that I should not profit by ending it. Being alive’s not that special, it’s just another use of energy
I’d do it for the 2k a month! The 100k is just too good to be true. I wouldn’t have any grandiose illusions about justice or retribution. It would be a job, and I would just punch the clock - and the occasional ticket.
This goes almost hand in hand with can someone execute another person. This one, however, adds in the delightful twist of looking at the victim as you kill them as opposed to with lethal injection and the electric chair where you press a button in an adjoining room.
Now then, I believe that I could work on a firing squad. It is much the same as fighting in the army, all you are doing is killing someone that you are told to. In wars there are innocent people who die as well as the guilty, but as a soldier it is important to not get hung up on that. As a member of a firing squad, you are also just following orders. Furthermore, they make it so that no one is able to determine which member of the squad’s shot actually killed the convict. This thus makes the guilt feeling less strong.