Kill Them, Make Them Suffer !

a reply to: VoidHawk
Ah, I'm not upset at all fella, just pulling you up on a rant...amused would be a more appropriate descriptive term for my mood.
I don't even really give a toss about other countries having the death penalty because I live in a country that does not, the UK, same as you. I'm personally glad we don't kill criminals here but not for any moral reasons, just because you can't bring someone back to life on appeal. Your apparent absolute respect for human life is not something I share, for example if someone raped and murdered my son I would want to kill them given the chance.
I've always assumed from your avatar that you are the father of the young person in the picture (bit weird if you aren't though) and if someone did something horrible to them I get the impression that you would just hand over responsibility for justice to the courts with all your bleating about the right to life of criminals.

I wonder who exactly is the sheep?
Me, someone who deals with problems myself, or you who probably just calls the police and relies on the courts for their definition of justice?

You call others sheep yet you accept the British justice system as being the absolute authority for what is the right or wrong way to deal with people who hurt you. I don't accept any authority over me, but I understand that I have to pseudo-conform wherever it suits me.
A few years ago a smack-head robbed my mates gran and I hunted him down to a needle infested house and beat 20 lumps of # out of him. We didn't bother with the police because the courts would have given him a £100 fine at most. Do you think that was immoral because 'the law' says I shouldn't have done that?

Again, if someone murdered my son then I would probably kill them if given the opportunity. I assume from your posts that if your child was killed then you would hand over all responsibility to the UK justice system and want the murderer to be kept fed and watered (with a TV and half ounce of tobacco each week) in a comfortable cell for the rest of their life.
I ask again, who really is the sheep?

*Edit*
I live on the boundary of our town centre 'street drinking exclusion zone' and abusive/aggressive street drinkers did try to sit on a bench on my road a couple of times but decided to move elsewhere after 'persuasion' from myself and a couple of other neighbours. No police were involved, and the problem was fixed.
You can bleat about people exacting individual justice as much as you like, and cry tears for revolting humans who are dealt with by the official law process, but as long as you personally devolve all responsibility to the police and the courts to deal with rapists/murderers/whoever hurts you, then you are just as much of a 'sheep' as the ones you bleated about in the OP.

a reply to: grainofsand
The OP of this thread was written while I was a little bit angry and therefore not well written, but thats the purpose of the rant forum - to let of a bit of steam.

Like you, if I caught somebody messing with my family, that person would have me to deal with. I have dished out my own justice in the past and been taken to court for it, and had it kicked out by a very sensible man on the bench. Hurt my family and I'm coming after you! Hurt them bad enough and you'll cease to exist. So I do understand what you're saying.

However, how many people have been certain of who they're after, exacted their justice upon that person, and then later discovered they'd made a mistake!
We all make mistakes, even more so when we're emotionally upset!

You might see a car thats going 100mph past your home, it kills your child, you grab the driver and kick the life out of him. Afterwards its discovered his car was faulty (remember the Toyotas?) and he had no control over it.
In this situation YOU are now the murderer! You have killed an innocent man who has a family waiting at home for him. Should his family now come along and kick the life out of the murderer who killed their father/son?

Mistakes are one of the reasons why I dont agree with capitol punishment.
Another reason is the relatives of the condemned. In the situation above you have just mistakenly murdered someone, and now the courts have ruled that you should be put to death. How is that going to sit with your family, your children?
Imagine your children having to learn that you are going to be put to death!!!
Your children are completely innocent of any crime yet they will suffer all the psychological damage that goes with this situation.
Capitol punishment doesn't end suffering, it creates more, and its the innocent who are the recipients of that suffering.
Just because you and me alike can justify in our own heads why we should go after that scum bag, it does not make it right, we are emotionally upset and likely to make mistakes and hurt other innocent people.


My reason for the thread was not so much about whether CP is right or wrong, but more about the behaviour of posters in a couple of other threads.
It was quite clear that many of them had no idea why the man was sentenced to death, therefore they were not responding because they were emotionally upset, all they knew was that a man took two hours to die from the botched execution.
It was a mob mentality, they wanted blood, and yet they didn't realise they were being driven along by a couple of posters. Thats why I touched on the subject of whats coming down the line in twenty or thirty years time. If in 2014 people are so easily driven into a frenzy, a frenzy so intense they are prepared to post on a public forum things like -
I Want him to suffer longer - for 22 hours.
I Want him to choke on his own vomit.
I Want him to have convulsions.

What does that say about them!?

Our world is corporate driven. Profit and efficiency are at the top of the list. Anyone with their eyes properly open can see the people of this world are easily manipulated (just watch these forums), and they ARE being manipulated.
Unproductive citizens (the elderly) hurt profits.
Answer?
Instill the idea that those who are non productive hurt the rest of us and the planet.

I can see it happening within the younger generations lifetime.

Void.

a reply to: VoidHawk
Fair one, I understand where you are coming from.
I agree completely that some members were effectively baying for blood in that other thread, I was heartened though that the people concerned seem only to want the blood of murderers or rapists, so imagine that they are not a general threat to the rest of society who are not murderers or rapists.

Law and societal control is a really tricky one though, right now in say mainstream UK, the police and government are the alpha gang keeping order, but I have also lived in estates where police rarely visit and the alpha gang is the biggest family or drug dealer who also keep some sort of order on the streets.
Which is better or more efficient, state sponsored violence or community based alpha males? I am unsure of the overall picture, but totally believe that the threat of a beating controls the unsavoury elements of our society much more than a £200 fine or community service ever will.

For sure a death penalty does not deter murderers, be they calculated serial killers or someone who glasses a guy in a fit of emotion and rage. I use 'glassing' as an example because a recent tragic killing near my home involved a father who saw his 17 year old son drunk fighting with another 17 year old at the taxi rank then in a fit of rage glassed his son's opponent in the throat, killing him. My son is a similar age so we discussed this sad local story and I promised him that if I ever see him in a one-on-one fist fight then I will not intervene unless/until he has either won or lost, and then my focus would be to make sure there is no stamping on heads after someone has clearly lost.

Back to the ATS members who would like to see murderers tortured or whatever, I agree it is a less than pleasant mindset, but I can understand the sentiment. Yes, mistakes are made by any person/gang/authority dishing out the justice, but the idea of someone who commits horrific violence to other humans being punished in a similar way is not something I automatically recoil from...it's just that conviction does not necessarily equal guilt, so one innocent person being hurt or killed as punishment for something they didn't do is one too many for me.

I think we mostly agree on everything touched on so far in this thread, but certainly for me, if I absolutely knew that someone violently murdered my son I would likely share the blood lust that others expressed in the '2 hours to die' thread. It would not be about protecting society, it would be pure rage fuelled and unashamed revenge for my loss.
But, if it is a question of our 'democratically' governed state dishing out the justice then I am glad that we don't (on paper at least) torture or kill our convicted criminals...if only because I or my loved ones could equally be wrongly convicted of something one day in the future.

PS...Good rant topic you posted here, I hope it gets more people thinking deeply about their own apparent blood lust for criminals - I personally don't give my support to the state to kill murderers, because an appeal will not bring them back to life, but I reserve a 'self-proclaimed right' to do whatever my emotions draw me towards if someone violently raped/murdered my loved ones. The prospect of prison would not deter me, in the same way it does not deter any other potential killer.