Is it time to change the current limits of capital punishment in order to deter mass shootings?

a reply to: Gargoyle91

I agree and disagree with your points there. It's an adversarial system of justice which requires prosecutors and defenders...can't have one without the other in a fair system.

I agree it's a bit screwed and not exactly 'fair.' It's a great ideal that could be much fairer.

originally posted by: Kandinsky
a reply to: Blue Shift
Whilst I can imagine exceptional circumstances where your idea might work, it wouldn't be practical overall.

They use it in boot camp, but I suppose that's a closed environment. And if the goal is to stop mass killers, then it probably wouldn't be effective because those people are usually not thinking rationally (according to the consensus), and a lot of them don't have any connections with friends or family. A tougher death sentence wouldn't work, because most of these people are going to die in the process anyway. They either get killed, or kill themselves.

Maybe there is no solution, and it's just something we have to live with, like the weather. People have a funny understanding of the probabilities in these things. Americans accidentally shoot about 1,500 people a year to death, compared to around 500 who are killed by mass shooters. Actually, weather-related deaths average around 2,000 a year in the U.S. But that's still nothing compared to complications from surgery, which are about 180,000 a year. And around 30,000 people a year die in car accidents in the U.S.

But sensationalist news makes it hard to keep it all in perspective.

a reply to: Blue Shift

Maybe there is no solution, and it's just something we have to live with, like the weather.

I share your concerns right there. Millions of people with individual motives and ambitions are hard to predict let alone police and mete out justice to.

We have to balance out so many things to get the greater good for the most people over the greatest span of time.

Justice system is no longer there to deter.

There is zero respect for the justice system and people are just not afraid of the consequences.

Penalties for killing need to be increased 10 fold.

What message did the world see when they put the Boston bomber on the front page of rolling stone magazine.

You think he is upset he is getting special religious food, alone prayer times conjugal visits. Books, tv.

This 20 year old by me just murdered a fellow classmate in college.

Got 20 years can be out in 15 or less.

So his murderer will be out on the streets at 35.

Hell no

a reply to: Enigma Publius



Only if we use the electric chair and televise it. That might have a chance of working.

a reply to: Enigma Publius
The death penalty is nothing more than revenge, AND it’s revenge by murdering someone who is mentally ill.

Short answer: no. Bottom line, capital punishment is not a deterrent for murder. Period. Never has and never will be.

If a man kills and then is released and kills again, then why care if it not your family dying.

a reply to: Blue Shift

I don't think that is good idea at all unless the family is complicit or egged it on or knew something could happen and never said anything. If someone doesn't care about their life that still won't keep them from feeling pain. Make the death last for months, slow slow torture

a reply to: tabularosa

I think it could be if we allowed it to be cruel and unusual

Some cultures see (or once saw) life imprisonment as a crueller form of punishment than execution but the point has been made that whatever threat of punishment, crimes of passion and insanity will still continue unabated. Limiting access to weapons that make it easier and faster to commit these crimes might eventually reduce the scope and frequency of them but that will be a very slow process.

In the end the solution, if there is one, will have to be something the majority of the population can agree on.