Ok fair point.
And so if you go and murder that murderer?
Doesn't that make you also, a murderer?
Doesn't that make you become, what you were opposing in the first place?

I have said it before, but I think the life of a human being is the most common sacred value among every culture. And I think to rob someone of their time, consciousness, virginity, dignity , or their being, is absolutely worse than all the other thefts of material values on this planet.

Budski, I think you may have opened a can of worms. This could bring on a debate of weather capital punishment is fair and proper. I have always been on the fence about state executions.

I do believe, as you, that taking a life is the ultimate crime. Do we have the right to then take the life of the murderer?

If a friend or loved one of mine was murdered I would immediately want to do great, long, painful suffering to that murderer. Sometimes I feel the death penalty is too easy. It puts the criminal out of their misery while the family lives with it until their own death.

Our criminal justice system has defined murder very well. The punishment differs in each state.

I wish I could find peace with taking another's life even if they had taken a life. As a christian I believe it is not our right to steal the life of another. When someone unjustly kills does that belief still apply? I don't know and it eats at my soul.

One thing which I have never been able to understand is that in many cases the murder of a child gives the murderer a shorter sentence than if he/she had taken the life of an adult. (At least that has been the case several times here in Scandinavia, especially if a mother or father kills their child as a result of long term abuse or a fit of rage.)

I am absolutely disgusted by this. I can not understand it. To me the murder of a child is in fact much, MUCH worse than the murder of an adult.

First of all, the child is helpless and have no way of defendig itself against a physically strong adult which in many cases also happens to be a parent - the excact same person who's job it is to protect and love the child.
Second, the younger the child is, the more future expected lifetime has been stolen away from it.

If it was up to me, the sentence would be longer the younger the child was.

WHOA Karl and I agree on a point? No way....

Ya so this is what prisons are for. Isolate the person and "try" to rehabilitate him...but then again there is the distinct possibility for the individual to commit the same or similar crime. Which is why I believe prison should be more of a large, open, and walled off partition where the inmates can co-mingle (not the ones that attack other inmates - one strike and in the hole/confinement) and are given things to do like raise their own food and educate each other for the benefit of the criminal society. Ya, some people are multiple murders or are insane/confused to the point that they need to be isolated...but, that is no reason to just up and "avenge" an action of someone in your own society, at least I think so anyways.

In regards to the prison idea, I am tainted with seeing how several European nations have their system set up and with the info I have come across as to how well our (US) system works.

ALSO, hehehe, I have been imprisoned before (25 days, no charge, was in the military - I was on a probation/no use of alcohol watch and refused to get put on narcotics for the chronic pain I am STILL in and I said someting to someone one night when I was, once again, lit up like a Christmas tree and two weeks later got arrested for it...and then released to civilian life to get treatment for my ever so thoughtful condition)...There was a prgram where the guys who were headed for Kansas for further "chill out in the icebox" periods were aloud to go outside of the prison to work on the island cleaning up vegetable debris and stuff - helped with keeping them busy, in shape, and feeling worthwhile. Uhm, I don't know if any of them were convicted of murdering other people (mixed jail, even was a dude from the Coast Guard in it) but all of them were in good spirits all the time that I was there. So, I think the "cage the animals in tight quarters" thing FAILS us massively.

So but my thinking is that murdering a member of our own community is immoral and sets a bad example - no matter what crime was committed (like Karl said about molestors and rapists being one split hair's width away from murderers - I want to see the rape people castrated...but would that actually help? Does it?). I don't agree with war, either, but some people want to do that and we have to do the best we can stop that sort of thing from happening.