Australian Gunned Down in OK by "Bored" Teens

[laklak]

What's wrong with kids today? In my day we just tortured small animals when we got bored.

I blame video games and teh Interwebz. How you gonna keep 'em on the farm once they've seen the big city?

[charlou]

Capital punishment punishes the family and friends of the convicted person.

I think a society is diminished by the dehumanisation of all parties, required to carry out capital punishment.

[Seabass]

What's wrong with kids today? In my day we just tortured small animals when we got bored.

In my day we watched Robotech and Voltron cartoons and rode our BMX bikes around the canyon.

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, I just rode my BMX all day when I was bored. In fact, I don't even remember being actually bored for anything longer than about 30 minutes.

[Warren Dew]

I think the advocates of stricter gun laws are of the mind that restricting only certain people from owning and carrying, and restricting them only in certain areas, while allowing a huge supply of guns available for trade under the table doesn't really do the job. They want the guns to become unavailable, so that nobody can get them.

And yet, they never seem to want to take away all the guns the police have. Restricting supply isn't going to work without that.

[piscator]

The best solution is to do what you'd do with any rabid, vicious animal, just put it down. A quick one to the brainstem and no more problem. Fucking cheap, too, compared to keeping the useless meatsuits in a prison for life.

But would you put your own life on the line? You are fully prepared to kill others. Or to have them killed.
But what if the law was that if it turns out that an innocent person was executed, then YOU had to be executed, to atone for it?
Or is it that you're happy to risk other people's lives, but not your own?

'Fuck are you on about, mate?

[Arse]

Well, that's nothing knew, really. Billie the Kid was 15, 16 or 17 when he killed his first man.

George Stinney was 13 when he murdered 2 girls in the 1920s.

A kid by the name of Jesse Pomeroy started killing kids when he was like 13 years old, in the 1860s,

A 10 or 11 year old girl named Mary Bell murdered a three year old for no reason in the 1950s.

Alexander the Great's first battle was when he was 17 or 18.

King Harald Hardrada of Norway was 15 or 16 when he fought in the Battle of Stiklestad

People kill people, and always have.

Mary Bell killed two children in 1968. She killed a four year old when she was ten, and a three year old when she was eleven. Sad case this, but you're right, its nothing new.

[Audley Strange]

Yup we keep adding to the age which we consider them innocent babes and then get surprised when the occassional innocent babe turns out to be neither.

[Arse]

I don't think any of them are innocent babes really. Normal children from normal backgrounds routinely bully their classmates for any reason or none, pull the wings off butterflies, stand around in circles chanting "fight, fight, fight" while two of their peers batter the shit out of each other and draw pictures of penises on walls, (although that one seems to be a male only habit). Things like conscience and impulse control aren't fully formed until people pass through adolescence so they can all be little shits at times.

Add a dysfunctional or abusive home to that, and the little shits can turn into little murderous shits far more easily than most people like to admit.

[Coito ergo sum]

I'm perfectly happy to execute mad dog criminals. Not under our present system, of course. No point in it at all, takes 15 or 20 years and costs millions. I'm certainly not willing to put my own life in jeopardy, because .....wait for it..... I'm not a mad dog criminal. Pretty simple, actually.

So, you refuse to address the fact that, if you have capital punishment, you will kill innocent people, as well as guilty ones?
That's just an intellectual cop-out.

It isn't any more of a cop out than the idea that giving people life in prison, or any prison time, means that innocent people will be put in prison for life or other periods of time. It's in the nature of a fallible humanity. That being said, I oppose the death penalty on other grounds.

Anyone can say kill the mad-dog criminals. But it's utter bollocks, till you face up to whether you are prepared to pay the price, which is that you will also kill innocent people.

I would personally make it law, that if a jury votes for the death of the person they convicted, and it turns out he was innocent, then the jury members who voted for death are also executed.

That's silly. How in the world would you know that it "turned out" he was innocent? It only would "turn out" that evidence arose to exonerate him such that there was reasonable doubt. Just because that happens doesn't mean the guy was innocent. It's always possible the guy was guilty and the jury was right the first time.

That way, they might take the life of others a bit more seriously.

I'd not be on a jury if that was a possibility. I'm not fucking putting myself at risk because someone else committed a crime.

The death penalty is a punishment. It's application can be to people who didn't deserve it. Same goes for imprisonment. There once was a time when putting people in prison was a novel idea, an advancement in criminal justice that housed criminals in jails instead of putting them in stocks or imposing other sorts of corporal and other punishments. People could very well have said, "how can you jail someone for years, when some of them are bound to be innocent?" Certainly, being jailed for 10 years and then released is better than being killed erroneously, but what about 30 years? 50? How much better is that?

[Coito ergo sum]

Capital punishment punishes the family and friends of the convicted person.

I think a society is diminished by the dehumanisation of all parties, required to carry out capital punishment.

Intellectually, I am against the death penalty. Emotionally, if someone hurt my little one, I would kill the motherfucker if I had the chance, or at least beat him senseless.

[Arse]

I don't really see the point of bringing the death penalty into this thread given that none of these three can be sentenced to death, (and they can't be sentenced to Life Without Parole either btw).

[pErvinalia]

Anyone can say kill the mad-dog criminals. But it's utter bollocks, till you face up to whether you are prepared to pay the price, which is that you will also kill innocent people.

I would personally make it law, that if a jury votes for the death of the person they convicted, and it turns out he was innocent, then the jury members who voted for death are also executed.

That's silly. How in the world would you know that it "turned out" he was innocent? It only would "turn out" that evidence arose to exonerate him such that there was reasonable doubt. Just because that happens doesn't mean the guy was innocent. It's always possible the guy was guilty and the jury was right the first time.

Not with DNA evidence.