Death Penalty

When I stated that killing a murderer is outdated, I meant it in the sense that the GOVERNMENT carrying out a legal execution is outdated, at least in many first-world countries. When you state that a murder on the street cannot be more reproachable than the government killing someone, you are wrong. The government was created to create and maintain laws so that citizens can know the line where right and wrong meet. If the government makes a law stating that murder is bad, but then turns around and kills someone for breaking that law, then they are being (very) hypocritical. Forcing someone to spend the rest of their days in prison can oftentimes be just as inhumane as killing them. The difference here is, while one allows them to live and breathe, to think and feel, to laugh and love, the other kills you, taking all of that away. Morally, that is wrong. This debate is not about the quality of life in prison, but about the morality of our own government, who makes the laws to begin with, but executes the person after the crime has already been committed. You do make a very good point by stating the victim's family should be able to chip in by covering the legal fees. But how much would they be willing to pay? Anything less than $30,000 would simply not be worth it. And what if the victim's family did not particularly care about whether the person died or not? The amount of money the government would receive from families would, for the most part, be too insignificant to make a difference. The "swelling rolls of lifers" you refer to would be less than 40 people per year. Compare that to the over 4,000 who die in prison each year, and I think we'll be okay. Capital Punishment does, in fact, do no good to society. It costs more, it is often cruel (which I will get to later) and it just shows people how brutish and barbaric we can be. What that person did is done. Nothing will change that; it's over. Killing them is strictly for retribution and revenge; a childish and immature thing to do. The comparison to developing countries was to show how "behind the times" we are in this aspect. The United States is a country which others look up to; we are the standard for many nations in terms of safety, fairness, freedom, etc. America is the place where you don't have to bribe police, you don't need a firearm to protect your home (compared to countries in Africa, Asia, and South America), and you will most likely always have enough food to eat. Yet, for some reason, we still rank up there with Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Sudan in terms of government executions. The newest method of execution is lethal injection. Usually, three drugs are mixed together to perform the task of killing the person once injected into the bloodstream. Funny thing is, different states have different drugs they use, and they don't always get reported to the federal government. This, accompanied by poorly-trained executioners (doctors usually opt out of performing executions due to their oath) has resulted in nearly fifty botched lethal-injection executions. Some states still use the electric chair. Pretty self-explanatory as to why it's inhumane; the person gets fried for however long it takes to kill them. I hope this better informed you as to why I oppose capital punishment. Thank you!