Death Penalty

Ahhh, the final round. I'm gonna keep this relatively short and sweet; I'm not sure there's much more either if us can say that we haven't said before, but here goes. I'm going to focus on the four main points you provided for me: 1) Yup, been there done that. 2) I have based my barbarity argument not on where we SHOULD be, but where we are. Throughout this argument you seem to have been trying too hard to look at it in a really big picture sense; if you do that, then you will realize everything is based on people's opinions. If you think about it, every law ever made is an opinion on something, made by a group of people. So let's take a break from worrying about how we can't use opinions to control people, because we can. Lawmakers are of the opinion that a person who kills someone deserves to die; that is their belief, which is contrary to my own. This is 21st Century America. If you go up to any random person on the street, most of them will agree that racism, sexism, child labor, slavery, etc. are outdated. So why can't executions be outdated? Slavery is illegal because times change; times are still changing, yet we are stuck in the past on this one pointless issue. For the life of me I can't understand why people are so bloodthirsty (our government no less). 3) Misleading costs? Sure. Should we dispose of the things that make those costs? If course not. In my OPINION (yes, opinion) a man should be able to beg for his life, and make his case. If we didn't allow that, then we really would be savages. Are you proposing that a person be sentenced to die, and have no opportunity to take his name off of death row? Laws get revised all the time. Marijuana is illegal in most states; does that mean we shouldn't change it? No. There used to be laws that stated black people and women couldn't vote; were those changed? Yes. Just because a law is written doesn't mean it can't be changed. If the government feels a law is outdated/unfair/unjust, they change it As for damaging society, think about the accused's family. Yeah, they're murderers, but that doesn't mean they're mom's won't grieve when they're gone. While everyone else gets a short-lived justice boner, his family has to deal with the loss of a loved one. 4) Right off the bat I want to address the fact that you don't want prisons. You actually said that you don't want prisons. So...if there's a serial rapist, what do we do? Send him to rehab and then let him loose again? Will there be enough rehab centers to intake all those rapists, murderers, child molesters, robbers, carjackers, ganbangers, etc? And how much would that actually help? Moving on, I agree that the prison system is a cruel, violent place. Unfortunately, that's not what we're focusing on here. (Although in case you're curious, I support what some European countries do with the 21 year maximum sentence, with an evaluation every five years after that). And I've explained to you that I don't believe life is always best; please don't "put words in my mouth." As I stated earlier, I understand that there are circumstances in which death is certainly the better option. However, it shouldn't be the government's place to kill an individual; that is up to the individual himself. If he wishes to die, then he should take that responsibility upon his own shoulders. It's been nice talking to you, Boxbeat19