LogFAQs > #968706644

Conner4REAL posted...

ever heard of deterrence?

I don't think there's a single person who plans and executes a mass shooting like this that expects to actually survive it. Giving any number of them the death penalty wouldn't deter much of anything. If anything, a sizable percentage are a form of deliberate suicide by cop, so executing them as a matter of regular practice would act as entirely the opposite of a deterrent.

EvilMegas posted...

Yes. People in jail are still people and they aren't all mass murdering lunatics.

Also, you don't just stop being a threat to everyone around you because you go to prison. What if he gets the upper hand on someone and kills them in jail? Whoops I guess?

And how does this not apply to every violent criminal? Should we just kill all of them, then?

They're far from perfect (holy hecknuggets are they far from perfect), but prisons have plenty of systems and procedures in place to prevent inmates from killing each other that don't involve preemptively killing everyone that might be a threat. If he kills somebody in jail (which, as others have pointed out, seems unlikely given that he's not exactly the sort of person who can be threatening without hiding behind a gun), that's a failure of those systems, not evidence that he should have been executed. Every country in the world that doesn't have the death penalty keeps their murderers in jail and doesn't have a rampant problem of those murderers killing other inmates. This is not such a special case as to warrant special measures that aren't necessary anywhere else.

The death penalty is really only necessary for dangerous people that are a chronic flight risk (or who are a flight risk at all and are dangerous enough for that to be an intolerable risk). In any other case, it does not provide any benefit to public safety that cannot be provided by other means.