Robert Bowers, the gunman who killed 11 worshippers and wounded six others at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 in the deadliest-ever attack on Jewish people in the United States, was unanimously sentenced to death by a federal jury on Wednesday.
Robert Bowers, the gunman who killed 11 worshippers and wounded six others at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 in the deadliest-ever attack on Jewish people in the United States, was unanimously sentenced to death by a federal jury on Wednesday.
That’s a horrifying take.
To say it’s as simple as a jury deciding a person is no longer a person and we can then dispose of them? What about the innocent people who’ve been executed? An acceptable level of collateral damage, even when you admit capital punishment isn’t about punishment?
What about when a we decide a whole group of people aren’t people? That’s happened multiple times throughout history.
And there’s the limiting factor. Since there’s no way to reverse capital punishment like you can just take someone out of jail; A jury has to have absolutly no doubt and no more possible questions before deciding that this criminal can or can’t change. The bar for capital punishment should the 1000 times higher than the next highest bar. It is because of my stance that I’m upset at how often people are condemed to death, capital punishment is being used too loosely and if society isn’t capable of dispationatly executing a failed human and instead choose to take their feelings out on the bad guy then captial punishment should be banned.
I don’t see what’s wrong with acknowledging the fact that some humans are objectivly failures and have no place being compared to the average person. There aren’t that many of them, most people (like 98%) are good people and will never beable to be judged like this because noone can possibly be holier than everyone. It’s not a hard stance, its a system of value that acknowledges that some people are not actually people. It’ noones fault until it can be proven to be someones fault and when it happens you have to clean up.
Ok, bear with me. It’s actually as easy as not deciding that groups of people aren’t people. Right? You don’t have to do that, there’s no rule requiring you to do it. People aren’t groups and groups aren’t people.
We’re all collectively better than those people for these simple facts: