Why I utterly reject the death penalty.

[needledriver]

25. Any society which arms its police with lethal force

has already fully accepted death as an instrument of justice.

Whether that death was executed by a highly stressed individual making a splt second judgment, or as a result of a trial by a jury of the accused's peers, society as a whole still owns a measure of that execution.

Police kill innocent bystanders. This is no less a tragedy than the state killing innocent inmates, yet we tolerate the societal cost of street level law enforcement while clutching our pearls and wringing our hands over the idea that imposing a sentence of death somehow lowers us as a whole.

We're already lower. The death penalty rides around on every police officer's hip. If your conscience demands that you advocate for the disarmament of police as well as the elimination of the death penalty, I applaud your moral stance.

If you are not willing to deprive the police of the tools they need to preserve public safety, you have no moral justification to deprive the state of the tools it uses to promote the same ends.