We were talking about the death penalty

yesterday. The subject arose because of the latest mass shooting in the United States, something which distressed everyone I was with.

There are varying views on the death penalty within the group. Some people see it as the ultimate punishment, others see it as the easy way out for the perpetrator. There are two people in the group who say they would welcome the return of the death penalty here but the rest of us are opposed to it. 

And I shocked all but one of them (who already knew) by saying that the last person to face the death penalty in England was not the man who actually pulled the trigger. The man who did that was too young when he committed the offence to face the death penalty. He served his sentence and was then sent off to live in another country under another name. Apparently he has committed no further offences. Had he been a few months older he would have died. The other man did die although he had not actually murdered anyone. (He encouraged the other man to pull the trigger.) Right or wrong? I will leave that up to you.

What I will say is that I am opposed to the death penalty for several reasons. It seems to me that the death penalty is also murder. The death penalty does not prevent murder. Mistakes can be made. You can release an innocent person from prison but not from death.

The perpetrators of mass murder are not normal. They may well know what they are doing is wrong. They may know what the consequences will be. They go ahead and do it anyway. We may never know why.  It does not give us the right to take their life and what if that apparently incontrovertible evidence is proven wrong?

The worst mass shooting in this country brought about a major change to the laws around gun ownership. The Prime Minister who oversaw that change did the right thing. There have been some loosenings of the laws since then but it is time to tighten them again. It won't prevent familicide or the mentally ill driving vehicles into crowds. It does reduce the likelihood of people shooting strangers at random.  

We are fortunate our Constitution does not give us the "right to bear arms".