Views on the death penalty and gun control

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Can I provide absolute numbers like the fingers on my hands? No, of course not. It's statistical at best and then it depends on who's statistics.
Gun control doesn't work because it logically can't work and that's because the reason for violent crime lies elsewhere. We're not talking about a baby in a play pen where we can simply remove dangerous toys by reaching in and picking them up.

What culture, specifically?
The gun culture that some of us on this forum are a part of?
No, most of our violent criminals aren't part of that culture. A very few maybe but that's it. Most of the gun using criminals really aren't all that knowledgeable of the tools of their trade and their correct tactical applications as we gun culturists are.
The culture that breeds violence is of greed, psychopathy, entitlement mentality, irresponsibility, desperation, etc, etc, and feeble attempts to remove or further hinder access to their tools is about like the playpen analogy I used above.
The areas of strictest gun control are where the average citizen has a harder time obtaining a gun or carry permit for protection but the people he's trying to protect himself and his family from are relatively un-affected.
Gun control assumes that guns and/or gun access is the problem. When that fails to curb crime, and it will, it stands to reason that more is needed. This slippery-slope self feeding approach goes on and eventually we have legislation being passed to regulate throwable stones and sharp sticks............says the boy who lied about the German pirates.

I am for the death pentality. Im not too sure on the gun issue

They still wind up dead once it's all over. The firing squad method is too complex and theatrical the way it's carried out in the US as I understand it.
A single .22 bullet or two to the back of the head would have the same effect and you can get a carton of 550 for about $18. If they feel they just have to do it by shooting, for whatever reason, at least keep it simple.

^^^^^^And if you tell them they have been pardoned and are going free they die happy.

That was the Soviet method, except they used 9x18 Makarov.

Apocryphal story has it that you'd be told that you needed to write a letter asking to be pardoned and be led to a room with a desk and chair, and that the executioner would be standing behind the door with a suppressed Makarov, waiting to shoot you behind the ear as soon as you walked into the room. Actually, that sounds a whole lot better than the whole gurney and needle routine we use here...

In China, they actually have mobile execution vans that travel from prison to prison, so that executions can be carried out as soon as possible after sentencing; immediately post trial if possible. I've got a pretty strong stomach, but the death van thing really creeps me out.

i remember seeing a smuggled video recording of a chinese execution via firing squad, they stood behind the kneeling condemned, and when the bullets flew, all the condemned's brains exited through what was left of their faces. very gruesome, amazed it was shown on network primetime tv news uncensored.

I favor the death penalty, and I think that non-violent methods like lethal injection and the gas chamber don't fit the crimes.

how 'bout drawing and quartering?

A lot of ancient and medieval methods were frowned on when the constitution was drafted. Violent methods of execution were okay by them, but deliberately dragging out the time it took to carry out the execution was not.

During the U.S. Civil War human "branding" was used by the Union Army as a method for torturing/punishing soldiers that committed crimes like desertion, etc. I imagine some of them died right after being branded on the face like that too.

It takes a little talent but its still not *that* hard. I have friends who do it pretty proficiently and it seems like if people know which steps are a big deal or what the big don'ts are with the primers they can probably manage. If they controlled both you'd need to know someone who can fabricate the shells and then they'd need to know people who can access the other materials.



Unless you're going to use it to lie in wait for someone and surprise attack there's zero practicality. If someone wants to mug a person on a subway or really anywhere from within five or ten feet and that other person has a crossbow the only thing they'll do is be be a murder victim. To even be able to use a gun, if someone's rushing you, they've estimated the distance at 31 feet - so even with a gun if you're on the defensive your odds of being a murder victim are pretty high, possibly not so for an armed bystander coming to the rescue but you get the point. With the favor stacked that strongly toward whoever instigates violence there's very little hope of using a bow as a self-defense weapon.

I would much rather be guilloutined than anything else.

the point that i made, was that the process of getting the various pieces of the ammo assembled into something readily usable would be harder and so would slow down gun violence even if a bit. the point the other poster made was that if it was only crossbows, it would be harder to do the sorts of criminal acts that crooks now use firearms to do. all we can do at this point [in america, in any case] is make it a bit harder for the crook to do what he or she does, to throw up some roadblocks for them, existential speed bumps, as it were.

i can't remember if it was in the book "how we die" [dr. sherwin nuland MD] or someplace else, but i remember reading that getting one's head cut-off would likely be a painful thing, in that you'd feel sharp pressure [from the impact of the blade on your spine] and your head would go BANG! onto the ground with painful bone-breaking force. in addition, you'd likely feel intense "pins and needles" pain [that would feel like your whole body was being shocked even though that is merely an illusion as the body was no longer attached] as that is how your brain would interpret the sudden absense of your body below the jawline. you would also likely experience the worst headache of your life, albeit briefly. there are much better deaths out there.

In theory you'd probably still be alive for around five seconds afterwards, and the last thing you'd see is your headless corpse.