Agreement and disagreement in discourse

Agree: The death penalty does not deter crime.

One of the arguments in favor of the death penalty centers on capital punishment as deterrent. Supposedly criminals -- those among us who are the most psychologically disturbed, the most besieged by hatred and anger, or those who have become wholly irrational -- are supposed to take a moment of reflection before committing a crime and talk themselves out of it with the fear of dying. The very thought that the death penalty might be a deterrent to crime is laughable. An individual who commits egregious crimes is not one to think rationally or clearly enough to contemplate his or her own mortality, no matter how self-motivated the crime or self-interested the individual. Persons who commit heinous acts, those that would warrant the death penalty in a Hammurabian world, are nearly immune from such high-level thinking.

Looming capital punishment could not have deterred those who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nor could capital punishment deter those whose crimes were accidental, or those whose lawyers were simply inept during the trial. The death penalty is simply not a deterrent to the crimes it purports to prevent.

Data and statistics seem to back up the truth that the death penalty is not a deterrent. In spite of common sense, reason, and factual evidence, however, some states in the union still kill their own people. Those states -- and all those who support the death penalty -- have no right to criticize the barbaric practices of other countries. The death penalty makes Americans a less moral society.

The death penalty deters crime mainly in those who would not have committed crimes in the first place. As a deterrent, the death penalty does send a message that inhumane behavior is intolerable in our free society. Yet any life-loving, moral American should know that already.

Disagree: trying to get tough on gun crimes, especially through mandatory prison sentences, will not reduce gun-related crimes

Getting "tough on crime" has become a political code in the United States. The phrase has become a Republican Party platform issue and one used to galvanize citizens, one that signals the righteous intolerance of criminals but is a thinly cloaked measure for social control. Of course, Americans should hope for a society that is as crime-free as possible, one that does not restrict the right of citizens to possess a weapon while at the same time prohibiting criminals from doing the same. Tough on crime laws and mandatory prison sentences are not viable means of reducing gun-related crimes, though.

The way that "tough on crime" laws are phrased garners attention and votes. Voters have a hard time turning anti-gun laws down, but for the wrong reasons. The tough on crime laws fail to address the root causes of the problem: poverty and social injustice. Mandatory sentences will not reduce gun-related crimes. The decriminalization of drugs would go a farther way toward reducing gun crimes than the laws intended to be tough on crime. Eliminating the black market of drugs would take power away from criminal organizations that sell guns too.