Today’s Washington Post carries the news that the death penalty is alive and well and is being carried out, in several cases, in what appears to be a hurry before the change of administrations.

I naively believed for some reason that the deliberate killing of prisoners at the hands of the government was a barbaric thing of the past. Whatever the crimes of the several candidates for the elecic chair, killing them is pointless revenge and makes us complicit in what amounts to yet another murder.

The truth is that the death penalty is no deterrent to the killer. He (or she) is not going to pause before a murder and reflect on the risk to their own lives. You have to be, almost by definition, mentally disturbed to kill another human being. The electric chair might gratify a certain blood lust but does not deter murder. In short, the death penalty, banned in most civilized countries, is not only un-Epicurean but un-Christian as well.
What we should be doing is taking away as many means of murder as possible, and that refers, for a start, to controlling who can tote a gun. We should also put more money behind mental health.