It is time to take away our government's power to legally kill its own citizens.

[elehhhhna]

We can get traction on this from both the right and the left. I've predicted for years that frustration levels were ramping up to the point that we're all going to end up meeting in the middle. This is something on which we have some common ground.

As our democracy appears to be threatened threatened and our government seems to have been hijacked by the global 1% , I think it is time we restrict our government's powers. Developed nations do not give their government legal authority to kill them via the judicial system.

The majority of American people on all sides of the political spectrum mistrust our government - local, state, and federal. The time is ripe.

For many years i was ambivalent about the use of the death penalty in this country, mostly because it's so common and I grew up with that being a fact ...

Then someone pointed out that we are one of the few developed nations, or semi-developed nations, that gives our own government the legal authority to kill us. Our government has done nothing to demonstrate that they deserve that authority.

[MineralMan]

1. I have opposed the death penalty since I was a teenager in

the early 1960s. I agree with you completely, however ending capital punishment is not going to happen during a period where right wing Republicans control all three branches of government. It is one more battle we will lose through not electing a Democratic President in 2016. There is zero chance of this happening nationwide at this time. Plus, the states that have already eliminated it are probably the only ones that will keep that prohibition in force.

We're going to lose many, many battles for progress in the upcoming years. In fact, we will be hard-pressed just to maintain the tenuous gains we have made since the 1960s. That's the battleground we must fight on during a Trump administration. Further progress, like ending capital punishment, is extremely unlikely.

[Siwsan]

2. The intend to expedite the slaughter by removing the social safety nets

How many people, either working or retired, will ever be able to afford the highly inflated health insurance premiums? And without that insurance, how many will be able to afford any kind of medical care, while we are under the criminal 'for-profit' medicine system that is bankrupting this country? How many will survive without the social security benefits they have paid into for their entire working career?

These people are Barbarians.

[Calculating]

3. Some people just deserve to die though

IE that mother who went online to look for people to rape and kill her 10 year old daughter while she watched. The continued existence of people like this stains humanity and disgraces us all. How about that dude who had apparently been keeping a woman locked in a shipping container on his yard? He was released after serving time for a rape at the age of 15, and then went right back to killing, kidnapping and rape. How about Dylan Roof? The guy who shot up all those black people in church?

There are real monsters among us, and there's no use in denying it.