NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/talk/politics/misc/66081

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-03 | 1.8 KB

Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:66081 alt.fan.rush-limbaugh:11307
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From: [e-mail] (Cynthia Kandolf)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: An End to the Sanctity of Human Life Argument
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Date: 3 Jan 93 13:35:03 GMT
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In-Reply-To: [e-mail]'s message of 3 Jan 93 02:41:41 GMT

Mike Myke Schwartz (?) writes:
>If 100 murders per year are prevented by fear of ANY kind of
>retribution
>by the justice system, have we not saved more lives than we have
>taken?

How can you tell how many murders are "prevented" each year?  You're
counting events that _didn't_ happen.

True, you can probably say that some one who has murdered ten people
already, say, would be likely to kill again if he were walking the
streets.  But you don't know that he would still be walking the
streets; he himself might be murdered, or be killed in a car crash, or
kill himself.  And you certainly can't tell exactly how many people he
would kill in a year.  And if we start to talk about people who killed
only one person, do we know for sure he'll kill again?

To put it another way: About a year ago we had a terrible wind storm
in this part of the country.  The brunt of it hit an area of coastline
where there are few large towns.  Only one person was killed by the
storm.  How many people would have died if the storm had hit a city
full force?  Answer: There's no way to know.

-Cindy Kandolf
 [e-mail]
 Trondheim, Norway