Having let the question simmer in my mind a while, I have decided I am still 100% against the death penalty. I can see no reason for it. None. I push the doubts I expressed earlier aside completely.

The idea of untrained members of the public carrying weapons in public is horrifying. To allow it is licensing vigilante-ism, which is utterly despicable. The prospect of people pulling a gun on another at the merest suggestion of trouble does not bear contemplation, and any authorities that encourage it are, in my opinion, reckless of the law and order they are supposed to enforce, and complicit in any deaths that result. There are no longer any new frontiers where savages and outlaws are liable to swoop down any second and massacre us for our trinkets. There is no danger of redcoats swooping down from Canada to steal hard-won liberties. There's not even any danger of the elected rulers usurping power and overthrowing the constitution - not even where the ruler is a black moslem-loving communist.

No-one has the right to take another person's life, not, to my way of thinking, even in self-defence unless there is no other way to save oneself, and anyone who does take life must show inthe cold light of day and beyond reasonable doubt that his fear of immediate death was real and that there was no other reasonable alternative to save himself. Failure to demonstrate these conditions should lead to a presumption of manslaughter at least.

And because no-one has the right to take another life, except in the most extreme circumstances, it follows that judicial murder is also unacceptable.

It seems to me that the answer must be tougher controls and restrictions on the manufacture, sale, importation and exportation, and possession of offensive weapons of all kinds, and heavy penalties for transgressing the law. OK - it won't stop criminals, but what law ever did? Raoul Moat would've got a gun regardless of what the law said, but maybe Derrick Bird would not; and if he hadn't, 12 lives would not have been pointlessly wasted. Tighter controls will stop people who are not professional lawbreakers from becoming killers by accident or any other cause.