@OCCOM BILL,
Occom Bill wrote:I haven't. But I haven't really seen the United States’ parallel peer either.
I have. Pretty much every developed country -- every OECD country, say -- is a peer of the US in every regard relevant to the desirability of capital punishment. Each of those peers doesn't have capital punishment, or at least isn't using it in peace time. And each of those peers has dramatically lower murder rates than the US does.
Moreover, within the US, states with capital punishment are peers of states without it. Hence, your failure to find peers to compare does not reflect a dearth of peers. It only reflects a dearth of interest on your part to confront your political faith with empirical reality. (As an aside, this dearth of interest seems quite common to followers of Ayn Rand, who ironically call themselves Objectivists.)
But even if there
was an actual dearth of peers to compare, it wouldn't help your argument, because I don't owe you a reason why governments shouldn't go around killing people. You owe me a reason why they should. If you could show that the death penalty leads to fewer people being killed, that would qualify as a good reason. But by your own admission you can't, whether it's your own fault or not.