http://speakout.com/petitions/1274.html
In 2011 the same question of whether the death penalty is a good form of capital punishment still dominates as one of the top arguments among the people. In September of 2001 Billy Fould Driftwood from Taxes decided to voice his argument in favor of the death penalty in the form a petition on “Speakout.com” in hopes of making a political change. After reading the short petition entitled “The death Penalty is a Good thing that needs to be used more often”, I found the author may have been confused on what platform he wanted to take in defense of his conclusion. In his argument you can hear Billy’s frustration in the tone of the paragraph. Billy’s argument states good premises that should make the reader want to move to action by signing the petition. Billy states in the beginning that the death penalty is a great way to help keep the murder rate down. Billy also expresses in the argument, the death penalty should be used more to save the tax payers thousands of dollars.
Now i understand Billy’s sincere feelings toward increasing the usage of the death penalty, but i think the premises he chose, put together, are building a week argument. Lets take a moment to analyze the statements.
P) The fact remains that there are too many murders a year.
P) The murder rate will be lowered if the penalty was a real threat for criminals.
P) The crime rate stayed the same after the death penalty was re-instated.
As you can see the third premise does not follow the others and weakens this portion of the argument. Even though i pointed out a weak premise, I think Billy’s goal is very clear here. Billy’s goal is to show the people how this may be a benefit to them if they sign the petition. After I started reading, I thought about being the next person murdered if i didn’t take action. I also thought about other bad results that could also happen if i don’t take action. The consequences being, the murders may never stop, and there is a chance the murders may actually increase. Billy wants this to be something personal to his readers. Billy then goes on to list more good premises to support using the death penalty more often.
P) In taxes it cost 86 dollars for the state to kill someone.
P) In taxes it cost 30,000 dollars a year to keep a criminal alive.
P) The tax payer should not pay to keep criminal alive.
P) The tax payer should be saved money.
C) The death penalty is not used enough.
In this final portion of the argument, Billy makes very good points to support his conclusion. Billy starts once again with sparking the individuals’ interest with something everyone is familiar with, paying taxes and money. The subject of money is a topic that most individuals, companies, and the government find extremely important. Even with differences of race, origin and religion, we all have the same love for money. Billy hones in on this love by showing how our own money can be affected if we don’t increase the usage of the death penalty. Its like a sales pitch for those people that may be religious, or a person that lets their morals and values lead them in their decision making. Even as a sale pitch, the argument is structured with good premises that support the conclusion.
The problem with Billy’s argument is, some of the premises don’t follow the main idea Billy made of “The death penalty is not used enough”. Actually one premise makes it invalid. When Billy adds the statement, “in other states the crime rate did not change”, he leaves the idea open that his theory of increasing use of the death penalty may not work in our state either. The additional premises could also vaguely support a different conclusion. Billy unintentionally may give the idea he wants to help balance the state budget by carrying out death sentences at a faster rate. No, this is not what Billy openly said, but he put so many ideas on the tabel thinking they all support this one idea. The argument should not imply more then one conclusion. Billy tries to add more information that he thinks will help his main conclusion but really winds up weakening his argument. Because Billy takes this approach, the argument clearly has a fallacy of “Missing the point”. Billy should have continued listing true statements that were geared toward keeping the same conclusion, even at the very end of the argument. In order to make this into a healthy argument, Billy would have to replace some of the premises with other statements that support the original conclusion of the argument. Because so much replacement need to be done to make this a healthy argument, I diagnose this argument as Critical Condition.
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