The death penalty should apply to minors for many reasons. Obviously, it would be a different case if a 5-year-old had been playing around with her father's gun, but for the most part, minors realize that permanent harm can come out of pulling the trigger, or committing some other crime. Minors know and realize that someone may be killed, and because they have that awareness, they should also have the death penalty applied to them.

Are we not the country that gives many of the same rights that are given to adults, to minors? Is it not hypocritical that while minors have the same rights, they do not share the same consequences?

It is clear that there are other factors that may cause someone to murder, an example being Tony Hicks and how murdered Tariq Khamisa due to peer pressure, however, if it is certain a person is not going to change, then the death penalty should be available. If the death penalty is not available, but it is clear they will commit murder as soon as they are released, society as a whole would need to wait for them to kill yet another person before they are able to be ridden of.

Additionally, keeping juveniles in jail drains our resources as money from taxpayers are being used to support criminals. The money used to support a criminal, could obviously be better used.

To those who argue teenagers do not properly understand what could come out of their actions, it's very, very unlikely that they do not understand the meaning of death. Also, it seems as if the majority of the teen population does understand the consequences as the streets are not filled with corpses.

Emma Welch wrote, "A judicial system that takes the life of a child does not truly uphold justice." But is it fair that if a murderer, who just happens to be a minor is supported by the money of upstanding citizens, while the hopeless, or the poor, struggle to survive and make ends' meet? Of course, there is the saying that "two wrongs don't make a right," but if we let go that first wrong, another wrong may happen. One that society could have prevented.

In no way is the point that society should murder every minor that kills a being, however, that option should be kept available.