Rick Perry Has More Confirmed Kills Than Chris Kyle

As Rick Perry leaves his post as Governor of the State of Texas, he leaves behind a pile of dead bodies for which his state determined to be unfit to live in society. To be precise, Perry had 278 confirmed kills since he took office in 2000, making Chris Kyle’s 160 kills look amateur.

As a recovering neo-conservative, borderline statist, I can certainly understand how it is hard to garner sympathy for a convicted killer being put to death. After all, killing another human being in an act of aggression, is one of the worst crimes a human could carry out. Before I cared enough to actually think critically on the subject, my simple brain assumed that killing a prisoner would save all the costs of housing that inmate for the rest of his life. I was surprised to find out it costs about 3 times more, or on average $3 million, to put someone to death in the State of Texas. From a pure monetary standpoint, it makes no sense to seek the death penalty since state resources will be tied up for the rest of the inmates life in the appeals process.

Beyond the financial burden of the death penalty, the fact that we are delegating the guilt or innocence of a human life into the hands of a corrupt justice system is enough for me. We have no shortage of cases of individuals that were wrongfully convicted of heinous crimes, only to be exonerated by the grace of God. Most lawyers will admit that the ‘justice system isn’t perfect’ but ‘it’s the best system in the world.’ Well, if it’s not perfect, then by no means should we use it to take other human lives.

The ‘hang them in the streets’ narrative of my former self was changed by some very simple research and critical thinking. How many innocent men and woman were killed at the hands of an ‘imperfect system,’ and how many more will have to die before we start to think like adults?

[VIDEO] A group of activists in Dallas brave the cold rain to protest the death penalty