In response to:
Those who argue that all men are redeemable will not find an argument from me. What we may argue about is that redemption is a personal thing between the killer and his God, if he recognizes one. Pursuing his redemption is not a function of a sane judicial system. His personal redemption has nothing to do with societies’ obligation to punish wrong doing, bring justice for the victims, and protect itself from putting forward the idea that the ultimate crime does not assure the ultimate punishment.
In the aftermath of the Aurora, Colo., slaughter, the question went forth on all of the political chatter shows: "Will this reopen the debate over gun control?"
That's the script. When heinous monsters kill people with guns, we tend to talk about the problem of guns. Or rather, people in Washington, New York and other big cities tend to talk about the problem of guns, because they think guns are the problem. There's an irony there, of course, given that such cities tend to have the worst gun-related murder rates -- Chicago these days has the equivalent of an...
IIRC, it's lack of faith that is deemed unpardonable, and that's only because you have to ask for pardon; and if you don't believe there's Anyone to ask, you can't ask.
To put it another way, you can't ask for pardon, if you don't believe there is Someone to ask. So if you ask, you do believe.