Indeed, there are all sorts of things that America, which claims the moniker as being the "leader of the free world," does to its own people and to others, that are absolutely absurd. After all, America's own Declaration of Independence, makes the sensible claim, that "life" is one of the unalienable rights that all are equally entitled to – which signifies that when any agency so takes away a life, there needs to be some sort of inquest, as to the justification or legitimacy of such. Most people, then, do agree, that those that deliberately and under premeditation take away a person's life are best classified as murderers. Those then, that do so under the passion of the moment, or in a state of some inebriation, are also guilty of murder, but have some extenuating circumstances, that may be applicable to take thus into consideration, for each respective case. Then there are all those that accidentally kill someone, who aren't even necessarily classified as murderers, but often are more appropriately classified as having committed the crime of manslaughter. So, no doubt, not every killing, is a murder, though it is clear that a premeditated and deliberate killing of someone has the clear markings of what makes for a murder.
America has an awful lot of criminals, in which, some of these criminals are murderers, and thereby may be subject to themselves paying the ultimate price for that murder, which, in some places, is the death penalty, and therein lies the rub. The one thing that we do know is that somebody that has been killed, cannot come back to life, no matter what – this thus indicates that to punish the murderer by killing then the perpetrator can only be appropriately seen as a form of retribution, which thus leads to the next question -- which is, in consideration that the deliberate and premeditated killing of another, is a form of murder, then how is this state action, not itself, classified as an act of murder?
The typical answer of the state, runs along the lines, that all those that have been found guilty of a crime, which is thereby subject to capital punishment, and of which, the due punishment, so being imposed by that jury, has been determined to be an execution, then the State thus has the obligation to carry out that sentence on behalf of the people. This would seem to state, that there are exceptions to the general rule of murder; and therefore capital punishment, by the state, is one of those exceptions. That though, certainly doesn't make it right, from a moral perspective, because those that carry out state-sanctioned executions, are by their actions, deliberately taking the life of another, in cold blood, which actually appears to be the marking of a sociopath, and not that of a responsible, advanced, and civil society.
That is to say, to believe that to end killing, the state needs to kill, as well – basically, means that every citizen within that country does not really have the unalienable right of life, because the state, has itself, risen above that unalienable right, and is the ultimate determinate of such. In other words, when the state is allowed to kill its own citizens for what seems to be justifiable reasons, then clearly the lesson so being taught, has no sound moral grounding, because the state appears to be saying, that the premeditated and deliberate taking of another human being's life, is legitimate, as long as it is done through the auspises of the state