Improved Medicine Has Made Murder Charges Obsolete

Is it time for a new murder charge? Let's call it "intended" murder rather than "attempted" murder. According to a front page article in Saturday's Wall Street Journal, homicides are falling despite soaring gun violence. Part of the decreasing number of deaths by shooting or stabbing is not from reduced numbers of violent acts, but from better trauma care.

Just like the space program gave us Tang and integrated circuits in the 1960s, our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during the 2000s has taught our medical practitioners how to patch up and save victims who would have surely died if their misfortune had occurred only a decade before.

Murder is a very serious crime, which carries severe penalties up to, and including death. And face it, police investigate murders much more vigorously than attempted murder, so many unsuccessful murderers go unapprehended due to caseload.