"Calling for someone to be shot is advocating for a lever to be pressed. The violence following such a pressing is a second-order consequence."

Calling for someone to be shot is a call for violence. Calling for a trigger to be pulled is not.

The death penalty is a legal ruling that is often not even the final decision.

Sure, if you don’t understand causality.

It's calling for the state to kill someone. Doesn't seem any less an advocation of violence than advocating for a vigilante killing or advocating for some specific person to do the killing.

You don’t think there is a difference between the state killing someone and a vigilante killing someone?

I was solely addressing the fact that both are violence, and asking for either is advocating for violence. Exercise for the reader to decide if they think either is moral or just, which is a completely different issue.

By that logic, no one is advocating violence unless they intend to participate in the violent act directly. It’s a logically consistent position, but it’s also a highly implausible one.

Of course one can advocate for violence without participating in it directly. For example, you could call for a riot. Or for the death of someone directly.

No reasonable person would confuse “the traitor should get the death penalty” with “kill the traitor!”.

I guess I’m not a reasonable person then? Advocating for state sanctioned killing is no different to me, in terms of advocating violence per se, than advocating anyone else do the killing. There are surely other distinctions to be made, but “the state should implement violence” isn’t categorically different from any other actor in the same configuration.

Now the interesting question is, what would happen if I was to ask for the death penalty on a crime that does not carry the death penalty? Or only carries the death penalty in countries with legal systems that we object to, like Iran?

I doubt their mother sees it in such bloodless terms.

Why is that relevant?