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Something Else to Argue About

1st freedom

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Doug Huffman wrote:
Aran wrote:
Flyer22 wrote:
Decoligny wrote:
We deal with it by putting teeth into the laws that deal with actual crimes. We need to keep the laws thatpunish criminals based on their criminal behavior, we don't need laws that criminalize normal behavior, i.e. just having a gun.

Rob a store = X years in jail

Rob a store with a gun = X + 10 years in jail, no half the time off for good behavior crap either.
I would go a lot further than that. I've felt for some time thatthemost effective way ofpreventing certain types of criminal behaviour would be to imposemandatory life sentences for the use or brandishing of a gun in the commission of any crime, no matter how minor. (I'm a big fan of Singapore's sentencing laws. :))
So someone uses their gun in self defense, the jury somehow finds against them, they're put away for life.

Great idea.

This 'great idea' is the NRA's Project Exile way.

Either we are equal or we are not. Good people ought to be armed where they will, with wits and guns and the truth. NRA KMA$$
"Project Exile" applies to repeat offenders,Felons with firearms,or firearms involved with drug trafficking. That hardly applies to a self defense shooting.

Thank you for your creative and productive insight Dougy
 

Eeyore

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Thundar wrote:
O.K. Eeyore you only gave us half of the post. You asked "So how do we deal with this reality?"

First it is not reality, just some hypotheticals which are not balanced against other guns are good hypotheticals.

More importantly you do not provide a plan for fixing your hypotheticals. You should have given that as the second half of the post.
Nope, that's the whole thing. If I had a plan, I would have posted it. The fact that I didn't/don't have a plan is implicit in the question I posed for the sake of discussion. Furthermore, I never said or intended to imply that guns do not have beneficial effects--in this forum, I think we can take that as a given. My question was intended onlyto examine possible ways to minimize their negative effects. I would never advocate banning airplanes because they sometimes crash, but I would never prohibit someone from examining possible ways to make them safer.

Gentleman Ranker recognized all the above, and followed the implications. (Bravo, sir.) He restated the dilemma better than I did: "...the antis can argue that some number of Bad Things do and will happen if guns are around. We can't deny this, and we look foolish if we try." So what can we do instead?

I agree 100% that all evil should be met with justice. As for prison terms, I believe the swiftness and surety of punishmentare more effective deterrents than the duration. If your dog wizzes on the carpet right after you leave the house for work, and you punish him when you get home 8 hours later, the dog learns nothing. Likewise, when a BG gets arrested, then immediately released on bail, is free to run around for a year while awaiting trial, eventually gets tried and convicted, then waits a few more months for sentencing before he ever sees the inside of a prison, the deterrent effect is lost. The effect has been too far separated from the cause. (And that assumes he's convicted at all, instead of getting off on a technicality or getting some weak suspended sentence or time served. :X)

If it were up to me, I'd bring back stocks in the public square. Nothing like a little public humiliation to get someone's attention, and the sales of rotten fruit and vegetables will stimulate the economy. :cool:

The problem is that punishment comes after the crime has already been committed. My question was oriented towards prevention.
 

Comp-tech

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, Alabama, USA
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Citizen wrote:
Rights and freedom are soessential to human nature that anythingcontrary to rights is almost guaranteed to have holes in it.Its just a matter of finding the holes.

So, just because they are cowards and unwilling to defend themselves or help defend others if they witness a crime, the rest of us are now urged to accept more restrictions. I understand in South Africa at one time it was a serious offense to have your firearm stolen. Meaning it was a seriousoffense if it wasn't so well secured it was very difficult to steal.

So, there you go. Holes discovered. :D:cool:
Well said Citizen...well said

With this attitude "in the masses" and the lack of real punishment for criminal acts, our society will, IMHO, continue into this downward spiral. Maybe we should take a look at other countries laws/punishments....just to see what actually works.
I'd bet that South Africa, Bulgaria and El Salvador have a smaller percentage of DUIs than we do...... http://webpages.charter.net/ricknet/duilaws.htm
 

Pegasus

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Eeyore wrote:
Thundar wrote:
O.K. Eeyore you only gave us half of the post. You asked "So how do we deal with this reality?"

First it is not reality, just some hypotheticals which are not balanced against other guns are good hypotheticals.

More importantly you do not provide a plan for fixing your hypotheticals. You should have given that as the second half of the post.
Nope, that's the whole thing. If I had a plan, I would have posted it. The fact that I didn't/don't have a plan is implicit in the question I posed for the sake of discussion. Furthermore, I never said or intended to imply that guns do not have beneficial effects--in this forum, I think we can take that as a given. My question was intended onlyto examine possible ways to minimize their negative effects. I would never advocate banning airplanes because they sometimes crash, but I would never prohibit someone from examining possible ways to make them safer.

Gentleman Ranker recognized all the above, and followed the implications. (Bravo, sir.) He restated the dilemma better than I did: "...the antis can argue that some number of Bad Things do and will happen if guns are around. We can't deny this, and we look foolish if we try." So what can we do instead?

I agree 100% that all evil should be met with justice. As for prison terms, I believe the swiftness and surety of punishmentare more effective deterrents than the duration. If your dog wizzes on the carpet right after you leave the house for work, and you punish him when you get home 8 hours later, the dog learns nothing. Likewise, when a BG gets arrested, then immediately released on bail, is free to run around for a year while awaiting trial, eventually gets tried and convicted, then waits a few more months for sentencing before he ever sees the inside of a prison, the deterrent effect is lost. The effect has been too far separated from the cause. (And that assumes he's convicted at all, instead of getting off on a technicality or getting some weak suspended sentence or time served. :X )

If it were up to me, I'd bring back stocks in the public square. Nothing like a little public humiliation to get someone's attention, and the sales of rotten fruit and vegetables will stimulate the economy. :cool:

The problem is that punishment comes after the crime has already been committed. My question was oriented towards prevention.
Here's my 2 cents, found it on the sidewalk. :lol:

Prevention means education and a complete 180 in attitude, imho. First off, people need to know there are choices. How many crimes are committed by those who are simply desperate for some basic human need (food, attention, shelter, money), which could be prevented if we reached out and held out a hand instead of a handcuff?

As for the attitude shift: It's been found in some social psych studies (a class I'm taking right now, btw, I'm not an expert but like to apply my learning) that kids are more deterred from bad behavior when they have less (but not zero) external justification for avoiding said behavior. Internal justification will last longer than external punishment and will be more generalized to Bad Things instead of The Bad Thing.

The reasoning for this is that if they are "normal" (and thus do not behave badly out of some sociopathic tendency) and not "forced" by some other externality to do Bad Things (ie, forced to steal because you're starving), 9 times out of 10 the Bad Thing will cause cognitive dissonance. They will wonder why they're acting badly when the expectation is clearly the opposite and when their own personal values probably don't include Bad Things. To stop the discomfort of that mental mismatch between actions and values, they either have to change their values (tough, and not likely to succeed), or change their actions to meet their ideal values (which stops the Bad Behavior).

The implication for law enforcement, then, is really the opposite of our current reaction to criminal behavior (lock 'em up longer and treat 'em worse!)... but if it works for kids it should work for adults, assuming they have been raised properly (another preventative technique which we are desperately in need of, but one I won't go on about here). This means probably shortening the judicial process as much as possible to make punishment more immediate, making the sentences for first-time offenders more civil service work, social education classes (manners), the stocks, or other mild deterrents (writing essays on "Living Crime-Free"?) and less jail time. That in turn frees up the jails to keep repeat offenders or seriously disturbed criminals in longer, keeping the really bad guys off the streets and making them less likely to gain followers who will carry on the legacy of Bad Things.

But that'll probably never happen, because most people want to think we're already doing the right thing and the natural response to Bad Things is to kick back as far and as hard as we can without thinking about the long-term consequences. I forsee plenty of heavier sentences and overstuffed jails in our future.
 

deepdiver

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Most crimes in America are not committed by people desperate for basic human needs. Giving people things instead of people having to work for things is much of what got us in this mess in the first place. We have spent trillions of dollars over the last 40 years giving hand outs to people and that has done more to destroy the lives and cultures of certain segments of our population than anything else we could have done.

Pegasus, if you go on to take a criminal psych class you will find out (assuming you don't have a raging liberal professor who teaches opinion rather than fact) a lot of the social psych material on criminal populations and deterrents will make even more sense. You will find out that there are segments of the population act badly just because they can basically and that about 10% of the criminal population cannot be rehabilitated and would be criminals no matter how great their material wealth and comfort. The new concern being discussed when I was back in school was that cultural effects were increasing that percentage. Such a trend was just then emerging and being looked into but no long term or comprehensive studies had yet been performed.

The matter is not by any means as simple as a hand out instead of a hand cuff. Look at all the criminal acts by people born and raised in privilege. Granted they are not typically the street crimes we are so aware of, however criminal and contrary to a law abiding society all the same. Claiming poverty as a root cause of crime is an old, old theory that has not been born out by fact or reality.
 

imperialism2024

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Eeyore wrote:
Nope, that's the whole thing. If I had a plan, I would have posted it. The fact that I didn't/don't have a plan is implicit in the question I posed for the sake of discussion. Furthermore, I never said or intended to imply that guns do not have beneficial effects--in this forum, I think we can take that as a given. My question was intended onlyto examine possible ways to minimize their negative effects. I would never advocate banning airplanes because they sometimes crash, but I would never prohibit someone from examining possible ways to make them safer.

Gentleman Ranker recognized all the above, and followed the implications. (Bravo, sir.) He restated the dilemma better than I did: "...the antis can argue that some number of Bad Things do and will happen if guns are around. We can't deny this, and we look foolish if we try." So what can we do instead?
The point is, that I respectfully believe you're missing, personal responsibility should take the place of government regulation. This is the proper application of the "then let's ban rocks, swimming pools, and donkeys" argument for gun ownership. Yes, there are accidents and crimes committed with guns... but damages are also created with other instruments. A stupid person will still be a stupid person no matter how many classes you make him take. A while ago I brought up the issue of NDs that cause injuries, and how they're generally caused by bad decisions rather than a lack of training: in order for the bullet to hit a person, the gun generally has to be pointed at that person. And that's not going to be due to a training error. And as for criminals, they will find ways to commit crimes, and will do so just as readily as when they don't have guns. Criminals in the UK seem to be doing quite well for themselves.

So ultimately, we need to look at how it is the responsibility of each person not to misuse guns. Yes, innocent people are injured and killed by people using guns... but are also injured and killed by people using knives, and baseball bats, and cars, and even shoves from high places.

Eeyore also wrote:
I agree 100% that all evil should be met with justice. As for prison terms, I believe the swiftness and surety of punishmentare more effective deterrents than the duration. If your dog wizzes on the carpet right after you leave the house for work, and you punish him when you get home 8 hours later, the dog learns nothing. Likewise, when a BG gets arrested, then immediately released on bail, is free to run around for a year while awaiting trial, eventually gets tried and convicted, then waits a few more months for sentencing before he ever sees the inside of a prison, the deterrent effect is lost. The effect has been too far separated from the cause. (And that assumes he's convicted at all, instead of getting off on a technicality or getting some weak suspended sentence or time served. :X )

If it were up to me, I'd bring back stocks in the public square. Nothing like a little public humiliation to get someone's attention, and the sales of rotten fruit and vegetables will stimulate the economy. :cool:

The problem is that punishment comes after the crime has already been committed. My question was oriented towards prevention.
Two issues.

First, we need to get rid of the punishment notion in the prison system. Yes, punishment may work for the first few years of a child's life... but there comes a point where it is no longer effective. Barring malum prohibitum "crimes", there generally must be something wrong with a person that prevents them from applying logical thought to committing a crime. Robbing a convenience store? The criminal might be desperate for money... in which case they either need rehab, or perhaps remedial education so that he can enter the work force. He's not going to be considering the punishment, as he really needs the money. Or the criminal might just want money, and doesn't have qualms about threatening force in order to get it. In the former example, prison as punishment will not deter future acts, will most likely put the person in a worse financial position once he gets out, and will teach the criminal how to commit crimes even better in the future. Here, rehabilitation is necessary. In the latter case, the person is dangerous to society, and punishment will just make him more sociopathic and will certainly not prevent future crimes. In this case, life imprisonment might be appropriate, or perhaps psychological assistance in dealing with the deficiencies giving him such a "criminal" mindset. I could even understand the application of the death penalty here, in order to more efficiently remove this person from peaceful society, but I'll get to why that's a bad idea after the next, short paragraph.

Sure, such a "pansy lib'ral" approach might not satisfy a desire for vengeance. But what's more important: feeling good about someone else's demise, or giving the criminal the chance to live a life where he doesn't cause more crime to happen? The need to stop looking at prison as punishment isn't so much for the sake of the criminals, but for the sake of society as a whole.

Second, I believe there's a misunderstanding of the ideal American Criminal Justice system. The point is to force the government to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that a person is guilty of the crime with which he is being charged. That's why there's bail: the person "running around for a year" while awaiting trial is presumed to be innocent. So long as there's some reassurance from the person that he will appear in court and not run away (that is, reasonable bail), there's no reason to lock up an innocent person. As for "getting off on a technicality", those "technicalities" are there for a reason: to prevent the oppression of overzealous government. Let's take the Miranda warning... while we tend to be well-aquainted with the law around here on OCDO, many people in America may not know that they have the right to a free attorney during questioning, or the right to not answer questionsl. Also presuming that the person taken into custody is innocent, there should be no question that he deserves a fair shot at retaining that status. At any rate, the key term is presumption of innocence.

Sure, it might be nice to watch a cop show on TV and see the police kick down the door of a child rapist, shoot his pet dog, and beat him into a bloody pulp before bringing him back to the police station for questioning... at which point he is deprived of food and water until he confesses. But since this person is presumed to be innocent... what happens when the police mistake you for the child molester?
I'd think that those openly carry their gun(s) should be especially attuned to wrongful accusation and arrest and other acts of overzealous policing.
 

Flyer22

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Aran wrote:
Flyer22 wrote:
Decoligny wrote:
We deal with it by putting teeth into the laws that deal with actual crimes. We need to keep the laws thatpunish criminals based on their criminal behavior, we don't need laws that criminalize normal behavior, i.e. just having a gun.

Rob a store = X years in jail

Rob a store with a gun = X + 10 years in jail, no half the time off for good behavior crap either.
I would go a lot further than that. I've felt for some time thatthemost effective way ofpreventing certain types of criminal behaviour would be to imposemandatory life sentences for the use or brandishing of a gun in the commission of any crime, no matter how minor. (I'm a big fan of Singapore's sentencing laws. :))
So someone uses their gun in self defense, the jury somehow finds against them, they're put away for life.

Great idea.
Quite honestly, I hadn't thought of anything like that. I was thinking about overt crimes like mugging. The law would have to be rerwitten to make sure that your scenario never happened.
 

Tomahawk

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We have a near-ban on machine guns, and few crimes are committed with machine guns, right? Isn't it true that in Britain knife crime has ramped up to replace crime committed with guns?

I think that bans do work, just not the way intended. You may be able to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, but you can't keep them from being criminals. They will just use a different weapon.

Firearms were invented to even the odds against people who are physically bigger and stronger than you. And, as Gunslinger pointed out, good guys outnumber bad guys, so arm them all and the problem takes care of itself.

And for once, johnnyb is right: the social science aspect of gun control is irrelevant. Individual liberty is paramount.
 

Gunslinger

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Tomahawk wrote:
We have a near-ban on machine guns, and few crimes are committed with machine guns, right? Isn't it true that in Britain knife crime has ramped up to replace crime committed with guns?

I think that bans do work, just not the way intended. You may be able to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, but you can't keep them from being criminals. They will just use a different weapon.

Firearms were invented to even the odds against people who are physically bigger and stronger than you. And, as Gunslinger pointed out, good guys outnumber bad guys, so arm them all and the problem takes care of itself.

And for once, johnnyb is right: the social science aspect of gun control is irrelevant. Individual liberty is paramount.
Actually, there are a lot of MG crimes in the drug scene--not the local pushers, but the higher ups. Ever see Scarface? :shock:
 

Tomahawk

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Scarface = Hollywood.

I am fairly certain that if there were a lot of machine gun crimes in the U.S., it would be plastered all over the news media, and we'd all be taking the blame as evil gunowners.
 

Gunslinger

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Tomahawk wrote:
Scarface = Hollywood.

I am fairly certain that if there were a lot of machine gun crimes in the U.S., it would be plastered all over the news media, and we'd all be taking the blame as evil gunowners.
Uhh, a bit of humor...I'm not saying a huge use of MGs in crime, but the drug cartels are noted for Kalashnikov and Mac-10s in general use.
 

SlackwareRobert

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But, known BG with MG = worried about unknown with good long range sniper rifle.

Seems to me a good 50 cal sniper can solve the MS13 problem over Mex border,
there is no doubt which house is the BG hangout.
Bush should just bomb it like he does aledged house in Iran.

But LEO can easily railroad good guy for the easy win balance sheet without
worry about retalliation.

We need justification defence on this side of border.

If they would only treat belonging to a gang the way they do leagally owning a firearm, a lot of BG would be off the streets.
 
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