A real way to combat and reduce gun crime

[Lurks Often]

If you commit a murder with a gun, you go to jail for life without possibility of parole.

If you commit a crime and shoot someone with a gun, you serve a full 25 years, without the possibility of parole, over and above any other penalty for the crime.

If you possess a gun in the commission of a crime, you serve a full 15 years, without the possibility of parole, over and above any other penalty for the crime.

If you are a convicted felon found in the possession of a firearm, you serve a full 10 years, without the possibility of parole.

Additionally none of these charges can be plea bargained away and they can not be dismissed by the prosecutor.

[TheWraith]

1. That last one is the key, and might do it all on it's own.

Often, weapons charges are plea bargained away by the prosecutors. This results in a shiny, high conviction rate for the prosecutor, and a criminal who's out on the streets again in a couple years.

[Ruby the Liberal]

2. I'll take it!

[geckosfeet]

3. How does that actually reduce crime? Prison is after the fact.

The US has 25% of the worlds prison population (and about 5% of the worlds population). People still commit crimes with guns.

You can be pretty sure that the fine young Tuscon gunman will never be set free. How does that help his victims?

[Lurks Often]

4. It prevents criminals from being repeat offenders

and many criminals are repeat offenders.

As for Tucson, there is NO law that will stand up to Constitutional review or that is politically feasible that will prevent these tragic events from occurring.

However IF some of the rumors are true, I repeat IF they are true, it may be that the shooter had already made threats against other people and had already come to the attention of law enforcement and that nothing of substance was done. (And I am not referring to the drug possession charge or the vandalism/graffiti charge).

[eqfan592]

5. How about instead of finding new and amazing ways to imprison more of our population...

...we concentrate on fighting the actual causes of crime? You can't scare the crime out of this nation, period.

Poverty, poor education, and clearly poor access to mental health care are the real issues that need to get caused, and would do a lot more good than your "lock them away and throw away the key" idea.

[Lurks Often]

13. Agreed

My idea was aimed (no pun intended) specifically at reducing the amount of crime committed with a firearm.

I agree that the social and economic factors need to be addressed, but even if we address them immediately, it is likely to take several generations for significant results to be achieved.

I also agree that mental healthcare needs to be addressed, but people also need to want to have their mental health issues addressed.

[geckosfeet]

9. Yes - for the term of their sentence. Then they are out and likely to repeat.

Don't get me wrong - I do believe that the laws should enforced. But I don't agree that prison is the ultimate solution for preventing crime. There have to be other social and cultural deterrents.

[X_Digger]

7. A deterrent isn't effective if you know it can be pleaded away..

The two elements of deterrence are 1) How well a particular law is enforced, and 2) How strong is the punishment.

e.g. A law against spitting on the sidewalk from the 1800's that isn't enforced will not be a deterrent. A law with a light punishment (parking tickets, etc.) aren't much of a deterrent.

There are all kinds of heavy federal penalties for use of guns in the commission of a crime. However few defendants ever face those charges- they get plead away.

What are the characteristics of a large portion of those incarcerated in today's prisons? Drug offenses, which are harder to plead away. (Pleas often come down to reducing the 'amount' of illicit substance, therefore putting the defendant into a lower, yet still severe, bracket of sentencing.)

[one-eyed fat man]

10. You know...

you might have a plot for a Tom Cruise movie!!

"The Future Can Be Seen. Murder Can be Prevented. The Guilty Punished Before the Crime is Committed. The System is Perfect. It's Never Wrong. Until It Comes After You."

This jerk in Arizona is just another low level loser in a string of low level losers. They are wackos who stay under the radar and garner little attention aside from some odd looks from those around them until the make their bid for infamy and perpetrate some horrendous and senseless act.

Also just as predictably, there are self-appointed sages who from their lofty perch where they can contemplate every detail dredged up by investigators looking into the latest wacko's past and cluck because they can clearly see the clues that pointed directly to the latest outrage back when the miscreant was in grade school. How could the authorities have been so derelict and as not to call in the Bureau of Pre-Crime and have him locked up?

That is it, like it or not. As long as there is a semblance of a free society you cannot lock up someone for a crime until you prove them guilty of committing it. You can try to deter crime, and the best deterrence is generally the odds of getting caught. That's why criminals generally avoid committing crimes in the presence of the police. Lunatics not so much.

Prison only keeps criminals from committing crimes (not counting those the commit on each other) while they are locked up. The only positive for the death penalty is that absolutely prevents recidivism

Welcome to the real world.

[applegrove]

6. The NRA members will start to sell massive amounts of cross-bows.

[Peace Patriot]

8. I don't agree, for the following reasons...

1. Such laws would not have deterred the Arizona shootings. Some people who kill with guns are psychotic/delusional, suicidal, etc.--they don't care. Prison is not a deterrent for them. And there are others who may not be crazy but they don't care other reasons--they have extremely low expectations for themselves and prison just confirms those expectations, and they don't think ahead--so a stiffer sentence is just meaningless. In other words, they've thought, all their lives, that they would end up in prison--so what else is new? Also, most gun crimes are committed by young men and most young men just can't think 10 years, 20 years into the future. It is utterly meaningless to them.

2. We already have crammed, inhumane and often privatized prisons in which human beings are utterly forgotten by our society. There is not only little or no help for them, to understand themselves and have the chance to become better people, but conditions in the prison are often so bad and so violent that they might as well be consigned to Hell. Is making this situation worse--with longer, unappealable prison sentences--going to reduce gun injuries and murders? No. As long as guns are prevalent--legal and illegal--and people feel hopeless because of poverty, poor educations and lawlessness at the top of our society, and other causes, these kinds of draconian sentences are just going to make everything worse.

3. Such punitive sentences fall unfairly and unjustly on poor black men--a population with something like a 50% unemployment rate, and a population that also has extremely poor access to legal help. Unjust convictions occur all the time in this system of injustice. Just think about this for a minute: George W. Bush has slaughtered a hundred thousand innocent people for no good reason. Is he ever going to see the inside of a prison? No, he is not. Why? He is too rich and too powerful. That's the reality. You rob and kill at his level, you never pay. You rob and kill on a very minor scale, by comparison, and you may be stuck in Hell for the rest of your life. Until we straighten this out, and have a decent justice system, and have decent conditions in our prisons, cramming them with more poor people, for longer periods, ain't gonna help. It is going to RAISE the level of anger, hatred and violence in our society.

I utterly oppose our "prison-industrial complex" and, quite frankly, I think we would be far better off if we declared an amnesty for about 90% of the prison population and spend the BILLIONS that we would save on helping those people re-integrate into society, in providing them with a decent, humane society to re-integrate into, and in providing REAL psychological help and rehab for those who are not ready to re-integrate or possibly can never be trusted among us again. We have got to HEAL our society--including our government, our politics and our relations with each other.

I am also a believer in nutritious food and in the healing powers of nature. The shit we serve prisoners for food shouldn't be fed to a dog. And the lack of contact with nature in prisons is appalling. They are purely punitive institutions--Hell holes!--where the notion of healing and community has been utterly lost. Black prisoners are taken far, far away from their neighborhoods, to white rural areas, to bump up the Census numbers in those areas--for more government aid and more political representation than their numbers merit. The black prisoner bodies are COUNTED as residents in the rural white area, even though they can't vote--nor can they vote in their home neighborhoods. This is a meat market! It is disgusting. Community and re-integration should be the first priority of a prison system, and it is not even a consideration, in our present prison system, which is punitive, and racist and unworthy of a progressive democracy. And it cries out to be changed.

You have hopeless people, you're going to have hopeless gun crimes, and that is a fact. No amount of draconian sentencing is going to change that. We are incapable of decent handling of the prison population, as it is. Pack four more in the cage. Pack eight in the cage. Where you gonna stop? How many people can you pack into cages and treat like animals?

Prison is not the solution. A decent, caring society is the solution. And we don't have that.

[one-eyed fat man]

11. Are there no criminals you would condemn?

You think Charles Manson can be rehabilitated by going to Whole Foods and a trip to Yosemite?

Where do YOU draw the line? Do you seriously discount that there are very real predators among the prison population for whom rape, rob, murder are clear choices they make? Economic conditions or station in life having no impact on their choice?

I will agree with you is that far to many low-level, no-violent, mostly drug users who are in prison would be better served by appropriate treatment. But explain how you think Ted Bundy could have been "cured" of serial killing women in any other way than he was?

[Peace Patriot]

22. i am not defending criminals. I am saying that more punitive, longer sentences for gun crimes will

do no good. Please don't twist my words and misstate my views. I recognize that there are people who need to be confined probably for the rest of their lives. What I am saying is that cramming more people into our already overcrowded and hellish prisons, for longer sentences, for unappealable sentences, will do no good, and this punitive mindset--that prison is a solution--will do more harm.

We have to look at the WHOLE problem. We have a vastly unjust society in which the poor, and especially the black and the brown, CANNOT make a living--and all social programs to help them are being cutback, defunded and eliminated, due to MAJOR CRIMINALS perpetrating MAJOR CRIMES--like slaughtering a hundred thousand innocent people and like looting the country blind!

You can't start to solve our BIG problem by cramming more people--the overwhelming number of them poor--into our prisons!

Our BIG problem is our egregiously unjust society including our egregiously unjust "justice" system.

Here is the message that our people are getting from Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld running around free: Controlling vast amounts of money and vast amounts of weaponry makes you IMMUNE to criminal prosecution. just get big enough--just commit murder and theft on a grand enough scale--and you get a pass.

Until we solve THAT problem--the fundamental injustice of our society--no amount additional laws mandating additional and longer sentences for crimes with guns is going to do any good at all--and it will make things much worse.

Civil society is not created by laws. It is created by people agreeing to be lawful. You can have all the laws in the world--including laws that ban private ownership of guns altogether--and it won't do any good if people don't agree to be governed by those laws. Has the U.S. "war on drugs" stopped the drug trade? NO!!!! it has ENHANCED the drug trade by driving prices UP and has made it so lucrative that people will kill for those profits--as we are seeing in the bloodbaths in Colombia and Mexico.

You have to start with the "social contract." Can people make a living? Are their living conditions conducive to a peaceful social order? Do you have the "consent of the governed" as to what is lawful and what isn't? Does everyone within the society have hope, dignity and opportunity?

Clearly, this society does NOT have the "consent of the governed" on the use of drugs. It is just like "Prohibition" only worse. It is "Prohibition on steroids"--with huge PROFITEERING on the part of the PRIVATE "security" industrial-complex, the "prison-industrial complex" and the "military-industrial complex"--all making TRILLIONS of dollars off the "war on drugs." A good portion of the violence with guns involves this "war." And the only way to end a bad, socially corrosive, endemic, sick "war" such as this one is to END it. You will NEVER win it. "Winning" it is a total lie and an illusion.

The "war on drugs" ITSELF causes most of the violence. If you make war on people, EXPECT return fire! EXPECT drug entrepreneurs to arm themselves. EXPECT truly criminal minds to gain ascendancy. EXPECT murder and mayhem. EXPECT gang wars for control of the huge profits that YOU have insured for them.

Has putting people in prison for this stopped the drug traffic? NO! And it never will.

It is exactly the same for gun crimes. Imprisoning people does NOT solve the problem. The problem is much bigger than that. Long term imprisonment is necessary for SOME criminals, I agree--although I would put most of that limited population--those who cannot be rehabbed (with a genuine effort, I mean)--in HOSPITAL prisons. i think most of them are very sick in the head, and punitive imprisonment does no good at all with psychotics and sociopaths. With the 70% of the prison population who have committed no violent crime, frankly, I would let them all out, now, and use the $30,000 to $50,000/year that we are wasting on their imprisonment in hellish conditions on their re-integration into society. As for the violent offenders--and, indeed, ALL offenders--I would radically change the FOCUS of the prison system from punishment to humane treatment and rehabilitation.

Call me a Christian. I believe in redemption. And I think most criminals are capable of redeeming themselves, if given half a chance.

Caring fosters caring. And punitive, hell-hole imprisonment fosters crime. That's my opinion. But, most of all, in a practical sense, punitive, hell-hole imprisonment just doesn't work. Never did. Never will. We are CREATING sociopaths, as we speak, by this attitude that prison is the answer to SOCIAL problems.

And, NO, I don't want violent criminals running around free in society, endangering me and mine, and everybody else. We DO have to stop them. We DO have to protect ourselves and civil society. We DO have to inflict consequences for such actions. But we are never, ever going to create a safe and civil society by looking to imprisonment as our primary solution. This HUGE mistake of our society has gone far enough. It has created vast injustice in our prison and "justice" systems, and has cost us TRILLIONS of dollars--not to mention costing us our reputation in the civilized world, which views our rate of imprisonment and our prisons system as a disgrace.

[one-eyed fat man]

23. There is still a problem with career violent criminals.

I would go along with you for non violent offenders, particularly first-time offenders. Many drug abusers need medical care not prison. On the other hand, those who have committed violent crimes, by which I mean robberies, assault, shooting, stabbing murder, arson. They need locked up. I would be perfectly happy they never get out.

By the time a career criminal has spent 30 or 40 years of his adult life in and out of prisons for robbery, assaults and killings I am of a mind they are probably not worth redeeming, even if I thought it possible. The sneak thief who breaks into an unoccupied building and steals goods is not the threat to human life the guy who knocks over convenience stores and shoots minimum wage clerks just for the fun of it.

For many, being a criminal is a choice. The low-life isn't stealing bread to feed his starving family. He might be miserable, but he ain't Les Miserable.

If it was only about stealing stuff or money, he would break into places where no one is home or pilfering cash from his mother's purse.

Robbery is confrontational. That is where the rush is. He wants to see the fear. Why should someone who'd threaten with death a minimum wage clerk at a fast food joint or a convenience store be treated as if he had just created a new social compact? "Give me what I want an might not hurt you."

Subway clerk murdered

A 22 year old clerk, paralyzed with fear, unable to open the cash drawer, and the vicious vermin says to her, ‘Girl you’re too slow. You gots to die.’ Then the misbegotten bastard shoots her three times.

Robbery is about cash like rape is about sex. The goal is subjugation, humiliation, and domination, the rest is incidental. The robber's threat of bodily harm makes it personal.

Paul Dennis Reid

You really believe he turned to robbery because he was down on his luck Nashville songwriter?

Robbers Execute 2 Store Clerks

This Florida robbery might go down as the most senseless double-homicide ever. These men rob a convenience store. Even though both clerks are obviously compliant, the man guarding the door shoots them both -- all for $77...

Surveillance video images of two men sought in Monday morning robbery incidents and a store clerk’s shooting.

"The "war on drugs" ITSELF causes most of the violence. If you make war on people, EXPECT return fire! EXPECT drug entrepreneurs to arm themselves. EXPECT truly criminal minds to gain ascendancy. EXPECT murder and mayhem. EXPECT gang wars for control of the huge profits that YOU have insured for them."

That war is a three legged stool. Yes there is big money, enough to make criminals willing to risk prison and death to pursue it. Enough to corrupt police, judges and governments. And all three are needed.

The Prohibitionists (ironically, while some concede it didn't work for booze, doesn't seem to work for dope, but they are cocksure certain it will work flawlessly for guns.)

The criminal enterprise established to satisfy the demand for the illicit commodity.

And the recreational user, who manages to steadfastly deny that HIS money had any role in underwriting this level of carnage. They are more concerned with the dolphins in their tuna than the blood in their dope.

[Peace Patriot]

32. How come the corporation profiting from the "convenience" store doesn't provide adequate

security for its slave-wage employees and encourage healthy communities around their stores? Because they have to give themselves multi-million dollar bonuses and please their big investors. They prey upon their employees and their employees get preyed upon. They furthermore prey upon their customers and the planet. The rich don't give a fuck for the poor and, in turn, the poor often don't give a fuck for each other. And all are eating crap food for outrageous prices, in these "convenience stores," in glitzy packaging that is polluting and destroying Mother Earth.

I really don't think you understand what I'm saying. You create the conditions for criminality and criminality will happen. You create conditions for caring, for beauty, for pleasure, for joy, and good things will happen among people. We have created conditions from the top to the bottom of our society in which sociopathic behavior is rewarded, imitated and encouraged.

You have to start with that--with who we are, who and what we let rule over us--if we want to address criminality. And if we don't--if we go on letting this corporate-run, predatory capitalism rule who we are and what conditions we live in--sociopathic behavior will continue. You can't "imprison" it. Oh, yeah, you can stick more and more people in prison, for longer and longer periods, but you have solved nothing.

As for the beheaded people in the photo, they didn't show us the blown up babies and grandmothers and others--a hundred thousand of them--in Iraq, did they? Such things are awful but they are not unique to Mexico or to drug gangs. Our president, our soldiers, our country have done far worse--mouthing hypocrisies about "freedom and democracy" the whole time. That is the model that we have provided for our children, for everyone in our society and for the world. We are the truly depraved ones, to sit in Fortress America while our military is hijacked to slaughter other people for our corporate rulers and war profiteers.

THIS is the problem that we must solve if we want to live in a safe and decent country. We have lost our way.

[one-eyed fat man]

35. That is our elemental disagreement then

Here is a picture of my workplace 50 years ago.



You sound like you are still here



You blame "corporate greed" for every societal ill and the justification for every punk knocking over a liquor store.

I blame the punk.

Have it your way. Add your money to this stack of trafficante cash. ONE Mexican drug dealer-207 million in CASH



Pay for more of this:



Save the whales.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_5eFGvpSbGJk/TLNj2FfF9vI/AAAAAAAAAKo/YY4OCS64fkI/s1600/dolphin+safe.jpg

[Peace Patriot]

39. I "blame 'corporate greed' for every societal ill"? I do not.

"You blame "corporate greed" for every societal ill and the justification for every punk knocking over a liquor store.

I blame the punk."--your reply

-------------------------------

I am absolutely in favor of catching and stopping criminals, removing them from society--forever, if they cannot be rehabbed--and the necessity of inflicting consequences. But social decency and peace, and the "prison-industrial complex" and its various, in my opinion, CRIMINAL profiteers, is a complex matter. You cannot simplify it into "Hippie-criminal-huggers" vs "real men." As for the U.S. tank you were driving, back when, did you kill anybody? And if you did, how did you determine that they were "punks" deserving of death? And if you didn't see combat, how did you determine that the general military operations that you were part of were killing "punks" and not patriots (plus a whole lot of innocent people)?

Military service does not entitle you to be right. I am married to a former AF jet bomber pilot and both of my brothers served in the army. Two of these three opposed the Vietnam War (if that's the war you were in) and oppose the Forever War that has now been inflicted upon us . My pro-war brother is dead, but he would, for sure, be on your side of this argument. So be it. Military service has nothing to do with the validity of an opinion. George Bush served in a pansy division during Vietnam. Does that entitle him to execute rehabbed criminals, as he did in Texas, or slaughter a hundred thousand innocent people to steal their oil? He and his ilk would say so. That's why they paraded his phony service.

You are not addressing my arguments. What good does it do, as policy, in addressing the problem of gun crimes, to lock up the criminals for extra-long, unappealable sentences, when ten more spring up after them, because, a) they can't make a decent living, and b) our corporate-run society doesn't give a fuck about them?

This is a DIFFICULT problem. Can you wrap your brain around it? How do we create as society in which pansy militarists like Bush and his team of Draft-evaders get don't get rewarded with great wealth and Secret Service protection, for slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent people, and in which poor children--often black and brown children--see no option but drug trafficking in order to become filthy rich and immune to consequences, like Bush and his multinational corporate cronies?

Some punk shoots me or one of my loved ones and friends, to take what little we have, or because they are nuts, and I would feel very angry and vengeful. I could probably kill in that circumstance. So I sympathize with the emotion. I am a tough woman--a fighter. I get mad when innocent people, when helpless people, are harmed and when sociopaths rule our government and our street corners. But if you create public policy out of this raw emotion, you have a JUNGLE, not a society--a jungle in which vast numbers of people are harmed by remote control as well as directly. What is a six year old in a chronically depressed, economically ravaged neighborhood supposed to do about the conditions he was born into? Make responsible personal decisions--or join the gang? You are not addressing that innocent kid and what he needs to make good decisions. He has a life expectancy of 13. He will be dead before he ever conceives the notion that he shouldn't steal or deal drugs. And, anyway, gang members don't work that way--stealing money from their mother's purses. They steal money, and join gangs and deal in drugs to put money INTO their mother's purses. They are TRIBES--protecting family and neighborhood, and funding their families in the only way that they see open to them: crime.

You have to look at this Big Picture, in order to make wise and useful and effective public policy. Bush and his fellow fascists believe in punishing small criminals with draconian punishments, while the rich do whatever the fuck they want and get richer and buy themselves every luxury. It doesn't work--to create a decent and peaceful society for the rest of us. It is not meant to work. It is meant to create MORE profit for the rich. That's all the "war on drugs" and its "prison-industrial complex" are about--profiteering off of human poverty, misery and desperation.

So I'm asking: What's a better policy? What's a wise and useful and effective public policy on gun crimes and other crimes? How do you start de-constructing this extremely unjust, corrosive, crime-inducing social and political system? How can we do BETTER? Is that not what democracy is supposed to be about? Something doesn't work, so we try a better idea that emerges from democratic discussion? Do we have to live with so much violent crime--or is there a better way? What might that better way be?

You really can't split society into the "good" and the "bad." We are all in this together. We can't get rid of the "bad" by hiding them in prison Hell-holes (along with a whole lot of people who shouldn't be there). That ultimately leads to Hitler's "solution"--you cram those whom you have deemed to be "bad" into ovens. Sweep them out with the trash. They are sub-human. The truth is that even the most heinous killer IS HUMAN. So are we going to treat him like he treated his victims? Or are we going to demonstrate our humanity--or what we hope humanity could be--by giving him a chance to redeem his demonic soul?

I guess that's what our difference comes down to. I don't believe that any soul is irredeemably lost. They may be heinous criminals, consumed by their ego, but there is some innocent, helpless baby, just born, in there somewhere. I would most certainly maintain social control of such persons--confinement. But I wouldn't torment them or kill them (execution). They are consumed enough with the torments of Hell as it is. I would maintain HOPE that the person MIGHT change--because it HAS happened, and because that's who I am. I am a hoper. I'm not stupid. I am not naive. I have personally suffered from an unhinged killer--suffered horribly in the loss of a loved one. So I do not say this lightly. I maintain hope.

You would consign people to Hell and to death as "punks." I would consign NO ONE to Hell and death. And I ALSO think that that is better public policy.

[one-eyed fat man]

41. We will likely always disagree.

I was born in Germany in 1942. Thanks to my father's great aunt's willingness to sponsor us, we emigrated from what was then a part of East Germany, to the United States in 1954. I spent 26 years of my adult life in the Army and served combat tours in two wars. I have lived and worked diverse places.

You want to tell me about poverty and desperation. Desperation is a mother trading sex for half rotten potatoes from a Russian Army mess hall to feed her children. Desperation is not some thug shooting a kid for Air Jordan sneakers.

There is some level of anti-social behavior where society should accommodate the sociopath and remove him from society.

You mention that innocent 6 year old. If he is born into a culture where millionaire athletes find it necessary to adopt the "thug persona" and stick a Glock in their designer sweatpants when they go clubbing he will have a tough time.

I am all for getting the non violent, the youthful dumb ass mistakes, rehabbed, treatment, education etc and back into society.

What a I also want is those who have proven repeatedly that they are predators; violent and dangerous misanthropes; to be secured so that they are unable to hurt anyone. Criminals who repeatedly injure, maim, rape, and kill must be locked away

The systemic failures of the justice system make the death penalty problematic. Even in cases of absolute certainty, it is inefficient; its only virtue is that prevents recidivism. So in most cases I am against it.

Something has to change as a fear the desolation will be visited upon our grandchildren.

[one-eyed fat man]

36. One other thing

You really underestimate the big corporate store owners.

When it gets that bad, they do in those "poor neighborhoods" aka crime ridden slum what the big grocery chains did long ago. Pack up and move out.

You are right, "the poor often don't give a fuck for each other."

The folks they are robbing and killing are the "Mom and Pop" bodegas. Those are all that's left when the big chains get tired of being robbed and having their employees killed. Eventually they even drive their neighbors out of business or kill them.



Here again we have an elemental disagreement. You think poverty CAUSES crime, while I think poverty causes people to be poor. I think criminals choose to be criminals. They started by stealing from their mother's purse. They bullied their classmates out of their lunch money. They like it and they keep doing it. It is a lifestyle choice.

I know many people who grew up poor. I know people who only had shoes during the school year and who only ate what they could grow. They do not sing songs about how great it is to sell dope, rape women and kill people. They never spent a day in prison, they never robbed anyone, they worked their way to whatever success they enjoy.

What does your "Great Society" offer as a counter to a culture that celebrates misogyny, criminality, and lawlessness while deriding education, work, and those prosaic, quaint, "middle-class" values?

[Callisto32]

12. Why greater punishments if done with a firearm?

How is using a gun to commit a crime worse than any other method?

[Lurks Often]

15. It isn't, however there have been a lot of people here

in the gun forum calling for more gun control laws to be enacted, despite that the fact that there are plenty of laws already on the books that are not enforced.

Yes we need to address the social and economic pressures that cause crime, but it is very likely that it will take several generations before we start to see significant results.

I strongly believe that my suggestion would result in a significant decrease in gun crimes and probably a decrease in violent crime overall within 5 years.

[RSillsbee]

19. a significant decrease in gun crimes

I strongly believe that my suggestion would result in a significant decrease in gun crimes and probably a decrease in violent crime overall within 5 years.

How about we punish the specific crime not the tool used to commit it

[Lurks Often]

20. We are punishing the criminal for using a specific tool

to commit a crime. I have not and do not advocate for more gun control laws. Gun control laws are useless, feel good nonsense, pushed by people and politicians who fully intend to (and would if they had the power) ban guns completely.

[RSillsbee]

27. No we're punishing the criminal for taking a specific action NT

[Lurks Often]

28. And it's the criminal who should be punished

not the millions of people in the US who own guns and have never committed a crime.

[RSillsbee]

29. By George I think you've got it! NT

[Lurks Often]

30. At no point

have I EVER advocated for more gun control laws. Please cite the post saying so or explain your reason for being rude.

[RSillsbee]

31. I'm terribly sorry

I had no intention of being rude. I was making a joke because so often it's either dark black or bright white in here and very rarely does anyone who isn't solidly pro RKBA come in here and not call for more gun control

[Callisto32]

34. I guess I just think you are focusing on the wrong thing.

I understand your reasons for suggesting this, I just don't think that such punishments actually act as deterrents. It's like the death penalty. People who support it claim it has a deterrent effect, but the data generally don't bare that out. Rational people look at the punishment and say "that would have a deterrent effect on ME" so they think it will. Unfortunately, criminology shows us that most violent crimes are committed either in the heat of the moment, when such considerations are not being made, or by people who just don't think they will be caught.

[Lurks Often]

38. I disagree, but part of the problem

is that the penalties are rarely enforced. If John Doe robs a store with a gun and is caught, he likely plea bargains, does maybe 5-8 years on the robbery charge and is out in maybe 3 years if he behaves himself in jail. For John Doe, that's the cost of doing business. You change that to mandatory, full 15 years, John Doe might start thinking twice.

[RSillsbee]

14. A real way to reduce bat crime

If you commit a murder with a bat, you go to jail for life without possibility of parole.

If you commit a crime and beat someone with a bat, you serve a full 25 years, without the possibility of parole, over and above any other penalty for the crime.

If you possess a bat in the commission of a crime, you serve a full 15 years, without the possibility of parole, over and above any other penalty for the crime.

If you are a convicted felon found in the possession of a bat, you serve a full 10 years, without the possibility of parole.

Additionally none of these charges can be plea bargained away and they can not be dismissed by the prosecutor.

What's the difference?

[jeepnstein]

17. You are addressing the actual offense...

and not just responding to some reactionary need to ban something. Am I close?

We could house all the violent offenders, easily, if we would call off this silly War on Drugs. Even taking a baby step and decriminalizing pot would go a long way. Of course many of the same types who want to take our arms from us also have a deep seated need to ban "street drugs", for our own good don't you know.

[Lurks Often]

18. See post 15

[NewMoonTherian]

16. I have one request:

define "crime" clearly. Given your criteria, the police could be sending people up for 15 years for speeding.

Other than that, I like it! I've been arguing for it for years now.

[Lurks Often]

21. The first, second and fourth penalties

are crimes in of themselves, as for the the third penalty, violent misdemeanors and felonies.

[NewMoonTherian]

25. I like it. I REALLY like it. n/t

[ileus]

24. this may work for someone other than the spree killers...

spree killers aren't worried about the next day or even the next hour...


I am 100% for tougher sentences for the illegal use of firearms.

[Lurks Often]

26. The world isn't perfect

There will always be a portion of the population that prefers to prey on the weaker members of society and no matter what law you pass, no matter what object you ban, that won't change. The best you can do in the SHORT term is to put them away so they can no longer hurt other people. In the long term the country needs to address the underlying causes of crime, which include, but may not be limited to, social pressures, mental health problems and economic pressures.

[YllwFvr]

33. I am a huge gun activist

and will freely admit I am more pro gun rights than many who are gun enthusiasts. It causes me to butt heads even with the NRA and pro gun groups.

I have to say its a great idea, and the last one most of all. I saw a sheet on a guy in Pa the other day who has dozens of arrests, many with gun charges, and it was line after line of dismissed. What?! Just so this guy can go ruin someones elses life?

My opinion: If they have "served there time" and they are off parole and totally free, then ALL rights are returned. If they are deemed unsafe, or cant be trusted, then never let them see the light of day again. Repeat offenders are the failure of the justice system in the worst way. I agree with everything the OP wrote.

Perhaps add, repeat firearms offenses double the penalty.

[KansasVoter]

37. Yes, because all criminals think about the punishment before committing the crime.

Give me a break. We have more people in prison per capita than anywhere in the world. So our conviction rate is not making us the safest country.

[Lurks Often]

40. A conviction rate has nothing to do with

keeping the violent criminals behind bars. My suggestion will put violent offenders behind bars and keep them there for the entirety of their sentence.

There are lots of non-violent offenders that would be better off not being in prison.

[beevul]

42. And yet...

You want to make more laws for criminals to ignore, and non-criminals to be burdened by at the same time.


I think that clarifies things quite well.