Guns

[Danoff]

Well I guess I get the last word! Just in case anyone (including R3V somewhere) cares, here goes:

Your hypothetical lacks the necessary information to give a confident answer.

You could have asked questions.

Maybe I should flesh out my opinion on rights and prisons in more detail. To me, the main primary purpose of a prison is removing the means by which someone, who has harmed others, could do it again. A secondary, bonus purpose is rehabilitation.

I'm not sure I disagree.

The death penalty is its own separate discussion. I'm against it for many reasons, but one that I don't think any reasonable person should disagree with, is that any justice system is not infallible. Every prisoner should have the right to prove he/she was wrongfully convincted until their last day.

Sure... but that's still true with a death penalty.

As to the other stuff you said like "why not let them have guns inside a prison"... please.

I'm trying to get you to see something, and you're just ignoring it. More at the end.

I may be a little autistic or something because I do not see the difference. Giving someone a second chance is practically saying you have enough faith/trust in the person that he/she will not do the same mistake again. This doesn't mean it's 100% confidence that it won't happen, but just enough to let them off in a way that gives them the freedom to re-offend.

There is a difference. You make yourself more vulnerable to people you trust than people you do not.

John is a career criminal who went to prison for a 5th time. Jane is a 1st time offender who punched someone at a bar. John, IMO, should get life in prison because we cannot trust him anymore. No parole. Jane, IMO, should get X months in prison. If our goal is to keep her away from reoffending, and we determine 6 months will rehabilitate her to a point where we can trust her again, why don't we just give her 6 months? Why 3 months in + 3 months parole? If 3 is enough to restore her freedom of movement, why not just give her 3 months from the beginning? Or does parole not work the way I thought it does?

I'm trying to understand where you're coming from. I already acknowledged that it could be used as a carrot to keep convincts behaving while inside as one potential benefit. What's your reason though? Why 3+3 instead of just 6 or 3 from the beginning? If it's reducing the prison population, that's purely an American problem and is rooted elsewhere. Seems like a band aid solution and I really don't like those especially on a macro scale.

Because we want to see what Jane will do with looser restrictions. We want to see how Jane does with a little extra freedom. Can she avoid getting into altercations? Can she follow the rules of her parole? Or will she slip up again? The parameters of parole attempt to mitigate the downside (possible harm) while enabling the upside (reform and freedom). 6 months isn't necessarily better from ANY perspective.

Harder meaning buying it off the black market, right? Are you saying that someone who wants to kill his wife with a gun, who cannot legally obtain it, will give up on the idea because he has to go find one in the black market? I'm just not seeing it. This is like locking the door to your house to do something about burglarly. Sure it'll slow down a burglar by like 10 seconds but it's not going to change the results.

Yup, harder meaning buying it and ammo off the black market. And yes, I'm saying someone who might kill his wife with a gun in a moment of rage might not take it upon themselves to try a black market gun purchase after being released from prison on parole.

Just to be clear, are you saying YOU don't trust them with a gun, or that they should be legally forbidden from owning one? If it's the former, I already said I know such people too. If it's the latter, that's what I have a problem with. It shouldn't be up to me or you (or anyone) to say someone should be banned from owning a gun. It should be up to a judge/jury upon a criminal convinction to determine how long they lose that right for AKA prison sentence.

I'm saying I don't trust them and I think the law shouldn't either. I didn't say I get to decide, I said people like that exist.

How? I'm talking about your country and the "gunshow loophole" here, and not my utopia. AFAIK the only way is through NICS, after filling a 4473 form. Just like buying a brand new gun from a dealer. Is there an alternative method I'm not aware of? If so, is it in any proposed gun control bill?

As far as I know, you can ask a dealer to run a background check for your private sale.

So you just give up and live under tyranny or what? I'd like to know. What does society do once democracy has failed?

We have many examples around the world of populations living in oppression.

It's the particular interpretation of that supreme court, though. In any case I believe my argument for arming the general public (for any country) stands on its own. I don't need to cite the 2A or the wig-wearing slave owners who wrote it, grateful as I am for the inspiration.

I didn't see any argument, and I didn't cite wig-wearing slave owners either.

If it was so straightforward why did it take ME, the person who wrote it, several posts to comprehend what you guys were talking about when saying there's a contradiction? All it would've taken is a simple question asking if I meant this or that. I would've then apologized for any confusion and wrote a less ambiguous response.

Again, I made it clear that I thought you're realize your mistake quickly and recant. You didn't though.

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On rights, and the role of prison
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Human rights are a spectrum ranging from rights against torture to life to property ownership, freedom of movement, voting and all the way up to suicide. You lose these rights the moment you demonstrate that you do not observe them in others. But you lose them proportionately. If you violate property rights, you lose property rights, etc. The role of prison is primarily to house people who have lost their right to freedom of movement, property, suicide, and others. But the role of prison can and should also be reform and assess whether someone can be given a second chance with their freedom of movement and property. The exact same situation is present for mental health conditions.

Crimes range wildly in their demonstration of what rights a person can respect in others, and what rights they cannot. Petty theft is not the same as kidnapping and torture. It would be in no way proportionate to incarcerate someone for life for petty theft, and yet it would also be wholly unnecessary to observe that person's property right over every last bit of their property. Legal penalties in the US take this proportionate relationship into account, taking away small amounts of money in the form of fines, or larger amounts, parole, house arrest, prison for short terms, prison for long terms, gun restrictions, voting restrictions, movement restrictions, driving restrictions, therapy requirements, community service. There are a wide range of proportionate responses from the US legal system to fit the crime.

The punishment FITS the crime. If it is disproportionate, something has gone wrong. Either someone's rights have been violated, or they got away with more than they might have. Proportionality is what a lot of people might call justice, and it's the problem with giving a violent offender a right to buy a gun at the corner store. They're not entitled to it (violent offense after all), and it's probably a bad idea.

 

[FuriousDemon]

Probably 15 minutes from where I live. I haven't gone to this specific park, but I do go to a couple others in the area frequently. Scary, but it's also sad that this now happens so frequently that we treat it as just another day in America. A ****ing splash pad is a new(?) place that isn't safe anymore from random violence.

Rochester Hills splash pad shooter found dead; wounded victims include two boys

The shooting occurred Saturday around 5 p.m. at the Brooklands Plaza Splash Pad in Rochester Hills, according to the Rochester Police Department.

www.detroitnews.com

 

[TexRex]

Prosecutors are frequently disinterested in reasonable leveling of justice, indeed prosecutors are frequently disinterest in due process of law. They're frequently politicians rather than true civil servants. With the exception of legitimately progressive prosecutors, they're also frequently on the conservative side, and even if they're not staunch conservatives, that they're frequently politicians rather than true civil servants means they're haunted by allegations of being "soft on crime." A special prosecutor involved with the case against Baldwin actually made it explicitly clear that it's politically motivated, stating the intent to make a point that nobody, including A-list actors (lol), is above the law.

So one of the charges against Baldwin was dropped...I guess a couple weeks ago? In 2022, New Mexico passed an amendment to existing criminal statute that added two years to a three-year mandatory minimum for firearm possession during the commission of a crime. One of the two charges against Baldwin carried a firearm enhancement and, as charged, carried that newer five-year mandatory minimum despite the incident occurring in 2021. Upon contest and review due to the unconstitutional imposition of statute nonexistent at the time of the incident, the firearm enhancement itself was dropped "to avoid further litigious distractions"--so stupid. Application of the enhancement here absolutely isn't in the spirit of the statute.

Alec Baldwin shouldn’t spend 5 years in prison for an accident

The actor is a polarizing figure. That shouldn't matter when evaluating the criminal case against him.

reason.com

Involuntary manslaughter charges, and trial, dismissed with prejudice over the state's having withheld evidence beneficial to the defense.

 

[Tornado]

Here we are and he is getting acquitted for involuntary manslaughter (because it was such a nonsense case the DA had to break the law to get charges to stick even enough to go to trial) so maybe I am the lawyer-type, lol.

 

[GBO Possum]

I don't know why, but I decided to glance at Xitter today...

 

[Tornado]

Man this criminal trial brought forth by the lawyer types that definitely wasn't a fishing expedition sure was investigated pretty terribly. Some of this stuff he talks about specifically (investigators shook boxes of ammunition to determine whether they contained live rounds!?) even seems to rise to "Updated the Autopsy Report" levels.

 

[Meythia]

Im not really following in the Baldwin case at all, just reading headlines.
Should he be liable for having used a prop gun that was supposedly checked by an "expert" for safety and then handed over to him for filming purpose? Or is there something I absoluty do not understand on the law side behind it?

 

[Tornado]

I mean there is absolutely an argument to be made that he should be liable for some sort of criminal negligence.



What the prosecution instead did was go after him with a big boy manslaughter charge with a firearms kicker they added (that they were illegally trying to apply retroactively) to try and get Baldwin a minimum 5 year prison sentence, and then seemingly conspired to forge/cover up evidence to try and get those over the top charges to stick. It possibly can also lead to the conviction that the armorer already got being thrown out.