Felonies
Ya know, a felony conviction can end your right to vote or buy guns. But, you know, given that owning a three-dimensional device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs in Texas and carrying a slingshot in New Jersey are both felonies, I’m not so much a fan of the idea. Perhaps it should include only violent felonies.
August 29th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Generally speaking, I’m worried more about people being put in prison for a year or longer for owning a dildo, pocket pussy, or slingshot.
There are a good number of non-violent felonies that should pretty clearly prohibit one from owning a gun. I don’t want someone with three DUIs to be walking around with a gun, drunk. The same goes for a gun trafficker, or a meth addict.
I’d rather we actually keep them in jail til they can actually be trusted with weapons, but that’s not likely to happen at a time where the average life sentence gets paroled in less than two dozen years.
There are two ways to solve this problem, and I know that the average citizen will complain less about legalizing dildos and slingshots than about selling guns to felons.
August 29th, 2007 at 10:50 am
But entering the country illegally isn’t a felony…
August 29th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
You can be pretty violent with an 18″ rubber cock.
“…and that is why you pay Hatchet Harry when you owe…”
August 29th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Gattsuru, there are three quite good reasons for parole:
1) It makes the prison guards’ jobs much easier and somewhat safer – most of the inmates don’t want to endanger their chance at parole. Since many states already can’t hire enough guards, I want to keep that incentive in place.
2) Prisons are expensive.
3) After a long time in prison, adjusting to life on the outside is often difficult. Even those that really want to stay out of trouble often can’t manage it. So there should be a transitional program where they’re out but still under supervision.
Not that we couldn’t do much, much better with that supervision than the present parole system, where the ex-con just has to show up once a week and lie convincingly: Make them wear electronic tags, with GPS + a cellphone circuit to report the position every few minutes. Have an office manned 24/7, where all the tag-wearers are tracked. If anything seems odd, the watchers can activate the cellphone for listen-only (i.e., as a bug). They can also randomly pick one to listen to, also. If needed, they can turn the phone on to talk and give the guy some “advice” right on the spot. If that doesn’t keep him straight, then they send the cops to pick him up, and schedule a court date to extend his sentence.
That 24/7 tracking office might sound expensive, but it’s much, much cheaper than keeping them in prison. And it’s a far cry from real freedom for the parolees; they aren’t getting out of part of their sentence, they’re just serving under a different regime, where they’ve got to go to work and support themselves rather than living off the taxpayers.
Nonviolent offenders should go on this system from the start, so we only use expensive prison cells on the ones that re-offend even though they know they’ll get caught. Violent ones go to prison for a while, and hopefully emerge older and wiser – but in any case, if they earn parole at all, they get a chance to show that they’ve learned their lesson, while there are still safeguards in place to put a quick stop to any further criminal behavior.
I think that for true violent criminals, I wouldn’t give them their gun rights back right away on finishing parole, but would make the restoration of rights automatic upon 3 years outside the system without any trouble. For non-violent crimes (and things like fist-fights), I wouldn’t automatically take the rights away in the first place, aside from not bringing guns to jail or the courthouse. The prosecution could apply for and the judge could order a loss of rights for a period on parole/probation or after release, but it would have to be for particular reasons on a case by case basis, not just because the judge doesn’t like guns.
Finally, we need a sensible definition of “violent crime.” Stealing a gun and pawning it is not a violent crime. Carrying (but not using) a gun isn’t a violent crime, and it doesn’t make any nonviolent crime into a violent crime. A fist-fight is a violent crime (assault & battery), but if that’s all there is to it, it’s not serious enough to justify losing all your rights.