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epiphiny43 -> RE: Stop Knives! Save Lives! (11/26/2014 12:18:20 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BamaD
quote:
ORIGINAL: Kirata
quote:
ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
I've used the expression 'freedom from being shot' here many times in the past and, on each occasion, I've been treated as though I've just spoken in ancient Klingon. It's as though the gunsters here simply can't fathom the concept...
What you frame as a "freedom from being shot" can only be effected by a totalitarian state. You may argue that it's not a totalitarian state if the people want it and vote for it, but that is a species of sleight of hand. The mere fact that people voted for it doesn't make it less totalitarian. You are idolizing democracy. Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on lunch. We recognize certain natural and inalienable rights, among them the right to self-defense, which is vaporous absent an effective means to do so. Accordingly, our constitution expressly protects certain rights against the fond tyrannies of utopia-obsessed majorities besotted with the notion that things would be ever so much nicer if people didn't have them.
K.
Don't laws against assault an murder codify the right not to be shot, or stabbed, or clubbed?
I'd have thought a few of the posters here actually understood how the Police powers of the State are exercised in most Western nations. No one has a right not to be ..whatever, under criminal law. They may have under Civil Law. Which is a totally different set of rules and consequences. The law criminalizes certain conduct After the fact and does little or nothing before. Even 'conspiracy'. The police are a reactive force, and rarely anticipate. That's not how our legal punitive social control measures work. (Raising sane people would be the primary alternative and an obvious interference with a 'free' people's parental rights?) The attempts to control behavior before the fact (Prohibition, War on Drugs, etc.) have been hugely problematic and as warned above, usually lead to draconian dictatorial bureaucracies.
Changing social mores has worked, we are seeing attempts now in a number of areas. Smoking, rape, child abuse and child pornography are current focuses? I'm seeing little effect on the obesity front. Changing attitudes takes generations, it works better than a massive police state?
The OP topic is pretty embarrassing to educated people. Try living in a neighborhood where knife violence is the predominate criminal activity on the street. Just as with guns, concentrated police and prosecutor work can greatly diminish the amount and degree of such violence. ONE USA city actually had a good working relationship between local police, prosecutors and the local US District Attorney. They followed up and fully prosecuted all of both State and Federal laws on all illegal carry and gun violence offenses. Street illegal carry plummeted and gun violence massively dropped as it was a given offenders who were arrested would do hard time, usually in Federal pens. Which isn't why most people carry and use illegal guns? Budget priorities and jurisdictional disputes and defenses everywhere else often mean few if any offenders see real jail time if even detected.
The marches in GB are aimed at creating social pressure on the police, prosecutors and legislators to be proactive in using what powers they do have to make the now ubiquitious-in-some-areas knife crime far more risky for the offenders and punished so as to remove them from social interactions as best possible given the sentencing standards of the community. I doubt anyone thinks making knives illegal is the point or is workable. Carrying obvious weapons and more, the Use of knives in criminal enterprises is what the security apparatus of the State is being urged to concentrate on?
From my knowledge of the juvenile criminal cultures where I live, it's the existence of known individuals who are successfully doing illegal things that's the most encouraging to the rest of the 'culture'. If every police contact with a criminal use of a weapon results in an early jail time served, these people Aren't seen as effective role models and the ideas lose their luster. It's where the police/prosecutors can't or won't arrest and effectively prosecute weapons offenders that the problems get worse.
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