A long time ago, AWA and I were talking about gun rights. Keeping in mind that I am originally from Canada, and therefore have some canalized thinking about firearms that harken back to those days, I was shocked to hear that he was okay with people getting back their guns coming out of jail.
I want to unpack this, because being a convert to 2A stuff, I think I have an interesting view on it. Perhaps my process will help you understand the Left a little more.
I grew up in a place where guns were considered terrifying. Only the police had guns, and guns were considered something only criminals would have. While there were hunters up north, where I lived in the suburban areas it was considered “odd” to own a gun, even if you had some need for one. This was pushed onto us, brainwashed into us from an early age.
To give you an idea of how much it messes with you, I’ll share a story. When I was a young adult, I went to live with my Hungarian grandparents to help take care of them. I had a kid at the time, and a boyfriend. I took care of them until they became unable to function at all, and were a danger to themselves and others, at which point I found a wonderful home for them where many of their friends were, and the kitchen staff allowed my grandmother to continue cooking. As I was cleaning the house up and out after they left, I ran across my grandfather’s gun. My boyfriend (who was from Michigan originally) told me it was a 22, but I honestly have no idea. It was packed in this dense, icky stuff which I now am pretty sure was cosmoline or something similar. It was behind the washer and dryer, in a spot where no one would have ever found it had I not been moving furniture around.
Nagyapa grew up in Hungary, and was conscripted into the Communist army during WWII. At gunpoint. He probably knew what it was like to be a disarmed populace. When he moved to Canada, he carefully put that weapon away. I’m sure it was probably worth a lot. Perhaps he thought it would be there for me or mine, should anyone ever try to disarm me. Regardless, when I found it, I FREAKED OUT. Holy hell, here was a GUN in my HOUSE with my KID! My kid could have been killed! I’m pretty sure I believed that the gun could have gotten up and shot my kid all by itself.
I was in such a dire panic that I called the police and had them come and get it. They removed it, and that was that.
Today, I smack myself in the head for giving up a perfectly good firearm. But that was the level of emotional/mental brainwashing they put you through.
Fast forward to the conversation with AWA.
We were discussing the idea of people convicted of violent crimes, and whether they ought to get their gun rights back after being released from their sentence. I thought that they should not get their gun rights back. I mean, they’d violated our laws, so why should they? They broke covenant, and they did it violently, so why should the covenant accept them back in so readily?
Today, I look at that same scenario differently. The problem is not the gun rights. The Constitution and its Amendments apply to all citizens of the United States equally. While certain parts are paused while someone is incarcerated (especially at the Federal level), such as owning weapons, the right to privacy, or freedom from warrantless searches, that do not apply once they are out of jail. Heck, if you’re incarcerated for a misdemeanor, you can still vote. It’s not easy, but you can do it (in most places).
The problem is that we’re letting violent people onto the streets.
Let that sink in. If we are legitimately afraid that someone will re-offend, that they will immediately take up arms of some sort and go kill someone else, then why the heck are we letting them out of jail in the first place?
What I would love to see is that people who have served their sentence (note, NOT their jail time, but their actual sentence, all of it) should have their Rights restored. Of course. This means if they get out on parole, behave themselves adequately, then when their time is over and they’re no longer on parole, they can own guns again. What I would also love to see is a “special case” court (Supreme Court? I don’t really know) where violent offenders have to go through due process again, just before they’re released from incarceration. This special court would include a jury of their peers, in order to see that due process is in place. It would look at the likelihood of reoffending, the type of violence in the original case, and any mitigating circumstances. If a judge and jury still feel that this person would cause harm to others if they were released, then DON’T RELEASE THEM.
Of course, all of that would only work if we had a good judiciary system. We do not, at the moment.
Right now, we have innocent people in jail. We have guilty people running around outside of jail, fucking things up. We have people who could be helped, saved from that life, slowly descending into the horrors of gang life and such. It’s all just a damn mess.
Hagar
In principle, I think I agree. Same with the death penalty, I think I agree. The thing that ends up derailing my agreement is just how bad the gov fucks things up and how often for no reason the police or a prosecutor gets a hard on for a specific person and decides to just run them right through the meat grinder. Then even better when they do fuck it up, there isn’t much we see down here at the level of the proles that is done to fix or prevent it with even the most fleeting notion of good faith. I have no trust or faith the the gov can or would be able to do such a thing justly or efficiently.
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I don’t know the answer. Clearly we can’t just have people running amok. We also can’t continue to bolster a system that has no efficient means of recourse for those wronged especially as it is easier and easier to imagine being ground to a pulp by it for the most mundane of infractions.
I know people in my state who are convicted felons and lost thier rights…. One for driving without a license (caught 3 times, 3 strikes law) and one for riding an unlicensed ATV(same 3 strike law)…Felon conviction for that??? The laws were changed(I think in mho) to make it easy to convict non violent people as felons so they lose thier rights.. I agree some should be able to have rights restored. Many that have multiple convictions I think not. The “judicial “ system is FUBAR. Socialpathic felons get let multiple times and continue crime. Long way to go til America is back in balance..
Minnesota recently passed a law giving felons the right to vote after they are released from jail. Not when their sentences are completed, but just when they walk out of prison, even if on parole. That does trouble me a bit.
My concern is Recidivism is a real issue. I would be very happy to have a program that restores civil rights to every ex-convict in phases, and dependent on the crime and previous criminal history. I also want the ex-criminal to be required to petition to restore their rights at each stage, and even have a corrections department to aid them in applying for and approving their applications.
Start with voting rights as soon as soon as their entire sentence is completed. Then after a period of time, other rights including the right to possess weapons, depending on the crime and history. A non-violent offender? Maybe a year without any arrests? Violent offenders? Maybe 3, 5, or 10 years? Someone with separate multiple felony trips to prison? 10 years or more.
I want criminals to be able to return to society successfully, but too many criminals like to be criminals, and they should not be allowed to legally possess firearms, even though they will illegally possess firearms to do “business.”
As David Codrea at the War on Guns blog puts it, “Anyone who can’t be trusted with a gun, can’t be trusted without a custodian.”
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IOW, if someone is considered too dangerous to own a gun, they should be considered too dangerous to walk unsupervised among normal people in public — with ready access to knives, crowbars, gasoline, etc. — and too dangerous to vote in elections.
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OTOH, if someone is considered rehabilitated and safe enough to be out unsupervised among normal people (and all the scary tools and materials), they should be considered safe enough to own a weapon and vote.
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This is especially true if their only convictions were for non-violent crimes. (A felony, by historical definition, is a crime of violence against another person that results in actual physical harm. “Non-violent felony” is a contradiction in terms.) These days, far too many crimes are rated as felonies. Curby had some good (bad?) examples; nobody goes to jail for driving without a license — at most they write you a ticket, impound your car, and you become ineligible to get a license for a while … nowhere near the consequences of a real felony. Another example: Martha Stewart is a convicted felon, and her only charges were for tax evasion!
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I believe the reason so many relatively minor crimes are now classed as felonies, is to strip rights from as many people as possible. As Ayn Rand said (paraphrasing), government can only control criminals, and when there aren’t enough criminals, they make them, by declaring so many activities to be crimes that one cannot live his/her life without violating something.
Wasn’t Martha convicted of “lying” to the FBI? But not tax evasion?
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Never talk to the FBI without a lawyer.
After FULL sentence, maybe.
Violent crime? Never.
That’s an astonishing piece of clarity for a left leaning woman. Would that more of you get it.
Black, white, brown, or purple, there’s a reason they are in jail. We need to make punishment a deterrent again.
Well done, Hagar.
On the point about grandparents from Hungary wanting a gun, that sounds a lot like what Oleg Volk will tell you. He’s an immigrant from Russia and has the same view for the same reasons.
The “icky scary gun” bit reminds me of the opening chapter in the excellent novel “The Mitzvah” by Aaron Zelman and L. Neil Smith (founder of JPFO and a well know SF writer, respectively). it involves an older woman who finds the revolver of her late husband and dumps it on the parish priest with the notion that he’ll know what to do. He panics, but takes it with him to the police station. Gets mugged on the way, doesn’t scare the bad guy (who sees it’s unloaded). Cops then arrest him for unlicensed possession and unlicensed transfer. Oops.
I still regret the dummy round I found in my late brother-in-laws shop and took to the local PD for disposal rather than scrutinize it enough to be sure it was a dummy. I’m pretty sure it was indeed a dummy, and spectacular: a 57 mm artillery shell. I do have a photo, though. And I kept the GAU-8 dummies to sit next to my A-10 model. 🙂
Trump/Kennedy and Ramaswamy as Secretary of State Triumvirate: promises a 1-Day blood bath, Heads going to roll, if he wins ’24.
1)) Returns the US dollar to a commidty gold based currency by closing down the Federal Reserve and negating all US debt owed to those private banking monopolies.2)) Ends the Russian/Ukraine War in a day. Here’s the deal: The US pulls out of Nato in exchange that Putin pulls out of the Ukraine.3)) Restores the Rights of the States to bureaucratically regulate all intra-State trade and commerce by disbanding all the Federal bureaucracies.
President Trump does this on Day 1 after sworn into Office, and manages the feathers flying for the next 4 years.