[879] in Depressing_Thoughts
Re: Guns Freely Available to Criminals
hga@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (hga@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Tue Oct 3 19:19:58 1989
I'm rather sure you were wrong; I follow this are very closely, and
remember the news item quite well. I was somewhat angry and depressed
(this is Depressing_Thoughts, after all) that you apparently have some
policy prescriptions that simply won't work since they a based on
false premises, and that they trash the Bill of Rights and liberty to
boot. Perhaps I'm reading too much into what you're saying, but I
don't think so. It's disheartening to watch this country slowly (and
sometimes not so slowly!) abandon it's precious and unique freedom in
an illusory search for a little more security. The long term worse
case is no less than genocide; already there are serious proposals to
fight the drug war by suspending habeus (sp?) corpus and throwing
"drug dealers and users" into concentration camps. I will hopefully
soon post some items to Scary_Thoughts that will hopefully give more
than a few of you second thoughts about outlawing private ownership of
guns in this country.
I have examined the whole crime mess, and what seems to be the cause
of our current mess is a failure of our criminal "justice" system:
first of all the "reforms" of the early '60s that attempted to reform
vicious scum rather than keeping it out of circulation, and second, in
this decade, a really substantial drop in the time convicted criminals
spend in prison, due to politicians deciding they had better ways to
buy votes than by building more prison space.
I think you ought to be a little more careful with your facts when
discussing such an important (life or death!) issue. To follow my own
advice, I just found my clipping of the AP item reporting the ruling.
It was by Justice Stephen L. Perkins of the Superior Court. The individual
charged had been earlier convicted under the state's habitual offender
law for operating a motor vehicle after his drivers license had been
revolked. He has been charged with criminal threatening with a weapon,
which Perkins refused to dismiss, and illegal possession, based on the
driving conviction. Perkins said that "there is simply no rational
connection" between the individual's previous conviction and his
ownership of a firearm. The article goes on to say that "Perkin's
decision left intact that portion of state law covering criminals
convicted of crimes involving guns or other dangerous weapons."
Hmmm, a close reading of the article indicates that violence not
involving dangerous weapons might be covered by the ruling, although
I believe fists, etc. have upon occasion been defined as dangerous
weapons. Of course, this is all rather silly, since the tradition
going back at least to English common law is that convicted criminals
loose some of their rights. After all, how else could we imprison
them? The judge may indeed be trying to zap the amendment by adopting
a silly reading of it, but the actual effect it will have on crime
will be minimal, perhaps nonexistant.
