Why should convicted felons be punished if they have a gun?

If a past convicted felon is caught with a gun, why should they be punished?
Can someone explain that to me?

 

They have proved by past behaviours not to be worthy of trust with firearms.
Recidivism proves this true.
Felons rarely reform and go straight.
Expungement exists as an opportunity for those rare Felons that do reform.

 

Have they? That's not the case with all crimes that are classified as felonies now.

So? How is punishing them if they're caught with a firearm going to help?

I can understand the argument for making it illegal for other people to sell to them. But when you're talking about punishing them for having it, that's something else entirely.

Yeah, and what if we required a permit for all people to own firearms?
A permit that could be denied, potentially for subjective reasons.

Do you think automatically taking away rights based on something else is okay as long as there's a potential recourse for remediation that exists?

To me, that sounds sort of like automatically sentencing someone to 20 years for a crime and saying it doesn't matter because they could always have the opportunity to try to appeal that. There's something wrong if they got sentenced to 20 years in the first place, if that wasn't appropriate.
Maybe this is a bad analogy here.


Some crimes I could understand. But automatically taking away rights for the rest of people's lives for violating any of a broad long list of laws, there's something wrong with that.

The most egregious one is the "domestic violence" charge, which in many cases isn't even a felony. This could involve something simple as a man pushing a woman back after she got in his face screaming during a heated argument. A little bit of exaggeration and selective story telling from the angry woman—a woman who would, in that frame of mind, do anything to get the man out of the house—and the man could find himself arrested and charged. Forced by the "justice" system to make decisions between his short-term freedom and his long-term rights.

 

After all those questions is a simple answer,
Felons have proven themselves in most cases, a noted exception being those convicted of one crime, most Felons have long criminal histories beginning in early childhood, by the time they reach adulthood, they are oftentimes already prohibited from owning firearms.

The rate of Recidivism is ample evidence that Felons are not to be trusted in Society.

 

The problem is the definition of Felon has been changed from what it used to be. It has been greatly expanded.

If by "felon" we were only talking about robbers, rapists, murderers, etc. I wouldn't be debating this with you.

The statement you made would fall into the category of Equivocation fallacy, making a statement that could potentially be making use of a word in a narrow sense of its meaning, which could make the statement true, while actually using the word to imply its full meaning. Doesn't make it true.

 

The 5th and 14th amendment allows rights to be taken away by due process. Federal law takes away voting and gun rights from convicted felons. IMHO, a felon has shown reckless disregard for the law, and can't be trusted with a gun.

 

If a person unwittingly commits a Felony, and has not what is referred to as
"Mens Rea" the guilty mind, this could esculpate guilt, when in fact, no effort to commit a crime exists, such as an expired license, since there was no intent to commit a crime.

In the case of complicated White collar crimes, fraud etc... Crimes not involving violence, yet felonies, many Domestic violence crimes by definition, in which an action no resulting in injury, is defined as a Felonious act by law.

These definitions exist not by my actions and I merely refer to them.

Hence, they are true based on their legal definition alone independent of what I think, hence no equivocation fallacy exists on my part, as you so generously regaled me.

 

this thread is strange..but I do agree that VAWA has become a club used by angry women and divorce attorneys and it strips many of civil rights by mere accusation

 

And the Thirteenth Amendment still allowed the existence of slavery, so long as it was for punishment for some crime.
Something many people may not be aware of, for many decades after the official abolition of slavery, African Americans were still put back into slavery in large numbers. So-called "chain gangs" were a common site in many parts of the South and the state would often rent the prison labor out to private contractors. They were frequently put into indentured slavery for small crimes that didn't deserve to be punished like that, or in some cases for "crimes" that weren't really crimes. It was all done with "due process" of course, but that didn't make it just and fair. Things such as not being employed and homelessness, or whistling at a passing white lady, were made crimes under the law.

Unless you're very careful with what the law is, due process can still be used to strip essentially innocent people of civil rights.

 

Convicted felons are hardly "essentially innocent people." They have committed major crimes that are punishable by more than one year in prison.

 

Right. And these crimes are done deliberately and intentionally.

Don't want your gun rights taken away? Don't commit crimes.

Actions have consequences.

 

Numerous cases of felonies that didn't require knowing intent on the part of those violating the law.

Just a few examples, there was a case where a Native American chief handed out antique headbands containing eagle feathers so the younger ones in his tribe could dance in a ceremony. There was another case where an old man mail ordered a single orchid plant from Colombia, and the ones who sold him the plant didn't fill out the paperwork properly. The orchid was on a protected species list, though it would have been legal for him to buy it so long as the paperwork had been correctly filled out.

 

Personally I'm of the opinion that firearm rights should not be taken from people who have committed non-violent felonies.

Doesn't really make sense.

Then again Democrats consider slinging heroin a "non-violent" felony.

 

Evidence for the above--say a news article (or legal document) that mentions a conviction for felony charges for that. I was under the understanding that Native Americans were allowed to have eagle feathers for ceremonial reasons.

 

Non-violent felonies can ruin the lives of the victims just like violent felonies.

 

Felons should be able to get back gun rights after 5 years of clean living.

voting rights, immediately

 

Agreed. We should employ them with their guns in classrooms.

 

Because we label folks in this world and that's how it stays.

 

People have done hard time for receiving lobster tails in the mail wrapped in plastic, so no, not all felonies make sense and taking their firearms for it also makes no sense.

 

Okay, how about we change the law then? Rights will only be automatically permanently taken away if the felony severely harmed (or attempted to severely harm) someone else, or if the felony ruined the life of a victim.

 

loss of gun rights for committing non-violent felonies, should be temporary.

 

Interesting you're so keen on taking away gun rights but not voting rights.

How about if we temporarily took away voting rights from felons for the first 3 years after they got out?

 

Nah, no good, look, we have a corporate for profit prison system; it's a growth industry. And the system can legally enslave anyone convicted into corporate convict labor leasing while offloading the costs of housing their slaves onto the public. The industry has the usual think tank cabals cranking out legislation to pass onto their congresspersons and lobbying efforts to secure the industry’s goals politically. It is a for profit industry with stocks traded on Wall Street and a vested interest in increased societal crime, increased societal violence, increased societal poverty and homelessness, increased rates of recidivism and drug addiction.


In a postindustrial society, the power structure can turn $40-50K per year, per hominid. Capitalism in america needs as many people locked up as it can get.

 

They should not have voting rights taken at all, even inside they are subject to policy decisions and should have a voice, unless of course we don't mean any of that "once you've paid your debt to society" bit.