Gun Control Part 1: Criminal Justice Reform
For years I’ve struggled to understand the logic of the gun control movement. Gun control laws only target law-abiding citizens of this country, not the actual criminals, thugs and terrorists who are committing the crimes and atrocities. Each new so-called “public safety” law only makes the public weaker and more vulnerable to the very thing the gun control zealots claim they are trying to protect us from. Sadly, it was the words of a psychopath that finally explained the sick logic behind it.
In order for gun control to work, and by work I mean accepted by the population, a number of social conditions have to be in place. One of the key ones is criminal justice reform. Wikipedia has a great explanation:
“Criminal justice reform in the United States is aimed at fixing perceived errors in the criminal justice system. Goals of organizations spearheading the movement for criminal justice reform include decreasing the United States’ prison population, reducing prison sentences that are perceived to be too harsh and long, altering drug sentencing policy, policing reform, reducing overcriminalization, and juvenile justice reform. “
Those who push criminal justice reform believe, for any number of reasons, that our criminal justice system is simply too severe. They believe there are too many people incarcerated for far too long. Of course, there is rarely a debate about whether or not those who were convicted of these crimes are guilty or not, only that the system has been unfair to them.
Let’s keep in mind that criminals — the people who break the law — don’t do so by accident. They make a conscious decision to steal someone else’s property, to break into cars, homes and businesses, to rob, rape or murder their victims. It is a choice to break the law at someone else’s expense.
Prison overcrowding is often the unspoken reason for criminal justice reform as it has been in California. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2011 stated that California must reduce its prison population by 30,000 in two years. As a result, so-called humanitarian reform laws were put into place to keep those convicted of crimes out of prisons and grant early release to those already in custody. But those reforms can only go so far, so it was necessary to make criminal actions less illegal with far fewer penalties, or make the actions not illegal at all.
California’s disastrous Prop 47 & 57 are all about reducing the consequences of crime and letting so-called “non-violent” felons out of jail sooner. Of course, the details are a bitch. Property and other crime in the state rose dramatically as there are very few disincentives to committing the crimes. And that list of non-violent felons includes assault with a deadly weapon on a peace officer; battery with serious bodily injury; solicitation to commit murder and rape/sodomy/oral copulation of an unconscious person or by use of a date rape drug. For those of you who like to check the facts and figures, I wish you good luck. By reclassifying crimes and non-crimes, it’s like comparing Apples and Oracles. The official narrative is crime is down, yet everything around us says the opposite.
Even that isn’t enough. Some states have restricted bail to only the most serious cases and California has eliminated it all together as of October 2019. It is supposed to eliminate bias in the pre-trial release system. In most cases, those arrested must be released within 12 hours. Since local boards would determine the standards to be used and judges would have discretion on more serious offenses, bias will still remain and there will be little incentive for anyone to show up in court to face justice.
But there’s more. Some of the more activist district attorneys in the country are now flat out declining to prosecute lower level offenses such as trespassing, shoplifting, larceny, disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, receiving stolen property, breaking and entering (where it is into a vacant property or where it is for the purpose of sleeping or seeking refuge from the cold and there is no actual damage to property), wanton or malicious destruction of property, drug possession, drug possession with intent to distribute and resisting arrest.
Not to be left out, California’s new governor just closed death row in the state and put all executions on indefinite hold. Even though the citizens of the State of California have spoken out in favor of the death penalty through ballot initiatives, the Governor has decided that those convicted of the most horrendous crimes in the state no longer deserve the ultimate punishment.
You don’t have to be a criminologist to understand the implications of all this. With very little to zero disincentive to committing crimes, criminals will continue to commit them at an increased rate. In an environment that is permissive of lower level crime, more aggressive and violent crimes follow. And what are the police to do? Will they waste their time taking someone into custody and do all the paperwork only to have the case dropped before it ever gets into court? Of course not. Other than the colossal waste of time, it opens departments and officers up to be held liable for arrests they know will never be prosecuted.
The result is a revolving door criminal justice system where even if someone is arrested for something that is still considered a crime, the chances of there being any real punishment is practically non-existent. With more criminals being let out of prison and fewer ever facing any consequences for their actions, all forms of crime and violence will continue to escalate. The criminal no longer fears the police or the courts; only their intended victim stands in their way.
One last thought… With all the so-called “criminal justice reform” going on, have you seen any of these politicians and social justice activists say a single word about reducing or preventing crime? How about making you and your family safer in your home or on the streets?
Gun Control Part 2 — The Words Of A Psychopath is next week.
Bob
#oddstuffing, #Constitution, #BillOfRights, #SecondAmendment, #GunControlFails, #CaliforniaGunControlSchemes, #CrimeAndPunishment, #SwiftSevereCertian, #SoftOnCrime, #SoftOnCriminals, #CriminalJusticeReformFails, #mewe, #medium, #oddstuffing.com
