I'm f'ing outraged!!!!!

[ahartman]

There are basically two schools of thought on prison. It's either for punishment or rehabilitation.

I belive there is room for both. Felonies should be treated with punishment (ranging from long-term incarceration to death). Misdemeanors go to rehab.

I think the biggest problem with capital punishment is that it isn't used enough to be a deterrent. No one is scared of the death penalty because it takes dozens of years of appeals and rarely is used anyway.

Do I think we should have public executions, probably not (I'm pretty on the fence here...) but I do think we should use it more often.

As for guns, I don't have a problem with people owning guns. I DO have a problem with people owning assault rifles and such.

The only thing that scares me more than Gurm's Texas population carrying guns all the time is the wackos who built the bunkers for Y2k in Michigan & Montana. The way people have misused the 2nd Amendment makes me sick.

I wish there was a way to FORCE people to have common sense.

Andy

[Jorden]

I think Patrick's got his movies mixed up. He might've meant Running Man, the only movie I can clue into what Dimi said before about the Arena.

Btw, Vlip: Isn't it that about every Swiss has an Assault Rifle in his house, because you don't have a (real) army?

Jord.
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T minus 12 days

[Compton]

Well what I sort of meant is fear works wonders for prevention. No one is gonna rob a store if every customer is strapped. Remember Vincent and Jules? I bet the fools who tried that certainly won't do it again. But on the other hand I guess Jules did give them the money... And no I don't think a gun will make me safe, but it will level the playing field.

[Jake]

When interviewed elephants stated that their two greatest fears were:
1) Getting caught in an elevator.
2) Confronting a mouse.

Joel, please post your source of reference...
Undocumented statements like that just makes me wanna puke!

All I can say about capital punishment is that I don't support it. Why? Well, a few years ago when I studied at a Danish University, I lived at a special boarding house, which was actually an institution for convicted criminals, who had served most or all of their sentence. In order to give them a chance in life, when they left whatever correctional facility they had been serving their time at, they could apply for a room there. There was all kinds of offenders living there. From murderers to petty thieves.

Also, I was possible for a non-criminal like myself to apply for a room there. About 25% of the residents did not have a criminal background. In order to be accepted you had to pass several critical and personal interviews with the staff and residents.

The idea was that in stead of just letting the convicts out into the streets, where most of them would return to their "former habitat" of crime, they would be placed in an enviroment where they could interact with "normal" people who could stimulate them by example to rebuild a normal life for themselves, get an education or a real job.

Fact: 90% of the residents who vent through this fase of rehab, have not committed crimes again! A lot of them has completed an education at an institue of higher learing like the University. A fella that came to be my friend there completed a 5 year education with honors to become a phd. in Portugese.

This experince changed my view of offenders for good. What purpose except satisfaction of the need for revenge would it have served to perform capital punishment on some of the worst offenders, who had allready spendt a major part of their life in prison?

And another thing I came to realise was that if I had been brought up the way some of these people had and seen the things they had, I suppose I would have eligable to commit some of the same crimes.

The "Each person, nomatter their background decides their own fate in life" parole is a load of BS!

Regards,

Jake

[Ghydda]

A lot of sence have been posted in this tread as well as nonsence. There is no 100% ideal way to get around the problems of our world. Every solution had advantages and disadvantages. And depending on who you are and the society you live in, some seem like a good idea and others does not.

The only thing we can do is try. Try to make it a better place putting our offspring into. There will always be casualties and injusties. This we cannot eradicate (sp?).

We can only try out different approches and use the results to come up with something new, hoping it will be more effective over the previous attempts.

I'm afriad I sounds like a conflikt avoiding politician, but I belive this is all we can do about things, until sociaty radically changes into something from say Star Trek (where you don't have fenomenons(sp?) called wealth, material status, unemployment (a perfect society from a humanoid point of view)).

Ghydda - also very upset with resent events in Denmark (which used to be spared for crimes of this sort)...

[Paddy]

yeh, i was talking about the Running man.
(if it matters anymore)
-good film though!

[Ghydda]

A Classic!

[Chris B]

Indeed it is.... and it´s violence you can relate to

[Paddy]

I love the one liners!
And who could forget the chainsaw scene!

[Joel]

To all you bleeding heart liberals who feel that these murders/rapist/child molesters deserve a second chance to a normal life, even though they have deperived their victims of a normal life, I have one request from y'all. Please start a registry indicating that you will be willing to take these murders/rapist/child molesters into your homes with your family and loved ones so that they can have this second chance. Personally I don't want them anywhere near my family, loved ones, or anybody I care about.

To me based on what they have done they should be treated no differently than we would treat a dog that attacks a child. We give it no trial, no second chance, and we immediately put it to sleep without any appeals. And most of the time it is acting out of instinct or it was raised to be a mean dog. When will you bleeding-hearts get it through your heads that these murders/rapist/child molesters are nothing but animals and therefore should be treated as such. In other words an 'Eye for an Eye'.

Joel

[Jorden]

Joel

[CHHAS]

Joel:

I can certainly see your point, and while I wouldn't describe myself as a 'bleeding hearted liberal' (nor would anybody who knows me), I disagree with you.
Not totally, in many cases the offenders should be 'put to sleep' as you say.

I just think it's extremely sad, that society has come to the level, where this is considered the only viable solution to a growing problem.

The danger in this approach is that it generates intolerance, of course we shouldn't tolerate rapists/murderers ect., but it can so easily grow way beyond that.
What's next ? People with multiple sentences for violence, hey they will probably kill somebody at some point of time, why wait until it happens ? Drunk drivers, they could have killed somebody ?

I just don't think that's the answer.

The real problem is not these people (or animals if you prefer), but the society which creates them.

We can kill as many of them as we wish, but unless we find out why people become that way, and how to stop it from happening, it's not going to help.

Sure, a death sentence is one hell of a deterrent, but do you really think you can scare people into behaving ? And what would society be like, if everybody goes around being scared about breaking the law ?

Crime is society's problem, and unless we find a good way to deal with it, this world is going to continue it's way down the drain.

[HollyBerri]

Jake, that is a lovely story. Says wonderful things about the human spirit... and I know that people can make mistakes, regret them and learn better ways.

However... given that society is ill in a fundamental way that we produce such monsters, even temporarily, I am not myself too happy with the idea of taking such change as the default option... for people so misguided and ill-trained to be changed effectively, it takes a level of health and sanity that we as a group have shown little evidence of.

I don't want to spend my taxes, or my peace of mind and safety in the hope that future crime will be prevented, maybe, by some kind of mystical osmosis, which seems to be how it's done now, but for small groups like the ones who ran that halfway house.

Those who are capable of evolution and growth will find a way to do so. Those who are not capable, we are better off without, if you'll excuse my harshness.

It is true that it's wrong to make the criminals pay as if they are the only ones at fault; they are only symptoms of a much more serious problem, just as you might remove a mole grown wrong yet still have cancer throughout your body.

That doesn't mean leave the mole there, though.

And decisively eliminating criminals from our midst does have it's problems of psychic distress and disturbance in the herd/group, but it has 2 very important benefits:[list=1][*] the criminals are gone. Whatever our regrets at the loss of their potential future contribution (if you want to bet on them making one at some point), they are rendered completely incapable of committing further similar or worse crimes, or of inducing others to do so (how many fans does Charles Manson have writing to him daily?)[*] Our psychic distress as a society becomes a different distress. We have lived with the distress of our "liberal" mindset for many years. We have suffered the distress of working at jobs in order to pay taxes maintain prisons and prisoners who have hurt us, our friends, and families. We have struggled to reconcile in our minds the concept that "everyone is human and should be treated humanely" with the knowledge that this protects people who have done monstrous things. We have sweated to find ways to allow people that we really fear back into normal society, knowing that we must stop fearing them if they are to ever be whole, but unable to justify the possible costs of a mistake.

If we were lab rats, the experimenters would have changed the conditions of the experiment long ago.[/list=a]

I said before, and I'll say again: I know the potentials for horrors the likes of which we've never seen, as society adjusts to becoming cold-blooded killers.

But we have got to try something different from what we are doing now!!! It may not work, or it may work worse... but we might all be so horrified that we'll have a breakthrough, as well.

Almost anything is better than living in this hideous fear of secret, silent madness.

At least fascists wear uniforms.

-----------------------------
Holly

[Joel]

Of course as usual someone is going to take what I said to the exterme. I definitely don't advocate the death penalty for petty thief or someone breaking the speed limit. What I am talking about are the cold-blooded murders, the sadistic rapists, and the sick perverted child molesters. And above all else we need to stop allowing them to blame someone or something else for their actions. They know that what they were doing was wrong but they chose to do it anyway and as such should pay the consequences for those actions. One of the problems I see in soceity today is lack of personal responsibility. It's always someone else's fault. To me that is bullshit.

Joel

[Gurm]

Hear, hear Joel!

At least we can put aside our petty VIA differences and agree on this.

Holly made some good points too.

Let's face it folks - all of y'all who don't like the death penalty are bleeding heart liberals of the highest order.

Yeah, it's POSSIBLE that we put to death an innocent man. POSSIBLE. It's also possible that your car will explode when you start it in the morning. It's possible that the plane you board to take you to see your loved ones will crash.

You accept these statistical risks because of two things:

1. These things make your life better.
2. You have done your best (or paid someone else to do their best) to make sure that you beat the odds. You get your auto maintenance. You pay WAY too much for a ticket so the airlines can pay their mechanics to check the plane before each flight.

So where am I going with this? We MUST ACCEPT the statistical risk that we might make an error and kill an innocent man. Yup, that's right. It's gonna happen. One in every hundred, or thousand, or million.

I can live with that.

I can live with one innocent dead, if it means that we've removed 999 rapists, murderers, or drug dealers from our streets FOREVER.

The question is... can YOU?

If you answer no, let me pose you a question. Let's say, hypothetically, that YOUR daughter, mother, wife (for the men) or husband, son, father (for the ladies) was murdered, in cold blood, and you witnessed it. You knew who did it, and that person felt NO REMORSE.

Now let's say the law wasn't EVER going to do anything about it.

How far would YOU go to take the ****er down for good? I know the answer in my mind, and it involves a glock and several bullets. And if some "innocent" got in my way... well, too bad. Come to think of it, in addition to the Glock, I might need a baseball bat and something REALLY SHARP.

Now, I understand that there are a few people who are SO DEVOTED to their liberal morals that they just can't stand the idea of the death penalty. Fine. Voice your opinion, and then step aside... because the MAJORITY of people in the country want it, and - funny this - that's what a democracy is. Majority rule.

I'm sorry if I'm ranting. I'll probably read this in the morning and go "good lord, what the F*** was that?", but tonight it's late and I'm pissed off 'cuz I just read about some twisted **** who kidnapped girls and chained them up and tortured them sexually for days on end before drugging them up and dumping them in a ditch - still alive.

And I'm tempted to go hunt HIM down, except I'm fairly sure he's being extradited to a state where they'll fry his sorry ass, so my sense of rightness MIGHT be fulfilled.

- Gurm



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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.