[marktwain]

If you ran a stop sign, and were convicted with a $100 fine, and next week the statute were changed to levy a $200 fine, would you have objection to the state billing you for a extra $100?

In the case of the Lautenberg amendment, a better analogy would be that next week the state changed the law to now saying that you could not own an automobile or vote because of the previous conviction.

And we are to believe that is not punishment, but merely "labeling"?

[William Terrell]

Neither voting or owning an automobile would have been the result of conviction for a statutory offense.

[SampleMan]

False analogies don't help. Here is a good one. You get your twelth DUI. The next year a law is passed that all multiple DUI convicted drivers must have a special plate identifying them as such on their vehicles.

Once again. Their is no protection in the Constitution from having to carry the stigma of your crimes, even after you've been punished.