Posted on 08/08/2008 6:01:54 AM PDT by marktwain
SSS
Unless the law has been recently changed, anyone with a felony conviction on his record is barred by federal law from possessing any firearm unless his full civil rights have been restored by a state judge or governor. If charged and convicted the homeowner will receive a mandatory 10 year sentence with no possibility of parole in what is euphemistically called a federal correction facility, aka a federal pen.
A long time ago, that was the advice given and today it’s wrong. Today, a person defending his or someone else’s life shoots only to stop the threat. Nothing beyond that.
Thus one generations mercy is changed into another's injustice. In the bad old days, felonies meant death, mutilation, or banishment. In mercy it was decided that one could serve some time in jail and lose some rights. Now that is thought of as too harsh.
Mind you, I am coming to agree that the war on drugs is creating more problems than it seems to be solving. There's some question about the fairness of some drug felony laws. But the notion that in felonies generally more is at stake than time in jail is not a priori a bad one.
The problem is that all crimes seem to be felonies except for government people. Lying to a police officer or Judge can be a felony, but it is perfectly legal for them to lie to you. If you try to bribe a witness it is a felony, but it is standard operating procedure for prosecutors. If you take a bribe it is a felony, but if your Congress Critter takes a bribe it is a campaign contribution. If you take someone against their will it is kidnapping, but when was the last time you ever saw a police officer arrested for kidnapping (when they put the wrong person in custody)?
Sentencing is a joke too. I can't prove it, but I would bet a lot, that how much money you have to spend on lawyers is a pretty good inverse indicator of how much time you will be spending in prison.
Who can argue with this?
The system is broken. Lawyers did a lot of the damage, but the REAL damage, IMHO, was a line of thought that minimized responsibility and maximized the diversion of public funds from the real duties of government to the subsidizing of indolence, drug abuse, and bastardy.
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