patrick.net

I just love pointing out the hypocrisy on both the left and the right. It's so easy.

Mandatory 10 year sentence for felons with guns. Sure, most of the homies would be in jail, but they wouldn't be shooting up the streets!

Quigley says

Mandatory 10 year sentence for felons with guns. Sure, most of the homies would be in jail, but they wouldn't be shooting up the streets!

I'm all for that. Along with a mandatory 20 year sentence for the last legal gun owner who sold the gun to someone who should not have had it.

bob2356 says

Quigley says

Mandatory 10 year sentence for felons with guns. Sure, most of the homies would be in jail, but they wouldn't be shooting up the streets!

I'm all for that. Along with a mandatory 20 year sentence for the last legal gun owner who sold the gun to someone who should not have had it.

Im guessing this is a minuscule portion of illegal gun possessions. Most illegally possessed guns are stolen or were illegally imported.

True. I know a lot of gun owners, and they occasionally sell their guns. Mostly to other gun owners. I don't know anyone who sells guns to gangsters. Guessing they get guns illegally like they do everything else...

bob2356 says

Along with a mandatory 20 year sentence for the last legal gun owner who sold the gun to someone who should not have had it.

Really? Does that happen often? Got any stats to back it up?

Quigley says

Mandatory 10 year sentence for felons with guns. Sure, most of the homies would be in jail, but they wouldn't be shooting up the streets!

So many Americans think Mass Shooting means "Crazy Person shoots up a Mall"

The vast majority of Mass Shootings is "The Crips din' get no respect from the East Side Raiders. Let's go to the street they live on and do a drive by."

Quigley says

Mandatory 10 year sentence for felons with guns.

The public always believes that long sentences deters crime. It doesn't. It makes the public feel better while actually making the problem worse. You cannot serve two masters. Either you satisfy your cave man need for vengeance or you think rationally and do what actually works. These two goals are mutually exclusive. So let's look at the evidence of what does and does not work.

New York Times: Longer Sentences Do Not Deter Crime

For 20 years, American state and local governments have turned away from rehabilitation programs deemed too ''soft'' on crime, and pursued a strategy of locking up as many criminals as possible in the most secure facilities we could construct.

In New York, and many other states, these ''tough'' policies have produced a combination of large-scale prison overcrowding without meaningful reductions in our crime rate. It is time to admit that the dominant anticrime policies of the 1970's and 1980's have created a fiscal and programmatic time bomb.

After years of increased sentences, and an extraordinary drain on our state's treasury, we need to acknowledge that longer sentences do not deter most crime.

The New York State Assemblyrecently passed legislation establishing two programs - earned eligibility and shock incarceration - which would provide effective punishment, while reducing our prison population and providing opportunities for those offenders who are receptive to changing their ways.

Unfortunately, we continue to encounter resistance to such programs from those who cling to the idea that longer sentences and even more massive expenditures for prison cells are the only sound penal philosophy.

Psychology Today: Why doesn't increasing the severity of punishment lead to less crime?

In recent times, many people, particularly in the United States, have apparently believed that

Punishing criminals deters crimes—in fact, the harsher the punishment, the more it will deter crime.

This widespread belief is reflected in the fact that, until very recently, a ‘get tough’ mentality dominated American political discourse surrounding crime. From the 1970s well into the 21st century, politicians risked little by advocating for longer sentences and harsher penalties. In advocating for harsh punishments, these leaders generally assured the public that tougher sentences meant less crime.

But that turned out not to be the case. Plenty of people went to prison and for longer stretches. And starting in the early 1990’s, crime began a two decade long decline that the public seems by and large not to have noticed. Yet there’s little evidence to suggest that the threat of punishment—even the threat of very harsh punishment, such as the death penalty—is responsible for the drop in crime. A massive 2014 study undertaken by the National Research Council announced that one of its “most important conclusions is that the incremental deterrent effect of increases in lengthy prison sentences is modest at best.” Put in less academic-ese: Threatening people with increasingly harsh punishments doesn’t discourage crime.

Many economists, philosophers, and criminologists have assumed that criminal behavior is self-interested, rational behavior—that in the end, people commit crime because, having weighed the prospect of being caught and punished versus the benefits of committing the crime, they conclude that the likely benefits outweigh the likely costs. Yet this assumption runs headlong into the fact that often enough would-be criminals either lack rational beliefs about their situation or struggle to act on those rational beliefs. Take a simple example: Do you happen to know what the punishment for arson is where you live? I bet you probably don’t. But notice that in order for a person to decide rationally whether to commit arson, she has to know what the punishment would be were she caught and convicted. And even if she does know the punishment (as well as the likelihood of being caught and convicted), a would-be criminal may simply not be thinking rationally at the time the crime is committed. She may be influenced by drugs or alcohol, motivated by rage or a desire for revenge, or suffering from a mental illness that leads her to think she is invincible or has nothing to lose. So even if a person has the beliefs necessary to make a rational decision about committing a crime, she may be unable to access or act upon those beliefs.

We first estimate how likely an outcome is, and then we only bother to consider how costly or beneficial the outcome is if we think the likelihood of the outcome is more than negligible. Put differently, if we judge that some outcome is pretty unlikely—effectively zero, we might say—we ignore how great the costs or benefits are. This has direct application to the decision to engage in crime. Consider the child deciding whether to steal a cookie from the family cookie jar. Doesn’t the child first calculate whether he’ll get caught, and if he sincerely believes it very improbable he will be caught, he then takes the cookie? Notice that this sort of reasoning entails that it doesn’t matter much how good (or bad) the outcome is. Likewise, in committing crimes, individuals probably don’t think too much about how bad it would be to be punished. After all, by committing the crime, they have likely already concluded that they won’t be caught and punished! That makes the severity of the punishment largely irrelevant to deterrence. A person doesn’t worry about how severe a punishment is if she is already convinced it won’t be inflicted on her.

Business Insider: Here's Evidence That Insanely Long Prison Terms Are A Bad Way To Deter Crime

"Evidence is limited on the crime prevention effects of most of the policies that contributed to the post-1973 increase in incarceration rates. Nevertheless, the evidence base demonstrates that lengthy prison sentences are ineffective as a crime control measure," the report noted.

Instead, the report argues that the certainty and imminence of punishment are more likely to deter crime than length. In a Hawaii program, for example, offenders on probation who faced the certain, but brief, punishment of one to two days of confinement for failing drug tests had far fewer positive tests than offenders who didn't face that punishment.

Permanent incarceration for people who are a threat to society is necessary, but it is not a deterrent. What does work for most cases is
1. Increasing the perception that the perpetrator will be caught.
2. Short, certain punishment.
3. Rehabilitation efforts
4. Prevention

In the case of mass shooting, prevention is the most important thing, and Australia proved how to do this: make guns much harder to get and make high powered guns unavailable.

The reason cocaine is illegal is to make it less readily available. Sure, some people will get cocaine even when it's illegal, but if you could buy cocaine at Walmart, a hell of a lot more people would be using it. The same is true for guns.

The reason cocaine is illegal is to make it less readily available. Sure, some people will get cocaine even when it's illegal, but if you could buy cocaine at Walmart, a hell of a lot more people would be using it. The same is true for guns.

—————-

I thought the reason The State made cocaine illegal, was to prop up it’s price.

If you follow the money, criminalizing Drugs makes them much more expensive. I’m not sure I buy the notion that more people would do cocaine if only it was on sale at Walmart. Have you ever done cocaine? It’s not even enjoyable

errc says

I’m not sure I buy the notion that more people would do cocaine if only it was on sale at Walmart.

I said "if" not "only if". The former is obviously true, and the later obviously false.

errc says

Have you ever done cocaine? It’s not even enjoyable

Some follow their hearts, I follow my nose.

Fucking White Male says

bob2356 says

Quigley says

Mandatory 10 year sentence for felons with guns. Sure, most of the homies would be in jail, but they wouldn't be shooting up the streets!

I'm all for that. Along with a mandatory 20 year sentence for the last legal gun owner who sold the gun to someone who should not have had it.

Im guessing this is a minuscule portion of illegal gun possessions. Most illegally possessed guns are stolen or were illegally imported.

You are guessing wrong. Try again. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/guns/procon/guns.html https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150916162916.htm

Somewhere along the line a legal gun owner knowingly (or was wilfully ignorant which is not an excuse) sold a gun to a criminal. Where is the outrage over this? Where is the cry to lock them up? You don't think gun manufacturers aren't fully aware there is a pipeline to criminals? Of course they are.


Remind me again why can't all gun purchases can't be subject to a back round check? If your gun ends up in a crime and you are the last legal owner (unless it is documented as having been stolen) then you should go to jail also. I don't see why any legitimate gun owner would object to this.

me123 says

bob2356 says

Remind me again why can't all gun purchases can't be subject to a back round check? If your gun ends up in a crime and you are the last legal owner (unless it is documented as having been stolen) then you should go to jail also.

and how would that have prevented the last bunch of mass shootings?

Oh, that's right, it wouldn't, as the shooters bought their guns legally with background checks.

Sorry piggy, the subject was where were criminals getting their guns, not mass shooters. Your buddy quigly brought up the subject of felons with guns, not me. Had nothing to do with mass shootings. It's only a false narrative to you because you can't follow along when the adults are using words with multiple syllables. You really should have stuck it out and graduated grade school.

bob2356 says

the subject was where were criminals getting their guns, not mass shooters.

So mass shooters aren't criminals? Wow, I learn something new here everyday.

Did Trump pass that new law, I must have missed it?

This is in response to Dan’s unnecessarily long and not on point turd of a posting a few posts back. I am not quoting so that I can save everyone on Pat.net a headache.

Increased prison sentences are absolutely effective against felons possessing guns illegally.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Exile

Yep, 9 out of every 10 days Jamal and Tyrone gun down Tyrell and a couple of bystanders in da hood, Yo. Doesn't make the news outside Detroit, Buffalo, or Baltimore.

But once in a while a White Cop shoots a Black Fugitive with an extensive criminal record and the Grevience Industry goes into maximum overdrive.