DescentBB

31 people shot citywide in 48 hours

Calling the chilling violence "just unconscionable," Mayor Bloomberg demanded that the feds step up their efforts to get illegal weapons off the streets.
"We just cannot continue to have these guns in the hands of kids who don't understand the value of human life," he said.


.......

Police said they were searching for 17-year-old Oneil DaSilva, of Mount Vernon, in connection with the shooting. His rap sheet includes nine arrests for attempted murder, third-degree assault and burglary.

Someone with a camera and a microphone should be asking the brilliant mayor a couple questions like:

Why does your city have such a high percentage of "kids who don't understand the value of human life"

What will stop these people from picking up machetes and baseball bats if the Feds manage to make guns go away?

Shouldn't you ask the Feds to remove all sharp objects and blunt instruments from the country as well?

And...

Why won't his law enforcement and judicial branch take thugs with a 'rap sheet that includes nine arrests for attempted murder, third-degree assault and burglary' off the fricken street the way he wants the Fed to clean up the guns from his streets?

Will Robinson wrote:Why won't his law enforcement and judicial branch take thugs with a 'rap sheet that includes nine arrests for attempted murder, third-degree assault and burglary' off the friken street the way he wants the Fed to clean up the guns from his streets...guns which ARE ALREADY ILLEGAL in his city!!

THAT is the question. why is this a Federal Problem and not an NYC or NY problem. it seems to me that if the guy has a sheet that long that maybe he should still be in jail. But I guess keeping bad people from doing bad things by keeping them in Jail, is cruel and unusual punishment

There is no room in prison, because it’s full of people who smoke joints.

flips earlier post (viewtopic.php?f=4&t=18670) shows exactly why the feds shouldn't be involved. Once the feds do get involved then it will be nation wide laws that in the end will not stop the crime Doomburg complains about. Like a good little liberal that he is, Doomburg wants to blame everyone else but himself and wants someone else to fix the problem. Like Will said, cure the root problem first.

it is a fair question to ask why we should expect prosecution and punishment of gun sales crimes when we cannot, apparently, do much to deal with 9 time offenders.
The problem with violent crime isn't guns, it is a society that breeds violence, fear and hate. Like most of our national woes(the economy jumps to mind), the problem lies with all of us, rather than what government can or cannot do.

Spidey wrote:There is no room in prison, because it’s full of people who smoke joints.

But Spidey, drugs are responsible for this violence. Drugs and video games.

Stop treating drug users like criminals.
Stop expecting government to produce like it is Nanny McPhee
Stop treating criminals like they are an otherwise innocent side effect of someone else's accumulation of wealth or good fortune.
Stop discouraging those who want to advance morality by way of peer pressure.
That was a major failure of our culture to take the lazy way out and simply denigrate anyone who wanted to uphold morality as foundation for us to erect our society. It was a bad reaction to the 'moral majority' phenomena. We should have engaged the general concept for all it is worth and steered a secular course toward the common good that lies within instead of going off like a bunch of Bill Mahers and declaring all of it as Christian in-your-face-judgementalism.

Pot doesn’t create violence, governments create drug wars, drug wars create violence.

Will Robinson wrote:Stop treating drug users like criminals.
Stop expecting government to produce like it is Nanny McPhee
Stop treating criminals like they are an otherwise innocent side effect of someone else's accumulation of wealth or good fortune.
Stop discouraging those who want to advance morality by way of peer pressure.
That was a major failure of our culture to take the lazy way out and simply denigrate anyone who wanted to uphold morality as foundation for us to erect our society. It was a bad reaction to the 'moral majority' phenomena. We should have engaged the general concept for all it is worth and steered a secular course toward the common good that lies within instead of going off like a bunch of Bill Mahers and declaring all of it as Christian in-your-face-judgementalism.

wow, there's a rant! An interesting rant, though........

Spidey wrote:Pot doesn’t create violence, governments create drug wars, drug wars create violence.

By all measurements the Govt. "War on Drugs" is a failure

But guys, if we let drug users see the light of day, fire and brimstone will come down from the skies! Rivers and seas will boil! There will be forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes... the dead shall rise from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together...

Mass hysteria!

Will Robinson wrote:Stop treating drug users like criminals.

You need to quantify that statement Will. If you lived here in Portland, you probably wouldn't say that. The Crack and Meth problem here is HUGE. and Heroine is making a strong comeback. What are you going to do with those folks? What about the manufacturers, the folks who steal to support their habit? And when you are dealing with meth or crank addicts, they will do just about anything to get their fix. Honestly, we should have learned something from the late 60's and 70's.

So in short, that was a bit too broad.

And no Woody, I don't think the war on drugs is a failure. It's not the kinda war we've come to know and love thanks to Hollywood. There's no armistice, no treaties, no end. It's an on going thing. And no, it's not 100% effective. When you have people sowing drugs under their skin to deliver it?? yeah.. good luck with that. It's an on going effort. Just like keeping illegal aliens from crossing the boarder. Unless you go in and glass over the source of the problem, it will always be there. And even then with drugs, you deal with it from the inside.

I think The Rule of Law is the problem. Instead of a judge being able to use his own discretion and listen to his heart on a matter (the very definition of being a judge), they are bound to make decisions based on a blanket law with blanket penalties that does nothing to take into account the actual circumstances of the crime, nor the nature of the individual involved.

“Honestly, we should have learned something from the late 60's and 70's.”


We should have learned something from prohibition as well….

The burden of proof is on those who favor the drug war to demonstrate its efficacy. Are there any fewer heroin and meth users as a result of the drug war, or are the people abusing heroin and meth the same people who would abuse them anyways?

The costs of the drug war are obvious--it's financially expensive to maintain the war. It's created cartels who will murder, rape, and kidnap to sell their product. It's filled our prisons with a new criminal class who have no hope of rehabilitation.

Legalize harmless drugs like marijuana and sell them in liquor stores to people of appropriate age. Then treat real drug addiction like the problem that it is--not a criminal one but a medical one. Even providing a heroin addict free heroin for the rest of his life is orders of magnitude cheaper than throwing him in prison over and over again, eliminates the cartels and crimes related to obtaining the drug, and then he can flip burgers instead of making license plates. "You can beat drug addiction, but you can't beat a drug conviction."

Duper wrote:

Will Robinson wrote:Stop treating drug users like criminals.

You need to quantify that statement Will. If you lived here in Portland, you probably wouldn't say that. The Crack and Meth problem here is HUGE. and Heroine is making a strong comeback. What are you going to do with those folks? What about the manufacturers, the folks who steal to support their habit? And when you are dealing with meth or crank addicts, they will do just about anything to get their fix. Honestly, we should have learned something from the late 60's and 70's.

So in short, that was a bit too broad. ...

I draw a distinction between the consumption of drugs and any crime committed either under the influence or done to fund the drug habit. One is a criminal act already covered by laws...driving while intoxicated...theft...murder..etc. the other would simply be a bad health choice with no harm done to others or others property.

I'd put junkies in jail for their crimes and have the judicial system be able to mandate treatment for them if it was reasonable to assume their drug use/addiction was a driving force behind any criminal activity. If someone could manage to get high as a kite everyday and never cause harm to another then he would be left alone by the law.

The money we would save in court costs and prison space alone would offset the funds needed to treat them and the legal system/police enforcement manpower could be better focused on dealing with the criminal elements.

I'd make laws against selling drugs to minors EXTREMELY SEVERE. Laws dealing with consumption of illegal substances would be limited to enforcing treatment/counseling.
I think those changes would be a net positive for all of us.

I think a big distinction should made between those who smoke weed (aptly named so), and users of other drugs. I think users of marijuana should be put in a class of their own as the "drug" doesn't fit well with any of the others. I also don't think any marijuana offense (consumption,possession,purchase) should be severely punished unless we are talking under 15 here and even then I think a healthy fine and a few hundred hours of your life forfeited for community service would be sufficient for most. As far as any of the narcotics or psychedelics are concerned, the complete control over that should be given over to the medical community with government oversight. There may be some good there but I have yet to see it any actual user I've known. Though they serve as a good warning . Honestly, IMHO, I don't think any non-violent crime, or crime that doesn't directly threaten the life of another should be a jailable offense, mostly ANYONE will respond to the right kind of encouragement.

It would be interesting to classify drugs by how they affect the non-user that exists around the user. For instance:

Alcohol: possibly lead to the death and/or injury of third parties by the user's driving of a vehicle

Smoking: may cause cancer or other illnesses including asthma in third parties

'Weed': may cause cancer (not quite studied for this effect, but very similar chemicals are produced in burning) or other illnesses including asthma in third parties

Meth: possibly lead to the death and/or injury of third parties by the user's driving of a vehicle

etc.

Yeah I'm totally against anyone driving impaired but that is a separate crime. I won't even drive after smoking one joint, not because I even feel impaired, but because I refuse to allow any law enforcement officer's discretion to determine my intoxication level. As far as the smoke goes, I know there are other ways but I've always enjoyed sparking up one, but I have no problems with setting aside areas for smoking and the rest being of limits. It's the smoker that is introducing that substance into their immediate surroundings.

I think that existing alcohol and smoking laws are good precedent for how we should treat marijuana. Many (most?) states already have laws prohibiting where you can smoke cigarettes. (In New Mexico, you can't even smoke inside bars.) Moreover, all states have laws limiting where you can drink alcohol and be publicly drunk, and all states prohibit driving drunk.

I think you should read some of those smoking laws before you push them,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sm ... ted_States

Duper wrote:
And no Woody, I don't think the war on drugs is a failure. It's not the kinda war we've come to know and love thanks to Hollywood. There's no armistice, no treaties, no end. It's an on going thing. And no, it's not 100% effective. When you have people sowing drugs under their skin to deliver it?? yeah.. good luck with that. It's an on going effort. Just like keeping illegal aliens from crossing the boarder. Unless you go in and glass over the source of the problem, it will always be there. And even then with drugs, you deal with it from the inside.

When you have the govt. selling firearms to druglords who then shoot and kill your agents with them all in the name of "War on Drugs" the program is a failure and needs to be scrapped with the people in charge fired.