Criminologist debates a criminal

Gary Kleck,a criminologist from Florida State University, and Paul Helmke, the former president and CEO of the Brady Center/Brady debate the claim:

While laws that prohibit gun ownership would reduce crimes perpetrated by criminals, that benefit would be more than offset by the foregone opportunities for defensive gun use by victims of crime.

It was an Oxford-style debate in which the audience votes on the resolution at the beginning and end of the event, and the side that gains the most ground is victorious. Kleck, arguing the affirmative, prevailed by convincing about six percent of audience members to change their minds.

Therefore, what we have here is a criminologist debating a criminal. And, as is usually the case in a fair intellectual fight, the truth wins.

I would like to suggest a series of debates with a similar theme leading up to a debate about the criminal penalties those who infringe, or advocate for the infringing of, the right to keep and bear arms. Something like:

Since the infringing upon the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms by numerous government officials has resulted in reduced ability to defend against violent predators, including the government itself, and this resulted in countless unnecessary deaths, rapes, injuries, and property loss, is the death penalty sufficient? Should the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment be lifted?

I am inclined to hold that the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment should remain in place. But I’m willing to listen if someone wishes to convince me otherwise.

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9 thoughts on “Criminologist debates a criminal

  1. Punishment for violation of any right, and especially those enumerated should be of the highest level of ‘punitive & exemplary’. Not just to punish the guilty but to provide that example for any other Crap-For-Brains Totalitarian Wanna-be tin horn who might consider similar in the future.

    Therefore punishment should be cruel and unusual so as to mark the offense as so far ‘beyond the pale’ that any amount of leniency would be counterproductive and because a perpetrator should not be considered a mere common criminal.

    The process should be elaborate, intricate and most of all public. It shouldn’t be something quick or painless but need not be overly gory like drawing and quartering.
    I tend to prefer the idea that the punishment should fit the crime.
    So, for infringing the 2nd amendment, one should more formally emulate what Elena and Nicolae Ceaușescu got i.e., each person facing a multiple man firing squad, using AR-15s with ‘bump stocks’ loaded with 30 round magazines. Scrape the remains into a bag and incinerate them, later flushing the ashes down an anonymous toilet.

    Further any children “even to the tenth generation” should be unable to hold any journalistic, religious, elective, civil service, law enforcement or other ‘position of trust’ except for perhaps the military, if we re-institute the idea of ‘suicide assault troops’.

    • Your ideas are quite unusual. If you truly believe what you are proposing – multigenerational punitive action on decendants who have not received due process; torture and then desacration of remains as punishment – I would not vote for you to represent me in any capacity. I would probably he obligated to take up arms against anyone attempting to enact your above proposals.

      • On the other hand, there is noting worse in the world than a person who seeks a position in government, knowing precisely all the grave implications, accepting that office, swearing an Oath to uphold, defend and protect the constitution of the a United States, and then setting out immediately to violate that position of trust by undermining that constitution.

        It’s like someone seeking employment as a nanny specifically for the purpose of abusing children, except that in the case of the public official the crime is done on a wholesale level, to affect millions of people.

        If you don’t want the most severe of punishments, it’s easy; don’t commit the most severe of crimes! It is 100%, TOTALLY avoidable simply by NOT being a lying, cheating, back-stabbing, anti-American, shit-eating, anti-rights, anti-human, Progressive Marxist, power-mad, presumptuous, Fascist, supremely arrogant, evil motherfucker working for your own glory or the glory of evil itself.

        Actually you can still be all of those horrible things and still avoid the punishment simply by keeping that shit out and far away from government or away from having any effect on society or anyone at all. Just keep the hate and the evil to yourself, be the sole individual suffering from your hate, and no one will be forced to kill you.

        So in fact it is simplicity itself avoid the punishment. One must push and push, and strive and strive, and be very VERY focused and determined against basic human rights, to get to the point where the crimes become sufficient for that punishment.

        So yes, I’m for the most severe of possible consequences, because the alternative, as history shows with perfect clarity, is hundreds of millions of innocent lives lost and uncountable loss of property, wealth and well-being.

        This is serious shit, and if one isn’t serious about it, or if one has that urge to interfere with the exercise of enumerated rights, with the possible sentencing to a horrible death, one can, with perfect ease, think about the consequences. Then, without the slightest effort, without lifting a finger, one may stay out of other people’s business, slink away into the woodwork of society where he belongs, and thus avoid any and all legal trouble.

        The authoritarians worldwide and throughout history have been enthusiastic torturers and brilliant inventors of new ways to kill people in the most painful, horrible ways. Surely it wouldn’t be unfair for them to die similarly when they’ve had all the forewarning possible, when they’ve worked hard to achieve office, taken an Oath to behave themselves, and when they’ve nonetheless played with the very lives of hundreds of millions of people as though those lives were their personal property to toy with anyway they like, for their own personal aggrandizement.

        No; there’s nothing worse on Earth than someone (and they’re always in groups) behaving like that and getting away with it. The worst serial killers are not even remotely close, and if you can’t do the time then don’t do the crime.

        NO ONE stumbles into criminal behavior on this level unawares! Unlike most other criminal behaviors, there can be no excuse whatsoever for attacking God-given rights on the wholesale level from some position of authority. You have to VIOLATE YOUR OWN OATH for shit’s sake! You have to REALLY, REALLY, WANT IT!

        And since they always work in groups, it is the anti-rights, anti-constitution, anti-American, authoritarian groups, in addition to individual players, which must be hunted down, routed out, and openly and publicly annihilated, the smoke of their burning, twisted and broken corpses being smelled around the world as a warning to all would-be authoritarians, and as a demonstration that, thoughbeit thousands of years late, there is still justice in the world.

        Anyway, it’s all in the prophecies, and what you or I think about it is of minimal consequence. It’ll happen anyway.

        • Fascinating. I recall recently reading on this blog about another person calling for the greusome public executions of a group of people.

        • Should Christian congressmen who advocate for prohibitions on [consentual, adult] pornography – a violation of the enumerated right to free speech – be boiled to death in the public square for their proposals?

  2. Their premise is incorrect. Laws that reduce gun ownership do not and have never reduced crime perpetrated by criminals.

    • Indeed. John Lott quite clearly demonstrated the converse: laws reducing gun ownership increase crime since those laws help provide a safe working environment for criminals.

    • Exactly! Never accept the premises of a debate, or a question, without careful scrutiny. Pull the rug right out from under that bullshit.

  3. I’d like to hear a carefully refereed debate as part of every legislative discussion on whether this particular piece of legislation violates the “Jews in the Attic” test, which should probably be rephrases as “Gays in the Attic” or Blacks, or Muslims in the Attic, so the point of the discussion is not sheathed.

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