Why Are Convicted Felons Denied the Right to Bear Arms?

1. I fully support stripping rights away from criminals, letting them rot in jail and permanently stripping firearm rights from those committing violent crimes and I am a Jew, Go figure 🙂

2. I agree with the Rabbi (it was bound to happen!) – We let too many people off the hook nowadays as it is: politicians, bank managers, parents, etc. You do something stupid and you pay the price – simple! …. and I'm not a Jew, or anything religious for that matter. I'm not even God fearing. I'm a hard-working, family-loving American man, and I feel that people are to be held 100% responsible and accountable for their actions. You smuggle drugs when you were younger, or assault a guy in the bar, hit your wife, etc and lose your rights… well that’s tough shit, you brought it upon yourself! Those actions were your own. Regardless of what the specials on A&E might say, incarceration rarely transforms those with previously exposed errors in judgment into level-minded and sound individuals, capable and responsible enough to afford the privileges and rights held by the rest of us. I'm a man of numbers, and the numbers continually prove that those who did something stupid before are extremely likely to do something stupid again.

3. I think that many people might support more lenient gun-rights restoration, at least for certain felonies, if they knew how absurd some criminal felony statutes are. Here in my home state (up until last June) if vandalism caused more than $250 in damage it was a Class C felony. The $250 threshold hadn't been adjusted for inflation for decades, and what used to be the price of a serviceable used car now wasn't enough to get a fender repainted. Dumb juveniles smashing a few mailboxes, or even simple graffiti, would frequently exceed the $250 level and result in felony charges.

   For ticky-tack felonies (like 'aggravated mailbox baseball', above), I don't see the justification in long-term abridgment of civil liberties. Do your time, pay your fines and restitution and behave on probation, and you should get all your rights back in a few years.

   What about sex crimes? Forget it, right? Lock them up and throw away the key? Fine, but what about streaking? What about taking a leak in the bushes at the side of the highway? What about a high-school boyfriend with a steady (and willing) sweetheart, who turns 18 and gets it on with her while her parents are out of town? All of these people could be adjudged as felons, under numerous criminal laws still on the books in various states. (And not just Arkansas.) For the real sickos, and we all know who they are, lengthy incarceration (REALLY lengthy) is the only answer.

   What about felony drug offenders? I think that a rational answer to that is far too fact-specific to lend itself to simple rules of thumb, but I'd suggest that many, if not most drug offenders could be trusted with firearms after completing a few years of drug treatment and UA's to prove they've kicked the habit, and living crime-free in the community for a few more years to prove they've turned themselves around.

   'Felony' is a loaded word, and many of us don't realize just how lightly that word is thrown about by our justice system. If you're trying to decide which members of society should be disarmed, felons are a good place to start looking. Remember the kinds of conduct that can and do get swept up in that word, and consider who you would rather trust with a gun: the alcoholic neighbor down the street who somehow hasn't yet died in a car crash, or the co-worker who made a big mistake (that didn't kill or injure anyone) fifteen or twenty years ago and has been a solid citizen ever since?

4. I have a friend who spent 9 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit as a teen.
   He now has a wife and young child and lives in the countryside.

   Thanks to dip-shit laws his family is not legally allowed to defend themselves with the best tools available. (But we all know that laws stop no one from owning a gun if they want to.)

   If a felon isn't sane enough to legally possess a firearm then why would you let them out of jail?

5. Whoah. I clicked on Roy's site. Clicked away quickly. I don't think Roy is a Jew.

   I'm with the Rabbi on this one.

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