Letter: We need ‘common sense’ on gun violence

A crazy person goes into a school with a gun and kills 20 babies and six adults. Now we have a conversation on what is the answer to all this violence: banning guns or having more people at the schools with more guns than the crazy person.

I did a little research: It looks like on the average 28 people are killed each day with a gun, 13 killed violently without a gun: knife, hands, sticks, bats etc. This is just in the United States, a civilized country — right?

By the way over 1,000 people die from cigarette smoke per day, but we’re not counting them!

Back to the violence: we are a nation of a lot of unhappy, unfulfilled people. Call them whatever you wish: crazy, sick — you name it. When these people get in their minds there is no hope, no light at the end of the tunnel, most anything can happen. I personally don’t understand why we have to have an AK- whatever with 100 rounds to hunt Bambi.

But if you let a bunch of politicians start banning and taking anything, they will take it all. Some video games have something to do with it. If you don’t believe that, take a look at the games of war and violence our kids are playing. It’s shocking!

Where do you start? At the beginning — that slippery slide that all of us are scared of has slid us all the way to the bottom. But that is where you have to start to get anything done. As a country we are dragging the bottom. Almost every time I read about a kidnapping of a beautiful, wonderful baby, it is by an (ex-con) convicted child predator, and I wonder what in the hell is he doing out of jail.

A couple of weeks ago, a guy killed his sister and two firemen and tried to burn the house down. And wait, he was out of jail after killing his 90-year-old grandmother with a hammer. If you pick up a hammer and threaten a 90-year-old person, you should never get out of jail.

That’s it! If you take a gun and do any crime — 50 years. If you pull the trigger — 50, and if the victim dies, life, served one day at a time — no more, no less! No BS! Sentence like that for a couple of years, and gun crimes will almost stop — except for the crazies. But if we quit worrying about profiling, a first-grader knows who in the room is crazy. It is pretty common sense.

I just wish “common sense” was more common!

Ricky Dawson

gravel pit hand

Clinton

Comments

1) Comment by DMJ - 04/02/2013

I predict we'll see an end to the death penalty in a decade or so. It doesn't deter crime. It is more expensive. If it was expedited like many want, that would almost surely mean the execution of more innocent people, which already happens, especially in Texas. People seem to forget that our justice system was set up to protect the innocent first and punish the guilty second. The death penalty makes this impossible. Besides, isn't it worse to spend the rest of your life in a concrete box in Kansas or some place rather than die a painless death in a few months? Lastly, if we're trying to send the message that killing is wrong, shouldn't we....not kill? And to all the pro-life Christians out there, does it say 'you shall not kill unless...' or simply 'you shall not kill'?

2) Comment by Whatnow - 03/02/2013

Societal decay = liberals

3) Comment by agagent - 03/02/2013

What rationale: it is too hard to execute a convicted murder so we want to take guns away from law abiding citizens. Since the anti death penalty crowd cannot do it by legislation they have mucked up the criminal justice system to stop the death penalty. I think we can get $22,000 a year in labor out of an inmate in Angola (the farm), and that could pay for their up keep for a year.

4) Comment by swinham - 02/02/2013

We've gotten a little side-tracked, but twinkie1cat and others have legitimately brought up the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of the death penalty. Louisiana has only executed 2 people in the last 10 years. In this context, it's hard to argue the threat of death serves as a deterrent to crime of any kind. Worse, the appeals process which is AUTOMATIC and required by our law costs the state an average of $2+ million per person sentenced (and, as twinkie1cat points out, the bills are stacking up because attorneys are not being paid timely for these required services to indigent inmates). A liberal projection of the cost to house death row inmates is $22,000 per year, and remember we're paying that during the appeals process anyhow. Wouldn't it be simpler, fairer (including the ultimate fairness, preventing the execution of innocents which has been proven to occur and even if it occurs once in a lifetime, that's too many) to do away with the death penalty in Louisiana? We would save $2 million in appeals costs per inmate and we can house an inmate for 40 years for less than a million dollars. The death penalty makes no sense in any except in the Biblical sense - and if a mistake is made, it doesn't even make sense then since murder is a sin.

5) Comment by agagent - 02/02/2013

Of course the death penalty costs the tax payers too much because the criminal justice system is a mess. That does not mean that it cannot be fixed to protect the innocent and the general population.

6) Comment by twinkie1cat - 02/02/2013

Conservatives are always worried about that non-existent slippery slope. The only slippery slope we have in America is the loss of necessary social programs and the destruction of our public schools.

7) Comment by twinkie1cat - 02/02/2013

aagent: The death penalty is a waste of taxpayer money that can backfire with the death of innocent people. Right now Louisiana is postponing trying capital murder cases because we don' t have enough attorneys certified to do them. (I think that might say something about our brain drain.) Of course if you are a Republican Teaparty governor, like Rick Perry, killing innocent people will not bother you, as he said during his campaign. Of course Texas is the execution capital of America. Wonder why?

8) Comment by Bighug - 02/02/2013

The letter writer resorts to that often used logic of the anti-gun nuts who say "You don't need a (insert name of weapon) to kill (insert name of game). Please read the 2nd Amendment and notice the word 'militia.' What would you guess is the root definition of that word? If those people ever get military type weapons outlawed, their next goal will be to go after hunting weapons. After all, you don't need a .22 rimfire rifle for a militia!

9) Comment by jdk944 - 02/02/2013

DMJ - not an all out ban on guns, NOT YET, ANYWAY!! We do fear the slippery slope because it is real. You can be in denial, however that doesn't change the direction this country is going in.

10) Comment by agagent - 02/02/2013

The death penalty is a deterent for the murderer who is convicted so we need to keep it. An armed citizen is also a deterent to criminals.

11) Comment by agagent - 02/02/2013

A couple of the reasons for the decreasing crime rate are that we are doing a better job of keeping violent criminals off the street and the increase in gun ownership among law-abiding citizens. Some people cannot legally own firearms, and we can do a better job of keeping firearms away from them. The system of background checks needs to be improved. There are too many false positives, and people lie to try to get a gun are not prosecuted. Yes, there are many things that can be done to keep guns out of the wrong hands.

12) Comment by DMJ - 02/02/2013

One problem with this letter... No one is talking about an all-out ban on guns or confiscation of them. Let's debate what's actually on the table instead of the fear of the bottom of a slippery slope.

13) Comment by DMJ - 02/02/2013

"If you take a gun and do any crime — 50 years. If you pull the trigger — 50, and if the victim dies, life, served one day at a time — no more, no less." I think we're all in agreement there.

14) Comment by [e-mail] - 02/02/2013

The only defense against crazy maniacs is just that, i.e. to defend oneself and one's family. Laws don't stop lawbreakers, and police can only try to catch the person after the crime; deterrent force is the only thing that stops crimes.

15) Comment by tradewinns - 02/02/2013

the death penalty is not a deterent because it is exteremly seldom used. if a murderer was caught, convicted sentenced and executed within say, two years, people would think twice before killing. for statistical backing all you have to do is go back to when if you killed a police officer, you were dead. usually before the trial. criminals knew that and killing PO's were few and far between. after our bottom feeding lawyers got control of our "justice" system and cop killers became national heros, things changed. it takes somewhere between 15-20 years to actually execute a convicted/condemned murderer, if then. we have thousands of murders each year; we have hundreds of murderers convicted and sentenced to execution each year; and yet we are in the tens of actual executiopns. lawlessness is like cancer, if you do nothing about cancer, it will kill you.

16) Comment by chem - 02/02/2013

The death penalty does not deter anyone from committing a murder. Granted, someone who is executed or in prison for life will not kill again. At least not outside of prison. But again, all of these laws are not going to stop crime. There will always, unfortunately, be someone else out there that does not care about the law. Only the civil, law abiding people observe laws. That's why they are law abiding. And the converse is true of criminals. The only gray areas are the mentally unstable and crimes of passion where someone does something stupid in the heat of anger.

17) Comment by Bighug - 02/02/2013

Can someone tell me why it is crazy to have an armed guard at a school, but not crazy to have one in the White House, or any other place where they are stationed? I agree with your argument, chem, but you must admit that the rate of recidivism is low in cases where the murderer is executed or kept incarcerated for life.

18) Comment by chem - 01/02/2013

The letter writer must be living on another planet, or perhaps he is a little crazy or stupid. We have laws against murder, kidnapping, rape, etc, and that does not stop crime. We have the ultimate sentence -- death -- and that does not stop murder. People who commit crimes, especially crimes of passion or crimes committed by mentally unstable individuals, do not sit down and perform a risk/benefit analysis before committing their crime. They just do it.