Should released felons have their 2nd Admendment rights restored?

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Gimme a break guys, no wonder the antis have the moral high ground sometime - Wildalaska
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We might need a break too, if you think a prohibition would stop an ex-con felon from getting and using a gun if he wanted one.

I know someone rather well who spent time in prison as a young person because of a marijuana bust. Preventing him from having a gun is just ludicrous. I don't know that he actually wants one though. This is why having no past association with criminal violence deserves consideration. It's okay to be comfortable belonging to a privileged class, but making rights subject to fashionable interpretation is why the BoR is so important and why liberals are so dangerous.
 
Hey it serves a purpose! It gets people more comfortable with the idea of denying Constitutional rights! Great! That'll make it easier to further restrict who can have firearms down the road. Super! Or who can have a right to free speech. Fantastic! Or who has the right to the pursuit of happiness! Peachy!

:rolleyes:
 
Actually, now all you have to do to nullify the Second Amendment is to make more silly things a felony (like having the wrong piece of metal at the end of your rifle), and make more misdemeanors a retroactive felony (like getting into fisticuffs with your brother on the front lawn thirty years ago.)


Thanks to the byzantine and often ludicrous legal and legislative processes, the list of "felonies" grows every day. Everyone on this board has at one point committed a felony, either knowlingly or unknowingly...especially because we're gun owners trying to navigate the labyrinth of 20,000+ federal and local gun laws.

When you say that felons should not have constitutional rights, you are setting yourself up to losing yours, because all that's left for the gun grabbers to do is to make as many things a felony as possible. Even some misdemeanors now cost you the right to self-defense for life, retroactively. (Lautenberg, anyone?)

Wildalaska, you still haven't enumerated which felonies should cost you the right to keep and bear arms, or why we shouldn't be able to deny any of the other rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights to convicted felons.

Your argument is emotional, not logical, and it is inconsistent because you do not have logic on your side.
 
Welcome to the fire, PBIR, It appears that you and I are in a minority here. The second ammendment that some of our fellow gun owners believe in seems to be a bit longer than ours. Mine reads;

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Theirs seems to say;

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. EXCEPT for thieves, wife beaters, environmental polluters, drug users, drinkers, teachers, workers in the airline industry, people that work in government buildings, or on military bases. You may not wear a gun exposed if you are around someone that has a fear of guns, and you may not wear a gun concealed without a permission slip from the government, and you may not have a gun on private property without permission from the owner."

Just about any fool will stand up and declare that he has rights under the second ammendment. What we need are people that understand that we have to stand up for the other guys freedom if we want to keep our own. To you I am the "other guy" and to me you are the "other guy".
 
Not being allowed to own a gun is still better than being in jail.
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:scrutiny: I'm not so sure about that.....Let's move on.

What's that we tell gun grabbers? Oh yes, it's a tool.

What do we call people with an irrational fear of tools? Oh yes, that's right. Hoplophobes.
A gun is a tool. If I can't get a gun (lol, any street corner in LA, SF, or middle America), I can kill just as easily with a hammer, a steak knife, or a bath towel. Any of those have the benefit of being far more silent than a gun.

So why are we creating a second class of citizen?
Hmm?.......
 
Everyone on this board has at one point committed a felony, either knowlingly or unknowingly...especially because we're gun owners trying to navigate the labyrinth of 20,000+ federal and local gun laws.
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There are very few felonies that you can commit "unkowingly", since mens rea, a culpable mental state, is an essential element of virtually all felonies.

And I guess Im the exception, cant think of one felony I have ever committed.

When you say that felons should not have constitutional rights, you are setting yourself up to losing yours, because all that's left for the gun grabbers to do is to make as many things a felony as possible. Even some misdemeanors now cost you the right to self-defense for life, retroactively. (Lautenberg, anyone?)
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Slippery slope arguments are the least effective means of arguing against something...

"Well if we ban felons, when can ban anyone" is as silly as "If we dont ban felons then blood will run in the streets"


Thats not the point. The point is EVERY felony entails the individual doing harm to either someone else or society with, in virtually all cases, a culpable mental state. These individuals have demonstrated that they are unfit, in whole or in part, to be members of society. Now since we just cant hang felons anymore due to our evolving system of decency, we make sure that these felons can no longer LEGALLY posess the means for OFFENSIVE actions against society.

Everybody wants to say..o but I know someone who...blah blah blah. Everybody has their favorite nice wronged by the government felon. Thats OK....if you want to say that CERTAIN felons should have rights restored automatically, thats fine too...then you are of course arguing that is OK to have SOME felons to be banned...So you for you guys its the same as what Im arguing...you just want to stop banning your favorite felons, and the hell with the rest.

Now of course, keep in mind that for the rest of you, under your plan of a free amn can have arms, past history regrdless, if Charlie Manson walked out of the can he could walk over to the local gunshop and buy an AR....or the blind Shiek does his time and gets his gun...or the local Chester the Molester buys a 38 and heads over to your kids school...if thats the world ya want more power to ya, but its not the world me or the vast majority of reasonable americans want or guess what, its not the world that the 2nd amnedment, under its most expansive reading, would ever cover.

So dream on.

Keep in mind I have NEVER agrued agaisnt a system that would permit felons to have firearms rights restored. As far as I am concerned, the non funded ATF program is a farce of the first order. Wonder why some of you guys are wasting energy arguing the dsame thing over and over instead of working to get the program funded.

or why we shouldn't be able to deny any of the other rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights to convicted felons.
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I think constituionally the state could (and does...voting?) deny certain enumerted rights to convicted felons, as long as the law met a strict scrutniy standard. Already exists, look at sex offender registry laws....


Your argument is emotional, not logical, and it is inconsistent because you do not have logic on your side.
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I think the posts speak for themselves...Im not the one gettin all teary eyed about all the "poor" guys who got busted 30 years ago and now are good citizens sob sob sob

PS...I spent three years of intensive work helping a buddy and his lawyer get him out from under the Lautenburg law. His life was almost ruined by that law. We got it fixed. If felons and their sypathisers spent as much tiome and energy doing that as they spend whining on the net, all the "wrongful" deprivations would go away.

Like I said before the same silly argument over and over again.

WildnowexcusemegottogosellgunstothelawabidingAlaska
 
Well, it looks to me like we do not have to wait for our enemies to try to take away our guns, we can let our friends do it.

Yes, Chester the Molester should be able to buy a gun (IF we ever let him out),,,,,,,, but when he gets to the school he should find the teachers, and the janitor armed and willing to deal with him. He may find something less pleasing the prison.
 
[SARC] No young person that screwed up and had remaining potential, needing a break, should get one. Like the dog that bites without warning, you take 'em out behind the barn and shoot 'em. Helps the gene pool. No skin off your nose. Couldn't happen to you.

BTW, the thread is a hypothetical. Mocking ideas with reminders about current reality is not a fair discussion.
 
I have an idea that I think maybe had been covered already, but I didn't want to go through this whole thread. Here it is.

"As a deterrant to help prevent crime, let it be known that should you comitt any type of felony, you will lose some of your rights that are reserved for the law abiding of this country."

How many felonies have we willingly involved ourselves in? I purposely avoid committing a felony or beating my wife because I know if I do, I get to kiss my 2nd Amendment rights away. Some purists will argue everyone has a right to self-defense, including criminals. This is an interesting argument. Where do we draw the line?

I feel comfortable specifying the rules and telling people that they will lose rights if they are convicted of certain crimes. If they chose to committ those crimes, they accept the responsibility of losing those rights. I work with federal inmates, they all have a sob story. Fact is, they aren't all stupid, they know what they are doing.

Should they be able to earn those rights back? I think so. Despite the deterrant of not committing crimes because of a loss of rights and freedom, sometimes people make mistakes. If you put a guy away for 5 years and don't give him the at least the ability to earn his way back into successful society, what is his incentive to re-enter society? Sure there is the incentive of prison isn't fun and no one really enjoys prison. This isn't to say they aren't pretty comfortable environments, but it still isn't a pleasurable experience. Anyway, so now he/she gets out of prison and they will never vote again, never own a firearm, they have no job, they might not have many skills, what options do they have? We could at least give them the ability to earn back what they lost. It doesn't have to be easy, it could take some time, but at least they have incentive to do something other than repeat their criminal acts.

So let it be known, if you committ a crime, you are going to lose some rights. If you value these rights, you might want to avoid committing those crimes. If you still choose to committ the crime, then you are aware of the consequences and we shouldn't be sympathetic to your choice to violate the laws of this country.
 
Are you free when your probation or supervised release is over? Are you free when you do 5 years of good conduct? Are you free when you leave prison? I wish this issue was so simple RealGun, but it isn't.

Just because you serve prison time doesn't mean that is all you have to serve. What is wrong with having to serve 1-5 years of lost rights outside of the prison walls because you could not abide by the rules to begin with? If you say that even prisoners have these rights, then obviously I am violating the Constitution by prohibiting inmates from all sorts of the same freedoms I have from this computer right here.

This is not a black and white issue. You can try to make it one here on the keyboard, but you aren't doing much good ignoring the current state of affairs.
 
El Rojo, you mentioned you hadn't read the thread. You're plowing some of the same ground. My premise is that the right of self defense is so sacred, that we cannot allow excuses to infringe upon it. A gun is the primary tool. The antis would simply ask, what do you need a gun for? Either that or simply declare that only police and armies should have guns. When we go to bat for ex-convicts, we go to bat for ourselves. We have to maintain that gun rights are uncompromising. It seems to me that if we don't, we have to some extent bought into the anti-gun mentality.

This kind of relies upon the assumption that convicts are not released or sentenced inappropriately. We are not in a position to second guess that process. We should be the last ones to exercise a prejudice regarding guns.

If one is such a threat to society, he should be dealt with before release. When do laws stop people with criminal intent? Instead of going back to prison for actually committing a crime, we would be allowing that an ex-con would go back merely for possessing a gun. I don't know about you, but I am not going to buy into that.
 
No, a felon should not be allowed to possess a firearm or any ammunition, ever.

If he needs to defend himself he can use his fists.
 
How about we just go ahead and get rid of the entire concept of a felony and leave these issues up to the states.
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Let's not. The states cannot be trusted.

Example: Because Connecticut does not recognize any of the other permits I have for concealed carry and because I'll be spending some time in Connecticut, I began to research their permit scheme. According to Packing.org, their constitution is even more clear-cut than the US Constitution: "Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state."

So far, so good. Then I get an info package from their Department of Public Safety. NO carry is legal without a permit. Seems to me that the supreme courts in several other states ruled that if the state constitution guarantees the right to carry and the legislature bans concealed carry, then open carry becomes legal by default. Not so in Connecticut, apparently. You need a permit to carry a handgun, period. Curiously, it appears from what I see on Packing.org and in their own handbook that once you have the permit, open carry is also legal. I called the firearms unit and asked that specific question, and WOW did I get a lot of hemming, hawing, backtracking and evasion in response. Apparently it actually IS legal to open carry with a permit, but the sense I got is that they don't like it and probably don't tell the cops that it's legal, so it would likely be risky to do it.

But the bottom line is, here is a state with a constitution that explicitely says EVERY citizen has a RIGHT to bear arms in defense of himself -- and a statute that says you can't carry at all without a permit. And we should trust the states to do what's right? I don't think so.
 
No, a felon should not be allowed to possess a firearm or any ammunition, ever. If he needs to defend himself he can use his fists.
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If he has to defend himself from you are you going to put down your gun and fight like a man?
 
A good example of why felons need guns, from this morning's paper. JT


BY JIM NOLAN AND MARK HOLMBERG
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITERS Sep 11, 2004


The court records of those involved in Wednesday night's triple homicide in North Richmond show convictions for burglary, illegal gun possession, prostitution, attempted robbery, possession of cocaine, heroin and marijuana, grand larceny, forgery, burglary, trespass and maiming.

And those are just the crimes committed by the victims. ( <=== )

The killers have yet to be identified or captured, but the risky lifestyles of the victims - who had 25 criminal convictions between them - echo a theme all-too-familiar to those struggling with the city's high murder rate.

"It's clear that these folks had made some horrible choices along the way," City Councilman G. Manoli Loupassi said last night.
 
Stripping people of their rights in these cases is an unjustice to everyone. It is one of the seeds of a police state.

When a court sentences someone to a jail or prison term, they lose some of their rights by virtue of the fact that they are incarcerated. But once they have served that sentence - that punishment - it is not just to impose additional penalties. Anyone who is a danger to those outside of places of penal incarceration need to be six feet under, under 24 hr supervision - or other form of institutional lock and key. One or the other.

Extending punishment outside of the prison walls simply creates a second class of citizens who, not "trusted" with their rights, are a further menace to everyone else. It basically extends the prison yard into the whole nation.
 
Seeing no "Exception" in "Bill-Of-Rights", Yes, "Ex-Felon" (Whatever that in reality means) certainly should "Excercise all Human Rights".

Once done is done.
 
If they are off of probation or parole, then restore ALL of their constitutional rights.
If we trust them to live free and unsupervised, then we should trust them with firearms.
 
Non violent crime should not get gun rights taken away. Otherwise your local cannabis cultivator might not be able to own a gun or a guy convicted of fraud could lose his RKBA. Of course the first thing should not be illegal(as Wild Alaska might know) but the point is the same. Now violent felons could get a rehab type thing were they would have to wait 10 years or something.
 
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