And you are also meted out punishment appropriate to your crime. And then done with it. Released and part of society again. Paid that debt.
Sure - to an extent. But you've also indicated that you are a danger at some level to society around you. We should not enable you in being a greater danger.
Example: Joe and Cindy are going through an ugly divorce. Joe accuses Cindy of cheating on him (he cheated on her, projection accusations are common), and they get into a physical altercation. Cindy calls the cops, and Joe is forced from the house. Joe begins to threaten Cindy for ruining his life, at one point telling her that if she tries to steal their daughter, Sarah, he will kill her. The proceedings are going badly for Joe, and so he takes Sarah from School. He drives her to his Aunt's the two states over, where he assumes he will not be found, and calls Cindy to let her know that he's going to stop her from stealing his child, and t if she knows what's good for her she won't come looking. Joe is caught and, after a fight with the police, arrested. He goes to jail, he's a felon.
When he gets out,
Joe should in no way be enabled by society to have the power to threaten Cindy. That includes allowing him to buy guns. It can also include limiting where he can live, how close he can come to Cindy or his daughter, his ability to contact them, etc..
Loads of violent, dangerous people are never jailed and go on offending
Yup. And that's a
bad thing.
If you are not safe for society when released, then you should not be released
Now you aren't imprisoning people for their crimes, but rather because you think they are possibly dangerous? The Justice system doesn't work like that. That's why, for example, we don't let people with sexual crimes live next to schools, but we also don't keep them locked up for the rest of their life. This isn't an avocation for human rights, it's an avocation for a sharp curtailment of human rights.
Firearms are easy to get....it's punitive...not constructive...to permanently remove their rights. Judgemental and actually non-productive to not provide incentives to people to rehabilitate themselves.
:shrug: if we wanted to construct a program that would allow them to build and demonstrate rehabilitation over time, I could see that being tied to a series of incentives on things like voting, gun ownership, etc. But "wasn't powerful enough or fast enough or smart enough to stop the state from catching and punishing you for your crimes" is not an indicator of rehabilitation.
And your question was specifically about the 2A, not voting.
The point there is that the case for restricting guns seems more obvious, yet it is actually a stronger curtailment of their rights than voting.
radcen said:
Not necessarily. "Will" is too broad to be accurate. One's individual felony could be a one-time thing due to unusual circumstances that would never happen again, and never would have happened to begin with in other circumstances.
Yes, you have. You don't get to say that things like murder or kidnapping and raping a child should be overlooked because you only did it once (that we know of) before you were caught. You have demonstrated that, given freedom of action, you will abuse it. That's it. You haven't demonstrated that now you
won't, you have only demonstrated that you prefer punishment to things like death-by-cop.