Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

I am also a conservative leaning libertarian. I do not feel there is a real argument for the restoration of firearm privileges for convicted VIOLENT felons.

I take great issue with the concept of one "paying his debt to society" by merely pumping iron in some yard with a bunch of other apes, on the taxpayer's dime, all the while, honing his criminal skills. The debt is usually not owed to society, but rather those victimized by the aggressor. How in the hell is a victim "repaid" by some jackhole being placed in a cell for X years?

I sympathize with the victim and go one step further. The victim needs to be repaid to any extent possible. Monetarily or through any other creative means possible.

I cannot fathom how permitting someone who has demonstrated a lack of respect for human life or compassion for the suffering of others to own, carry and use such a powerful tool as a firearm. It is just way too illogical.

Hell. I think there should be an IQ card that is required to drive, vote, and even procreate. An ID card that demonstrates you have survived 18 or 21 years on this planet with killing yourself does a whole lot less to convince me of the worthiness of an individual to exercise all the privileges of being a citizen. I know it does not mesh with my political stance in general, but oh well. Life is complex.

GS78 wrote:

Diomed wrote:Sorry, cyras21, you're not going to find many libertarians on this board.

Personally I see no reason why all rights should not be restored upon release. If they're not in prison, they should be treated like everyone else. If they're dangerous, what are they doing out of prison?

Of course, the modern prison-industrial complex makes sure that they have a steady supply of new and returning clients, by making trivial offenses into felonies and making serious offenses carry trivial punishments, and making sure that once the convict gets out he's got little in the way of options except more crime. The tax evader gets as much time as the armed robber, and the rapist and murderer get out instead of being sent to the gallows as in ye olden dayes.

I suggest that before getting all high-'n'-mighty and jail-'em-all, let-God-sort-'em-out, you spend some time reading the laws we have in place now. There are so many there's no way to know them all (but ignorance of the law is no excuse!). It's virtually impossible to live in our society and not be an unconvicted felon. Ruling is much easier, after all, when anyone and everyone can be imprisoned as the state desires.

Virtually impossible? really? Then I and my kids must be exceptional Americans since we are not "unconvicted" felons. A libertarian would be someone who believes Charlie Sheen has every right to kill himself with drugs..AS LONG AS, he is not endangering anyone else in the process, it is NOT someone who thinks a three year manslaughter sentence is sufficient recompense for a human life. Just for the record, I am one of those Let-God-Sort'em out, right after the conviction..

So by that logic, there is no such thing as enough punishment. There is no way to ever pay for what you have done. If you throw a baseball through my window (on purpose or otherwise), there is no way to ever take that back as to my knowledge we have no time machine. You can pay to fix the window, but I still have the memory of a ball and glass shards flying around my face as I sat typing up a post on VOGF. The window could not be replaced immediately either, so I had to live with the consequences of the broken window even though you fixed it later.

Thus, since there is no way for me not to remember or to remove the consequences I had to live with, there is no way for you to ever pay for the crime. No amount of punishment will ever be enough. 1 year in jail? Not good enough. Felony status? Nope, still not good enough. Capital punishment? Nope, not even that can remove my memories or take back the consequences of your actions. What you have done is setup a standard which no violation can ever accomplish. IMHO, it is either a way to rationalize something which is very hard to do well (felony) or simply a misunderstanding of what punishment and restoration are all about. Personally, I'm really glad I was able to pay for my previous mistakes and move on with life. I've never been convicted of any crime other than speeding and I got that wiped off with a drivers ed/court fees (or even charged for that matter), but my parents sure had good reason to spank me on occasion.

It's just pride that you think you and your family have never committed a felony and not got caught for it. Or you just have no idea what constitutes as a felony these days. I've never intended to commit a felony, but given how vast the law is I can't claim that I never actually have. How's this for a stupid felony? http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/01/26/ohi ... er-school/

I could overload VGOF with such posts and likely not repeat any single felony classification!

Edit: Please note that there is a difference between claiming what that mom did was right and suggesting she deserves a felony and jail time for it. Clearly lying is wrong, but you'd be hard pressed to prove it's worth capital punishment...

gunderwood wrote:

WRW wrote:Again, prison time does not "pay your debt to society". It merely serves as a "punishment" for acts contrary to society. The Constitution does, indeed, guarantee rights...by commiting a felony the individual forfeits those rights.

That's merely the definition of a felony. You have yet to provide any rationale to say why that is right.

Hardly a definition. For that, I would have quoted one or more of the online dictionaries. In the context of which it was written, I was merely pointing out a couple of errors in the rationale of the OP.

WRW wrote:

gunderwood wrote:

WRW wrote:Again, prison time does not "pay your debt to society". It merely serves as a "punishment" for acts contrary to society. The Constitution does, indeed, guarantee rights...by commiting a felony the individual forfeits those rights.

That's merely the definition of a felony. You have yet to provide any rationale to say why that is right.

Hardly a definition. For that, I would have quoted one or more of the online dictionaries. In the context of which it was written, I was merely pointing out a couple of errors in the rationale of the OP.

The old common law, which is what was in use when this country was founded, was much more interested in restitution (paying your debt to the person harmed) than punishment. Of course is served both purposes, but it is a matter of focus. The ideas of prison as a business, punishment instead of justice are the ideas of contemporary (at the time) scholars like Jeremy Bentham. Their actual impact and changes came much later. They were the 18th centuries statists. Their philosophical foundation was not liberty and Rights, it was state power over the people. Hardly a recommendation for a free society IMHO.


The Constitution is nothing but a contract between the States, the People, and a third party which brought nothing to the table. It's a contract, it guarantees nothing. Action is required to guarantee it. As we have seen the government is very deft at ignoring it when it fits their purpose and only action can force them to follow it. Contracts are broken regularly, but it takes action to force the other party(ies) to abide by the rules of that contract. The Constitution recognizes the pre-existing Rights and explicitly specifies they are not trend on them and how. If the Constitution guarantees Rights, why are we in this mess today? Again, you have made a statement, but there is no rationale as to why that statement is true or false.

The comment was directed mostly at this part: "by commiting [sic] a felony the individual forfeits those rights." That is the definition of what we do to felons. Why is that the right thing to do? Certainly it is legal, but the two are rarely the same thing as we have destroyed much of our justice system and replaced it with just a legal system. For example, in certain Muslim countries it is illegal to convert from Islam to another religion or none at all. That is worthy of death under their legal code. Hardly right is it? Justice? Not even close, but it is legal.

It is a statement of fact that a felony "forfeits" certain legal rights, but that does not make it right or justice. Stating it is stating the obvious, so what. The debate is not if the statement is true or false, the debate is over if it is right or wrong. Why is it right or wrong?

Jeez...and all this time, I thought the Judeo-Christian "eye for an eye..." was the basis for punishment in our system. Punishment fits the crime, so to speak.

As to "why is it right to consider the right to arms forfeit", it goes to a realistic view that criminals are seldom "rehabilitated" and, as such, are considered a greater threat to society.

As you have previously pointed out, there is at present a tendency to overreact in some (a lot) of our current laws, but that should be corrected by overhaul of those laws.

WRW wrote:Jeez...and all this time, I thought the Judeo-Christian "eye for an eye..." was the basis for punishment in our system. Punishment fits the crime, so to speak.

Most people misuse that phrase. The eye for an eye was not originally used to justify minimum punishments, but rather to limit the maximum. Jewish society used it as a guide to avoid cruel and unusual punishments. For example, eye for an eye would forbid capital punishment for anything besides premeditated murder.

WRW wrote:As to "why is it right to consider the right to arms forfeit", it goes to a realistic view that criminals are seldom "rehabilitated" and, as such, are considered a greater threat to society.

With today's prison as a business system you are 100% correct, but historically that was not true. Common law came out of just such a system that functioned well for centuries up until the 19th/20th when the state started recovering some ground the people had taken.

WRW wrote:As you have previously pointed out, there is at present a tendency to overreact in some (a lot) of our current laws, but that should be corrected by overhaul of those laws.

We overreact because those laws were not based on sound logic and rationale. Instead they were based on emotion. I'm with YardDawg on the idea that certain punishments are way to light. I'm far more likely to spend more time in jail for attaching a 2L bottle to my rifle than I am for actually murdering someone. Not sentence, but actual time served.

If you commit an actual ethical violation against another citizen you statistically get off easier than the guy who committed no ethical trespass, but did violate a state prohibition. We lock people up for simple possession of an object which the state says they shouldn't have, but let rapists out in a few years.

Yes, we need to overhaul those laws, but we should do so with sound logic and rationale based on hundreds of years of common law precedence rather than emotion.

Edit: We got where we are today by ignoring that precedent and making up excuses based on tragic events and emotions.

@ gunderwood
Hence the statement "Punishment fits the crime".

Confiscation of land and goods sounds good on the face of it, but if one has no land or goods to confiscate...?

And, quite so, that law should be written and enforced dispassionately.

WRW wrote:Confiscation of land and goods sounds good on the face of it, but if one has no land or goods to confiscate...?

We focus way too much on taking from the transgressor and not enough on restoring the victim IMHO. In such cases where proper payment could not be made (let's say you can afford to pay to fix my window), then a certain kind of indentured servitude was used, which is very different than slavery. Most of the slaves were black, but there were a lot of indentured servants who were "white," either by choice for money (not all that different than a mortgage today, but with far more privileges for the servant back then) or by necessity due to the law. I.e. if you can pay to fix my window, then you work it off...this is not unlike what parents do.

The early common law courts were run by the local priest out of necessity (the lords didn't care much about what the small people did as long it wasn't impacting their "taxes"). It was a common third party arbitrator we could agree on and yes, the priest did use the Bible to assist in their decisions. However, priests didn't have the power to force compliance, so compliance was voluntary. Interestingly enough, it worked rather well. See if you didn't comply, then the priest would make it known to all the surrounding area that you had chosen to become an outlaw (literally this is where we get the word from). An outlaw was a person who removed themselves from the protection of the law. Once and outlaw you had no protection of the law. You could not use the priests to redress any of your grievances. If someone found you they could kill or steal or enslave you and the law would be silent on such treatment. After all you had made it known that you wouldn't submit to the law, so you also could not receive an protection from it either.

It was a very harsh, but practical implementation of punishment for those too bad to reform. If you submitted to the law, then the focus was on restoring the other person(s) which usually was punishment enough. Instead of costing society lots of money to enforce the law and provide for those being "punished," it provided justice, restitution all the while being far cheaper. Of course overtime there were the addition of "LE," but it was relatively limited compared today and also the courts were secularized (principles stayed the same though).

I personally find it odd that we find immense compassion for murderers and the like, but have no problem locking someone up for 20 years over a 1/4" of barrel, or a auto-sear, or weed (although I have no desire to use it). I could see doing that if they used weed and someone was harmed because of their impairment like drunk driving which actually causes harm. I could see throwing the book at the someone who used a machinegun in a mass shooting, but IMHO the fact that it was a machinegun is irrelevant. The real crime was murder, not the details of how it was done. We go so far as to ruin peoples lives for preventative measures, which is just plain crazy IMHO.

Let's punish people for their actual actions, not some preventative measure where something might happen. Of course, when they actually do something we need to throw the book at them so that others will make better decisions.

"Outlaw". Yes, that would work if there were "community", but there is little left of that in this mobile era.

1/4" too little barrel? Call it a pifle or a ristol and be done with it.

...or were you thinking of a pot gun or shistol?

IMO the bottom line is if you I will judge your future behavior on your past behavior. If your past behavior was robbing someone or beating and old man to death then I will never trust you with a gun or for that matter a lot of things. You can call it judgmental or whatever your want but its the way I look at it. Do people change? Sure they do but mistakes made today effect tomorrow.

Jakeiscrazy wrote:IMO the bottom line is if you I will judge your future behavior on your past behavior. If your past behavior was robbing someone or beating and old man to death then I will never trust you with a gun or for that matter a lot of things. You can call it judgmental or whatever your want but its the way I look at it. Do people change? Sure they do but mistakes made today effect tomorrow.

+1

gunderwood wrote:what is missing is some logic, some rationale as to why it is acceptable to dictate such a restriction. Don't get me wrong, it is a good distinction to make (even if the conclusion isn't what you prefer), but please carry it forward. How is this different than society saying to someone under 21 that they are restricted from CCing a firearm? How about less than 18 for the lawful carry of a firearm period? In short, why does and how is it rationalized for society to claim the right to restrict the mechanism used?

Really, the examples that you provided are just that. They are further examples of restricted rights. The rationale for these restrictions probably lies in an average maturity level. By this I mean that by the time that the "average" person reaches the age 18, they should be displaying a maturity level that most members of society are comfortable with them carrying a firearm without "adult supervision" and with a minimum risk to the remainder of society. The same could be said for the 21 yo being freed from the restrictions related to concealing a firearm.

I am sure that we all have known some individuals that we would not have had any issues with them carrying a firearm openly or concealed at younger ages. I am also sure that we have all known some individuals who well into adulthood that we still would not have that "warm fuzzy" feeling about.

When I was coming of age, the minimum legal drinking age for beer was 18. When I turned 19, so did that legal age limit. Same thing when I turned 20 and 21. I am proud to say that I have never been in any alcohol related troubles. Then again, I have always subscribed to the notion that "stupid is supposed to be painful!" This has been my mantra for many, many years and has served me well. I have two children (now 19 and 15) that I can honestly say are mature beyond their physical ages and have never been in any trouble because I have taught them to believe in my mantra. They have also seen from some of their acquaintances just how painful stupid can be.

gunderwood is hitting it out of the park here. I can't think of anything he's said that I disagree with.

WRW wrote:Jeez...and all this time, I thought the Judeo-Christian "eye for an eye..." was the basis for punishment in our system.

The "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" philosophy has its basis in the Code of Hammurabi, which is very much not Judeo-Christian in its origins (unless one wants to get into some really gritty business about where Judaism came from).

Diomed wrote:gunderwood is hitting it out of the park here. I can't think of anything he's said that I disagree with.

WRW wrote:Jeez...and all this time, I thought the Judeo-Christian "eye for an eye..." was the basis for punishment in our system.

The "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" philosophy has its basis in the Code of Hammurabi, which is very much not Judeo-Christian in its origins (unless one wants to get into some really gritty business about where Judaism came from).

So, yer sayin' it ain't in the Old Testament? And that the Code of Hammurabi was the more widely read document by the early European settlers and their forefathers?

Yarddawg wrote:

gunderwood wrote:what is missing is some logic, some rationale as to why it is acceptable to dictate such a restriction. Don't get me wrong, it is a good distinction to make (even if the conclusion isn't what you prefer), but please carry it forward. How is this different than society saying to someone under 21 that they are restricted from CCing a firearm? How about less than 18 for the lawful carry of a firearm period? In short, why does and how is it rationalized for society to claim the right to restrict the mechanism used?

Really, the examples that you provided are just that. They are further examples of restricted rights.

They were intended to be just that, further example of what you were proposing. I was asking you why such restrictions were ok.

Yarddawg wrote:The rationale for these restrictions probably lies in an average maturity level. By this I mean that by the time that the "average" person reaches the age 18, they should be displaying a maturity level that most members of society are comfortable with them carrying a firearm without "adult supervision" and with a minimum risk to the remainder of society. The same could be said for the 21 yo being freed from the restrictions related to concealing a firearm.

Except some people are not comfortable with anyone owning let alone carrying a gun. The same logic is what the anti-gunners use to push their agenda. I.e. without actions to the contrary, your 2nd Amendment Rights should be restricted because they are "uncomfortable" because you could do something bad with them. That is exactly the rationale for restricting liberty in most cases...something bad could happen therefore we must punish people and restrict them before it does. Do you actually have any liberty in that case? What can you not justify restricting? E.g. Society isn't comfortable with you owning guns they don't know about, therefore you must register them.

There is no end to that except a loss of all of our rights; it's part of the reason we have so few left. Wouldn't it be better to not worry about such restrictions and just punish people harshly when they actually do something? E.g. instead of BACs for drunk driving, why not just say if you drink, drive and cause a problem you loose your privilege to drive for a year if there are no other parties (just emergency services needed for you), 10 years if another is mildly harmed and/or property that isn't yours, and life if you serious harm another or kill someone? Drive, even while completely sober, without a license after having it revoked for such an offense and it is mandatory jail time to protect society (isn't that what jail is suppose to be about?). It wouldn't take long and drunk driving would drop off considerably. The people actually drinking too much and causing a problem would be punished while the rest of use wouldn't have to put up with random checkpoints (show your papers and submit to the test...USSR anyone?) or trivial technicalities about being 0.01 over the limit.

Actual actions should be punished harshly, but I'm against punishing people when they have done no wrong. However, instead of punishing the actual offenders we would rather let them off with a slap on the wrist and then restrict others liberty? Why does that make one bit of sense?

Yarddawg wrote:I am sure that we all have known some individuals that we would not have had any issues with them carrying a firearm openly or concealed at younger ages. I am also sure that we have all known some individuals who well into adulthood that we still would not have that "warm fuzzy" feeling about.

What does your warm fuzzy have to do with my Rights? Again, some people won't get a warm fuzzy until there are no more guns in citizen hands...

gunderwood wrote:
Actual actions should be punished harshly, but I'm against punishing people when they have done no wrong. However, instead of punishing the actual offenders we would rather let them off with a slap on the wrist and then restrict others liberty? Why does that make one bit of sense?

here here

Diomed wrote:gunderwood is hitting it out of the park here. I can't think of anything he's said that I disagree with.

We're on the same side...until next time.

Garret, please do not misunderstand me. I never stated that I agreed with these assumptions. I was merely responding to your question of how these things may have originated.

You are 100% correct that my warm fuzzy should not affect your rights. In fact, your suggestions concerning drunk driving punishments are spot on!

Having said that, are there some people that I would not feel comfortable being around knowing that they are armed? Unequivocally, YES! Should my comfort level restrict their ability to do so? NO WAY!

IMO, there is a lot of truth is the saying "Don't do the crime, if you can't do the crime." This philosophy is very similar to that which I stated earlier; "stupid is supposed to be painful".

Like you, I believe that we, as a nation, have not performed due diligence in effectively punishing those that choose to ignore the laws of the land.