Posted on 12/29/2004 8:48:06 AM PST by debboo
Murder is murder, and terrorism is terrorism. Many gangs do have a sense of honor. They may kill members of rival gangs for offenses they are deemed to have committed, but they don't go around blowing up innocent women and children at random. It takes a certain amount of courage to go up against someone who is as armed and dangerous as you are, not the kind of cowardice that blows up kindergartens and Bar Mitzvahs.
There is a difference, and it's wrong to use a terrorism statute for crimes against which it was never intended. It gives ammunition to the ACLU, which has said that these laws would be abused, and thus it undermines the fight against genuine terrorism--which at the moment is Islamic terrorism, not Hispanic youth gangs.
As it happens, one of my good friends was formerly the warlord of a Hispanic gang in the South Bronx. That was the way he grew up, that was what he knew, and with his abilities he was bound to reach the top. He later became a High School principal in the Bronx. He has great talents at keeping problem kids in line and seeing them through their educations. He is a man of considerable intelligence and honor.
Sure, if someone is a murderer, the law has every right to go after him--but as a murderer, not as a terrorist.
Exactly! Just like one of the county FBI offices in Arizona printed a flier listing anyone who believed in the Bible or the Constitution to be a domestic terrorist.
(Sorry, Lost my copy in a computer crash, so I no longer have it)
This gang-banger was a criminal, plain and simple. We already have punishments for what he did.
All the extraneous 'laws' do is ADD more layers of lawyers, regulations and bureaucrats to what already existed.
This forces Americans to work even harder to feed the behemoth that's taxing them further and further into poverty!
If these are illegal aliens (which mahy of them are), why shouldn't they be classified as foreign terrorists and treated as such? They are a threat to our society, government, culture, you name it. These gangs go well beyond mere murder and mayhem.
The only thing I see good about this particular instance is that 25 years isn't long enough to serve for killling a 10 yo girl. The life without parol is more appropriate, but you have to ask yourselfs why is the penalty for muder under the terrorism law greater than the one under regular law? Are terrorists victims more dead than ordinary victims?
"(Sorry, Lost my copy in a computer crash, so I no longer have it)"
I'll post it for you later. I remember that one.
YES.
Don't care what they call it as long as they inject him.
You know, just telling someone you plan to do harm is a terrorist threat, so why is murdering some one not causing terror to ensue.
"They are making him look as if he was this cold-hearted person, and he is not like that."
He killed a ten year old girl. Thats pretty cold-hearted.
I feel the same way. Gang acts of violence are despicable and so are terrorist acts of violence. If our laws and punishment have been so diluted with every gangbanger out there getting an 18 month sentence for murder then fry them with this law. Or fry them with a different law...just do it in a week, not 15 years.
Nobody even knows what a sentence means anymore. 25 years means 3 or 4 years. Life means the convict walks in 10 years. Death means 15 years of appeals and then only maybe.
If the old laws aren't good enough for the liberal judges, then give the judges 3 strikes like CA gives the Cons. Unless we're worried about offending all the muderous scum out there.
There used to be a group fighting for truth in sentencing, but I lost track of them long ago. The public doesn't know what a sentence means in many cases. We have 600+ on death row in CA and most will die of old age. Not one politician ever mentions this.
"The tree hugger nazis should be hit with this law next."
Several years ago I came across an article that I kept because I thought it was insightful: "Street Gangs-Future Paramilitary Groups?" (Published in The Police Chief magazine, June 1996, pp. 54-58). It's a very interesting article (written in 1996) about how street gangs might "morph" into terrorist groups. Clearly folks were thinking about this scenario long before 9/11.
OK, looking over the article I found, it appears that there is no reference to an actual federal statute, but that the Federal Protective Services (a division of the Department of Homeland Security) were investigating a man charged with violating a state law (against "3rd-degree harassment"), out of some stated (and ridiculous, I might add) concern about terrorism.
Some gangs are different from others. In the South Bronx, there virtually were no police during the worst years, and gangs formed to defend their territories. Whether they also dealt in drugs or terrorized people probably depended on the particular gang and its leaders. But at least some gangs basically protected their territory and the people belonging to it in the absence of any law. From what I have heard the gangs in L.A., for instance, are quite different.
In any case, I don't think we disagree about this. Murder is murder, and they don't need the terrorism laws to deal with it. They do need the terrorism laws to deal with Islamic terrorists, who represent a different kind of threat.
I'm not defending this particular group. If they murdered a young girl, there are murder laws to deal with it.
Considering that Al Qaeda has tried to recruit Islamic militants in prisons, I don't think this law is too much of a stretch. Why shouldn't street gangs be classified as domestic terrorism?
"Gangs do have a sense of honor." LoL that is some hilarious stuff.
These are punks without a shred of "honor" and they don't nobly face off against their rivals but throw up gang signals which if not responded too correctly produces a hail of bullets. There have been dozens, if not hundreds, of innocent kids killed by these PoS in Chicago alone this year, and thousands nationwide.
There in no honor in a street gang. They are terrorist pure and simple and anything that can be used to destroy them should be. Personally I would declare martial law in the areas they control and smash them once and for all.
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