THEN THERE WOULD BE A PROBLEM!!!!!!
The logic on your argument is that we should have no punishment for felonies, as anything might be made a felony.
Sorry but I just reject that out of hand. You aren't going to protect yourself from tyranny by removing the punishment for criminal activity. No power that would do one would hesitate because of some earlier action you took.
We have to fight for just and fair laws, enforcement and punishment every day. Creating a low standard for punishment today in order to preempt a bad law tomorrow is no way to run a country.
The problem is that we are way past that point already. There are already numerous bad laws on the books. There are already numerous ways that people can be convicted of felonies for actions most people would find to be innocuous.
"The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior. The volume of federal crimes in recent decades has increased well beyond the statute books and into the morass of the Code of Federal Regulations, handing federal prosecutors an additional trove of vague and exceedingly complex and technical prohibitions to stick on their hapless targets. The dangers spelled out in Three Felonies a Day do not apply solely to “white collar criminals,” state and local politicians, and professionals. No social class or profession is safe from this troubling form of social control by the executive branch, and nothing less than the integrity of our constitutional democracy hangs in the balance."
http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229
Those who would create a totalitarian society first create laws that will make everyone guilty of something..............
“We have to fight for just and fair laws, enforcement and punishment every day. Creating a low standard for punishment today in order to preempt a bad law tomorrow is no way to run a country. “
What about this? Remove all restrictions on “...keep and bear...” and when enough bad lads are left toes up at the scene, they get the message that criminality might not be the best career choice. As to the convicted, restitution would be a better route than punishment by incarceration. That whole “debt to society” thing is pretty nebulous, but paying restitution to the offended party is a bit closer to home. It seems that someone who can learn from a mistake has a better chance of actually doing something to learn from the mistake. Three hots, a cot, and living the lord of the flies doesn’t sound like much more than a higher criminal education.
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