It raises a good point, though. Once upon a time, executions took place in public where citizens could observe what their government does in their name.
Compared to the shame with which the US kills people, you almost have to admire Saudi Arabia's public beheadings. At least it's honest, and actually provides some deterrent value. Good old-fashioned barbarism has its advantages.
if a murderer should be released or escape from prison
I've never understood this argument. If a murderer is legally released, that should mean that on our best evidence, we believe the offender is unlikely to reoffend, or that we didn't have sufficient evidence to incarcerate them in the first place. In either case, having executed them first is an abomination.
As for the escape argument, saying that we should kill people because the prison system sucks at its primary job isn't exactly the most persuasive line of thinking I've ever heard. (Or is the argument that we should pre-punish inmates for escaping before they do?) That's quite apart from the fact that almost exactly nobody escapes from correctional institutions these days; they're pretty much all from work release or work camps.
I don't really see a criminals behavior changing if there isn't a death penalty [...]
Well, there's always the broken windows theory. If we live in a society where it's normal to believe that some people don't deserve to live, this could (in theory) result in more homicide.
On the contrary, it fits definition 2 perfectly, definition 3 slightly, and definition 1 not at all. Copyright infringement is appropriation without right. It is not taking property.
I think that the confusion is that it's more-or-less correct to call it "stealing", but it is not correct to call it "theft". "Theft" is a legal term, and "stealing" is not.
Why did I choose 1995? Simple. The Australian government started cracking down on gun ownership in 1996.
If you look at the long-term trend, you can see that 1995 was an unusually non-violent year. If you take a rolling average, there is a distinct downward trend from 1997 (the first year of the buyback) onwards.
To put it another way: There is no clash between privacy and security. Privacy is security.
The word "security", or any variant thereof, appears exactly once in the US Constitution: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated [...]"
Unfortunately, these are the same people that are easily exploited and swayed into terrorist acts.
If they're that malleable, then they should be able to be steered into being a productive member of society instead of being a criminal. The FBI had a choice about which they could do. They chose the one which would give them a headline and a story on Slashdot.
Clergy of all kinds often have qualifications in psychology or counselling, because that's part of the job description. This is just a guess, but I'd say that while "nutjob" isn't a diagnosis, the mechanism by which said nutjobs are spotted is "science".
What makes him dangerous is filling his head with dangerous thoughts. The vast majority, if not all, of the people whom the FBI have entrapped in the past are some of the more vulnerable members of society: people without a strong social support structure, part of a marginalised community, often poor, often unemployed, and so on.
It's a fundamental axiom of modern policing that the best way to stop crime is to stop people from becoming criminals in the first place. If someone is at risk of becoming a criminal, the best thing you can do is divert them away from that as early as possible. For the FBI to turn a non-criminal into a criminal is not just a failure, it's sociopathic.
Extract the most restrictive cities (with their severe gang problems) and the US has one of the lowest firearm homicide rates in the world.
Help me out here, because I honestly don't understand the argument. The five cities in the US with the highest violent crime rates are, in descending order: Detroit, St. Louis, Oakland, Memphis, and Birmingham (AL). Which of these are "restrictive" by your criteria, and compared to what?
Note that I'm not actually making the argument that the US has a high firearm homicide rate (although it does among stable democracies). However, it's also worth pointing out that the US has ne of the highest firearm suicide rates in the world. Statistically speaking, if you own a gun, the person most likely to be killed by it is you.
The Howard gun laws did nothing statistically speaking, there's even a research paper which shows that there are no statistical breaks as a result from the gun buyback.
ABS and AIC statistics are pretty clear that death and injuries due to firearms in Australia (locally) peaked in the year of the buyback, and has steadily decreased in all years since. Data on homicides and data on suicides are available for your own analysis if you don't believe the statisticians.
Look at all the success the gun nuts have had in preventing the government from spying on everyone, everything, and everywhere!
That's just a recent example. Look at what happened in WW2, where gun owners bravely prevented actual rounding up of US citizens and putting them in camps.
(Incidentally, you might want to think about how well it would have turned out if those citizens being rounded up armed themselves for protection from the oppressive government.)
Please name one Oppressive state/Tyranny without any gun control laws.
All countries have some gun control laws, so I'm going to interpret the question as talking about gun control at the rough level of the US or lower.
There have been several such countries in recent history. Ba'ath-era Iraq is probably the most obvious example. Pakistan has a bit of a human rights problem, too.
Slashdot Mirror
Every one of the AC's points is incorrect except the first: There is no "charge of rape".
What Russian secret papers do you refer to? What does Wikileaks have on Russia that it hasn't (yet) published?
If ISIS ever makes it as far as Oklahoma, we all have bigger problems than execution methods.
Be serious. Escape from prison in the US is so rare that it's basically statistical noise.
It raises a good point, though. Once upon a time, executions took place in public where citizens could observe what their government does in their name.
Compared to the shame with which the US kills people, you almost have to admire Saudi Arabia's public beheadings. At least it's honest, and actually provides some deterrent value. Good old-fashioned barbarism has its advantages.
I've never understood this argument. If a murderer is legally released, that should mean that on our best evidence, we believe the offender is unlikely to reoffend, or that we didn't have sufficient evidence to incarcerate them in the first place. In either case, having executed them first is an abomination.
As for the escape argument, saying that we should kill people because the prison system sucks at its primary job isn't exactly the most persuasive line of thinking I've ever heard. (Or is the argument that we should pre-punish inmates for escaping before they do?) That's quite apart from the fact that almost exactly nobody escapes from correctional institutions these days; they're pretty much all from work release or work camps.
Well, there's always the broken windows theory. If we live in a society where it's normal to believe that some people don't deserve to live, this could (in theory) result in more homicide.
Precisely what problem does execution solve that "life without possibility" doesn't?
It's certainly not cost; executing someone costs far more than life does.
If it's prison overcrowding that's the issue, we have better ways to manage that, like not incarcerating so many non-violent offenders.
There is no way that a public sector developer can make anywhere near $210k. Contractor, perhaps. Employee, no chance.
On the contrary, it fits definition 2 perfectly, definition 3 slightly, and definition 1 not at all. Copyright infringement is appropriation without right. It is not taking property.
I think that the confusion is that it's more-or-less correct to call it "stealing", but it is not correct to call it "theft". "Theft" is a legal term, and "stealing" is not.
It's spelled "cockatoo". HTH!
Why did I choose 1995? Simple. The Australian government started cracking down on gun ownership in 1996.
If you look at the long-term trend, you can see that 1995 was an unusually non-violent year. If you take a rolling average, there is a distinct downward trend from 1997 (the first year of the buyback) onwards.
We should work with the Muslim community to help people who are at risk to become productive members of society.
To put it another way: There is no clash between privacy and security. Privacy is security.
The word "security", or any variant thereof, appears exactly once in the US Constitution: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated [...]"
Regulations don't always appear in Lexis. They aren't laws, but they are laws.
If they're that malleable, then they should be able to be steered into being a productive member of society instead of being a criminal. The FBI had a choice about which they could do. They chose the one which would give them a headline and a story on Slashdot.
It's not even the number of arrests that's the issue, but the number of crimes prevented.
Better to prevent a crime by steering a vulnerable person away from a life of crime in the first place than to arrest them for a crime you set up.
Clergy of all kinds often have qualifications in psychology or counselling, because that's part of the job description. This is just a guess, but I'd say that while "nutjob" isn't a diagnosis, the mechanism by which said nutjobs are spotted is "science".
What makes him dangerous is filling his head with dangerous thoughts. The vast majority, if not all, of the people whom the FBI have entrapped in the past are some of the more vulnerable members of society: people without a strong social support structure, part of a marginalised community, often poor, often unemployed, and so on.
It's a fundamental axiom of modern policing that the best way to stop crime is to stop people from becoming criminals in the first place. If someone is at risk of becoming a criminal, the best thing you can do is divert them away from that as early as possible. For the FBI to turn a non-criminal into a criminal is not just a failure, it's sociopathic.
That's a cherrypicked year, and you know it. Try the 10-year average 1985-1995 vs 2000-2010 or something like that.
Extract the most restrictive cities (with their severe gang problems) and the US has one of the lowest firearm homicide rates in the world.
Help me out here, because I honestly don't understand the argument. The five cities in the US with the highest violent crime rates are, in descending order: Detroit, St. Louis, Oakland, Memphis, and Birmingham (AL). Which of these are "restrictive" by your criteria, and compared to what?
Note that I'm not actually making the argument that the US has a high firearm homicide rate (although it does among stable democracies). However, it's also worth pointing out that the US has ne of the highest firearm suicide rates in the world. Statistically speaking, if you own a gun, the person most likely to be killed by it is you.
Mexico knows all about that border. It's where narcoterrorists get their guns from.
The Howard gun laws did nothing statistically speaking, there's even a research paper which shows that there are no statistical breaks as a result from the gun buyback.
ABS and AIC statistics are pretty clear that death and injuries due to firearms in Australia (locally) peaked in the year of the buyback, and has steadily decreased in all years since. Data on homicides and data on suicides are available for your own analysis if you don't believe the statisticians.
Look at all the success the gun nuts have had in preventing the government from spying on everyone, everything, and everywhere!
That's just a recent example. Look at what happened in WW2, where gun owners bravely prevented actual rounding up of US citizens and putting them in camps.
(Incidentally, you might want to think about how well it would have turned out if those citizens being rounded up armed themselves for protection from the oppressive government.)
All countries have some gun control laws, so I'm going to interpret the question as talking about gun control at the rough level of the US or lower.
There have been several such countries in recent history. Ba'ath-era Iraq is probably the most obvious example. Pakistan has a bit of a human rights problem, too.