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Max M maxm@maxmcorp.dk Wrote:
>If furthermore you decide to carry a weapon there is a bigger risk of
>using it, because you have actually decided to do it beforehand.
If everybody carried a gun it's not clear if there would be more violence or less. If somebody lost control of their temper the odds of them committing a murder rather than just inflicting a punch in the nose would increase, but on the other hand the odds of them actually lousing control of their temper would decrease because they'd know they probably wouldn't survive such an encounter. Also massacre spree killing would be virtually impossible.
>Your theory is that the fear of a long sentence will make them think
>twice about programming themself for violence.
If a criminally violent person is in jail at least he will be unable to act violently against me, although he can still murder other prisoners and often does just that. If a man is convicted of murder and yet manages to kill again then that is as great a failure of the legal system as executing an innocent person. For this and other reasons I don't think anybody should be in jail longer than 10 years.
>This is indeed a logical conclusion. The only problem is that the
>punishment does not seem to have the wanted effect. Thus the empirical
>data does not support the theory.
If I believed that I would advocate opening all the prisons and letting everybody out. I don't.
>what can we do differently to make them run the right program?
Apply the proper voltage, they won't run the right program but at least they'll never run the wrong one again.
Geoff Fortytwo <ecstaticfuturist@ecstaticfuturist.com>
>It's not ok to slander people when they're alive and it's still not ok
>after they die.
It's not nice to slander people but it should never be the law's business. Let the reader determine for himself if what I say is true or not. If it really is slander then my own reputation will soon suffer more than the person I talk about. I hope our British list members will correct me if I'm wrong but there I don't think a distinction is made between the living and the dead regarding slander. At least the USA hasn't made that blunder yet.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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