02-20-2018, 09:30 AM
(02-20-2018, 07:58 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Hmmm. In the recent case, one who tortures animals could become a felon. Felons lose the right to keep and bear arms. There is presumably due process involved in making the perp a felon.
It would be a problem in principle if a state were to make someone a felon who had not done harm or infringed the rights of another.
But a cruelty-to-animals conviction for a juvenile is likely to be sealed at 18 or 21. There's cruelty in the form of neglect (leave for a day-trip that becomes a week-long excursion, and you leave the pooch behind with no ready supply of water or food) and active cruelty (like taking a neighbor's pet cat and throwing it to alligators). One is a goof; the other is unmitigated evil.
Maybe the records should not be sealed for purposes of gun permits, especially for cruelty to animals and fire-setting, two parts of the MacDonald Triad (bed-wetting is not a crime) that has a high correlation to criminal sociopathy.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.