Yes.
I would think “really? pianos are banned. That’s kind of dumb.” I might even help them try to change the law to un-ban pianos.
But in the meantime, until the day the law changes, anyone who pounds out Heart & Soul is saying that dah-dah-di-di-dah-dah-di-di-dah-dah-di-di-dah-dah-di-di is more important to them than staying out of jail.
Absolute, you shock and disturb me. What else could be outlawed and you’d feel fine with the offenders going to prison? Go to a movie, get 20-to-life? What do you expect people to do on a Friday night, hold still and stare at the wall?
Sometimes, “working to change the law” involves the masses breaking it. Slavery being the most noble example, but what about the disaster of Prohibition? Countless people have been working to remove the worse-than-useless ban on weed, and so far, the shitheads who want criminal penalties have won the day. Perhaps some of us do not acknowledge their legitimacy. Yeah, they have the guns. We got the numbers.
Perhaps I
…could be so bold as to…
I suspect this is a rather disingenuous (on the DOJ’s and lawmakers’ parts, not on yours). Many, if not most, jurisdictions have “possession with intent to distribute” laws, which automatically presume that if you are carrying more than a certain amount of drugs on you, you plan to distribute it. The amounts in question can be laughably small, such that casual drug users who happen to buy a few doses at a time, or who grow their own marijuana, for their own personal use are convicted as “dealers”.
Yes, Absolute, can’t you see the fascist undertones of you daring to suggest that smoking weed isn’t comparable to the civil rights movement? What could be more American…nay, human, than toking up? That this basic human freedom wasn’t mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, quite frankly, shocks the hell out of me, and is probably Bush’s fault. No, the true criminals are those who don’t regularly smoke pot, and if you don’t believe that, you not only hate America, freedom, and your mom, but it will undoubtedly lead to the government banning the letter “E,” because that’s exactly the same thing. Do you support banning the letter “E”? Do you, Absolute?
Nazi.
Absolute - you know, (I assume), that it’s against the law to drive drunk. Do you ever drink at all, then drive? How do you know your BAL unless you have used a breathalyzer?
Have you ever ‘borrowed’ a prescription pain killer from a friend? that’s a 7 year felony in my state. And, actually, pain killers are prescribed for a specific event (like getting in a car accident or some other injury), so keeping them around to take the next time you get hurt may also be using them w/o a legal prescription.
how about mail order/ internet purchases? do you keep track of those so you can pay the required sales/use taxes for your jurisdiction? if not, that’s against the law, too.
In my jurisdiction, there’s a law against ‘seduction’, defined as the ‘seduction or debauching of an unmarried female’. ever done that one?
SA, do you extend this attitude to, say, gun owners who are not in compliance with gun possession laws, but are otherwise law-abiding?
If so, you’re one of the few conservatives I know who think “it’s just that simple”. While ‘law and order’ is a tenet of modern conservatism, another is the desire to reduce intrusive government.
E.g., Randy Weaver broke the law, but I can’t remember any of my conservative friends saying that he got what he deserved.
Banning caffeine would do more harm than good, IMHO. In addition to coffee-addicts in withdrawal, you’ll have hordes of PMSing women with no chocolate. That’s just dangerous man 
And what’s more, gun advocates frequently beat Bill Clinton and Janet Reno up over that and Waco, so not only do they not say that Randy Weaver got what he deserved, they back him to the hilt!
That said, there has to be some means of enforcement. If you have no teeth in the tax law, I can guarantee you that I’m never paying taxes again. With regard to your example, I don’t go out of my way to turn anybody in (not a particular bias towards gun owners, just a general “mind my own business” philosophy), but were someone to be doing something blatantly illegal or unsafe with a gun, I would turn them in, and I wouldn’t be overly concerned about what happened to them as a result. You do not make mistakes with weapons. Period.
What if the government outlawed freedom of speech? Would there be no sympathy for people jailed for expressing personal views? I can’t understand this “if it’s illegal and you go to jail because you do it, I have no sympathy” type of thinking.
…proclaim that if sodomizing goats is wrong, I don’t want to be right!
So if you were on a parole board, and the comic book reader wanted to be let out early, would you look at him sternly and say “Son, I know it may seem silly that comic books are banned, but you made your bed and now you can lie in it. PAROLE DENIED!” If the answer is no, then you must have SOME level of sympathy going on for the lawbreakers. Just a teensy weensy little bit. Or maybe you’re just completely heartless.
I don’t mean to speak for Absolute, but since I tend to agree with him on this issue, I’ll give my input.
I do illegal things all the time. Nothing big, mind you. But, for example, I speed…a lot…all the fucking time. I make an illegal turn on red every day on my way to work. I buy things from Amazon and don’t pay the sales tax to the state at the end of the year. I tear the tags off mattresses!!! (Oh wait…nevermind that last one.)
I do these things because I don’t like the laws that forbid them. HOWEVER…I fully expect that if I get bustedfor any of these things, I’ll have to pay the consequences. I wouldn’t even feel sorry for myself if I were punished for willfully breaking a law which I knew existed.
I don’t smoke pot. But if I did, I’d expect to be punished if I were caught, and I’d have no one to blame but myself. That’s because I’d know it was fucking illegal when I did it.
Maybe they could ban guns instead. Would that be okay with you?
Less Pit postings about “OMG someone I knew almost shot the super bowl!!”.
-Joe
Where does Absolute say that he never ever breaks the law? Furthermore, are you seriously saying that driving drunk shouldn’t be against the law??
Does he live in your jurisdiction? If not, what does it matter? In any case, you’re missing Absolute’s point entirely. He’s saying that if you intentionally break the law, you shouldn’t be surprised by the consequences of that law.
Now, sure, the criminality of pot is one of the best kept secrets in today’s world :rolleyes: , so it wouldn’t surprise me that nobody at all *ever * realized there might *possibly * be consequences for it. But I tell you what. You grow, smoke, and sell all the weed you want and provide evidence of that to the police. I’ll nail as many unmarried women as I can in your jurisdiction (with my wife’s permission of course - in the name of progress, I’m sure she’d allow it), and I’ll go brag…I mean confess…to the local police, and we’ll see what consequences arise from both.
Stalkers on the left, please. With the strawmen.
Stalkers? For remembering a histrionic OP from a couple weeks ago? Sorry, don’t want people to potentially remember something, don’t post it.
So, guns are banned. How’d you feel about people being arrested for that? “Got what they deserved” or “Righteously fighting the system”?
-Joe
This OP? Hell, I’ll link to it. I still stand by it, and got some comforting words from some non-dickhead posters. Not sure it has fuck-all to do with this, but whatever turns you on, cowboy. You got a problem with my post, pit it.
How would I feel if guns were banned? Then I’d expect people who illegally had guns to be arrested. That wasn’t so hard. I’d also sit back and wait for the courts to overturn a sweeping gun ban, and if that didn’t happen I’d work towards legislation that would repeal those laws, including supporting candidates, donating money and time to the cause, and making my voice heard.
What I wouldn’t do is buy a fucking gun, and since I don’t own a gun now (or use drugs, or drink and drive, or sleep with unmarried women), I’m not sure what point you’re trying to prove.
Next question, sunshine.
There are some good posts here already about the oddity of sending pot smokers to prison, however there are plenty of other people in prison for drug sentances that don’t belong in there either. There used to be something that’s commonly referred to as the "carrier weight law " wherein someone charged with selling LSD wouldn’t be charged with selling the actual amount of the drug, but the combined weight of the medium used for delivery, ie they would weigh the paper or the sugar cube or what have you and charge them with selling thousands of times more of the drug than they had transferred. This resulted in felony convictions as opposed to misdemenor sentances and placed plenty more non-violent drug offenders into prison.
I’m not even going to get into the differance in sentancing guidelines between rock cocaine and powederd cocaine (hint, the one that poorer people are more likely to posess carries a much harsher sentance than the one that richer people tend to possess).
The point is that the War on Drugs has wrongly incarcerated thousands of Americans for things other than just marijuana, but many of these convicts are no more a danger to society than your average Cheech and Chong fan.
What’s the problem? Incarceration is big business. I view this as an unqualified success of our “service economy”!
Besides, it isn’t as tho there are any pressing issues that are more important than legislators grandstanding that they are “tough on crime” (as sure a vote-getter as there is.)