Re: Another Motivation for the CDA (Federal Sentencing Guid

[frantz@netcom.com (Bill Frantz)]

At  2:08 AM 3/10/96 -0500, JonWienke@aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 96-03-09 04:05:26 EST, you write:
>
>>At  9:59 PM 3/8/96 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote:
>>>The pizza guy was a thug, but twice as many third-strikers got
>>>their third strike for marijuana as for all violent crimes combined.
>>>I assume most of these had large quantities, possibly intended for sale,
>>>and a number of them had real crimes as their previous felonies
>>>rather than Prohibition-related offenses.  But you can get legally
>>>serious quantities of marijuana by just growing a couple of plants.
>>
>>I wonder how many of these drug dealers previous "real crimes" were related
>>to using violence to protect their drug business, defense which would have
>>used the courts and police had drug dealing been legal.
>
>What difference does that make?  If you are deranged enough to murder someone
>because they are selling crack in your territory, you are deranged enough to
>shoot your manager after getting fired from McDonalds, or to do any number of
>heinous things that ahve nothing to do with drug laws.  Sick people will
>still do sick things, even if some of them are legalized.

Back over 20 years ago, some acquaintances at the time stopped working in
the drug trade because it became necessary to carry fire arms to protect
against having your drugs or money stolen.  Other people of course carried
the guns, and I assume used them at times.  This violence would not have
occurred had the drug trade been legal.

Remember that here in California, about 70% of the people think killing
someone is a suitable punishment for certain crimes.  Many people also
think that violence in defense of life or property is a reasonable act. 
Are all these people "deranged"?

Bill


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