TAX VIOLENCE

The front page of the New York Daily News called it right.  The NRA is beginning to lose some of its power as they continually sell fear.  Gun deaths have risen as gun ownership hits the roof. The Republicans refuse to put forth reasonable gun control laws. No one could ever strip Americans of their guns, there are too many out there.

Reasonable control of loopholes could prevent needless deaths from assault rifles. I’ve heard it said that as soon as you ban assault rifles that can kill 50 people in less than 50 seconds, the NRA, the main gun manufacturer, will find a way around it. Plastic guns, do it yourself kits, convertible guns. It is time to regulate the manufacturer or put them out of business. Their business is profit from killing people. If every bullet made for assault rifles had a 1000% tax, it would reduce the number of bullets some individuals could afford to buy. If bullet making supplies surge, they too must be taxed to match the damage. Make it the law that all guns and  bullets must be purchased by check. The check is held until extensive background checks are cleared for ownership.  When the check clears the bank, the buyer is notified and can pick up  the gun. The same goes for gun show and on-line purchases. Gun shows should also be regulated. When they set up, all guns on the table are chained models. No buyer can walk away with a gun from the gun show. Gun shows have to have a security guard to check that rules are being followed. When a gun is sold at a gun show, the check is photocopied, and the gun show owner can place the item purchased in a safe controlled by the security guard for eventual pick-up. We are dealing with a killing product, like poison. It must have strict controls. Tax violence.

And what is the true cost of gun ownership? Jennifer Longdon, shot in the spine in a drive-by shooting, spent 5 months in the hospital, and came out a T-4 paraplegic. She can move her head, talk and breath. Her care costs $5 million. Why isn’t the NRA responsible for her around the clock, permanent care? They produced and profit from an unsafe product that has no practical use outside of war . It she were injured by a stroller, a bike, or a faulty plane, the manufacture would be responsible.
In ten years, 750,000 Americans have been injured by gunshots. And, 320,000 have been killed. Not counting the most recent mass shootings. Twenty thousand commit suicide with a gun each year and 11,000 people are murdered with a firearm each year.

Gun deaths are about to surpass car accidents as the leading cause of death.
The cost to you and me?   The national average cost to taxpayers is $700 per person for gun violence. Wyoming has the nation's highest rate of gun deaths despite its low population. The cost per capita in Wyoming? $1,397 per person.
Louisiana has the highest gun homicide rate, 9.4 per 100,000 residents. Nearly half the households in the state own a gun. Cost per capita? $1,600.

It is insane. I personally know of a young paper-boy who accidentally injured his sister playing with his father’s gun. Life for him, and his family, will never be the same. His guilt was so deep, though his parents and even his sister who is confined  to a wheelchair, are forgiving and understanding. Counseling didn’t help. He continually does self-destructive things, like stealing, getting into accidents, looking for punishment. Tragic.

We all vote. Let’s make reasonable gun control happen.

SHOULD WE END THE DEATH PENALTY?

On  November 6th, 2012,  California voters will be presented with Proposition 34, which would end the state’s death penalty and instead require mandatory life sentences, without parole, for condemned inmates.
Specifically, Proposition 34 will:

• Repeal the death penalty as maximum punishment for persons found guilty of murder and replace it with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
• Apply retroactively to persons already sentenced to death. (725)
• Require persons found guilty of murder to work while in prison, with their wages to be applied to any victim restitution fines or orders against them.
• Create a $100 million fund to be distributed to law enforcement agencies to help solve more homicide and rape cases.

I have a friend who is dead set against this bill. He espouses the idea that death by injection as cruel and unusual punishment is “bull”. And, I agree. However, the people required to kill 725 people are civil servants who work for the system. The find it difficult to participate in killing another human being. Physicians find it difficult to administer death to a healthy person. Life in prison is by some estimates a harsher punishment than death. Over the years, I was  a supporter of the death penalty. The recent spate of people released from prison, and death row, across the country, found innocent of their crimes after yeas in prison, made me change my mind. Most of them were exonerated by DNA testing. The expense of the death penalty alone gives me pause. It costs more to follow the “safeguards” with appeals and extra legal maneuvering before a man is executed, a process that often takes years, than it is to keep him for life.  I think voters should approve Prop. 34, for all the reasons below:
The death penalty doesn’t work. It has been proven that it does not deter heinous crime, especially in the drug crazed world we now live in.
A crime carrying the death penalty isn’t qualified equally in communities around the state. It depends on a seated judge’s interpretation.  Juries are harder to seat when they are faced with the power to condemn a person to death which greatly adds to the cost of trials subject to the death penalty.
Proponents have spent years trying to speed up executions, including creating a Habeas Corpus Resource Center in 1998. And yet,  California has only executed 13 condemned murderers since 1992. More condemned men have died while waiting on death row than have been executed.
Supporters say California could institute laws for speedy executions as they do in Texas. But we’d do so risking the same kind of legal errors and unequal application that has tarnished Texas’ judicial system. Killing innocent people, does not go down well, nor should it happen.
Ending the death penalty would save California courts $50 million annually for appellate litigation according to Legislative Annalists.  My friend claims that is because attorneys  pad their fees and take advantage of the governments deep pockets. If that is true, more the reason to do without the death penalty. There is no doubt that money would be saved because in all respects, death penalty cases are much more expensive to put to trial.
And, in California, looming is an expensive upgrade to the death row at San Quentin.
Altogether, ending the death penalty would save California about $100 million in the first few years, and about $130 million in subsequent years, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Under Proposition 34, the same prisoners  would be given jobs in prison, unless they posed too great a risk to be with the general population. Like other murderers, these inmates would have their pay deducted for any debts they owe to victims of crime.
Supporters of the death penalty say it is an affront to the families of victims to see these murderer’s live while their loved one died by those same hands. But how long must they wait when the system is not working? And, what guilt would they feel if the convicted man were executed and another inmate confessed to that crime sometime down the line, which has happened? Or, if DNA evidence proved him innocent after the execution?
How can we as humans, claim we abhor violence and then engage in it?
Manson, a heinous killer, is still in prison and routinely comes before a parole board and repeatedly, and endlessly (he complains) will be turned down. Prop. 34 would do away with those expensive hearings that come up every so many years, and the attorneys who represent them in these hearings. There are monsters in society and living with no hope of parole can allow the prisoner to accept his situation and engage in work that provides some small restitution to victims. It is simply more humane.
The Sacramento Bee made this point: If California were to implement life sentences with no possibility of parole, high-profile murderers such as Ramirez and Rhoades would no longer get the attention they crave and often receive on San Quentin’s death row.They’d live out their lonely days behind bars and die in relative obscurity. That would be a just end, and one that we all could count on.
I would add to that. No murderer should be allowed to make money on the sensationalism of his crime by publishing a book. He can write it, but he cannot publish it.