peacefuljeffrey

Do you really want to argue that because someone committed a certain crime, he does NOT retain his Constitutional rights? Is that really your premise? And would you please link me to the post you say offended you in Bonfire? I have forgotten what was said, and maybe I would want to restate my position. I honestly don't recall saying "good riddance" about your brother. Maybe I said it and don't remember; maybe you read something into what I did say that wasn't there. I dunno. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I am not able to watch such videos on the computer I'm using. I'll have to take your word for it. lmwb, you're right, this matter doesn't really concern "being stupid" -- that would be more of an issue if the kid were just trying to use a fake gun to rob people. Why does a suicide have to involve innocent people at a school? Forget about stupid, this kid is just SELFISH. HE wants to die, so he is going to endanger the hostage and others by introducing the notion of necessitated police gunfire in the school? He forced the cops' hand: what if the cop's shot had missed the hostage taker and hit the hostage. Here's an idea: There are plenty of tall-ish buildings around. If you want to kill yourself, forget about guns -- just jump off a roof. Save others the trouble, and don't put your death on someone else's head because you forced him to kill you. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Same here. People's willingness to submit to intrusion, based on the weak, lame-ass argument that somehow it will improve or protect society, "make us safer," is something I find very troubling. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

It is indeed a crappy idea, particularly because it pretends like we have 50+ year, indestructible power cells, and that they're small enough to be placed along with their associated electronic devices, somewhere inside existing gun designs. Really. Really. Really, people -- what the fuck is a guy SO STUPID doing in anelected position of leadership?! Shropshire, if it worked as you said, it would not be "GPS," per se... - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

shropshire, good post! +1 I really am astounded by the way so very many people here are debasing themselves to cheer this murder. On the one hand, they want civilization, i.e. people not to molest kids. And on the other hand, they cheer vigilante justice. If that guy who murdered the priest never did murder the priest, I wonder how many people here would think he's such a great guy, convicted murderer that he is. But then, he does what they secretly (in the moments when they think God is not listening, I guess) wish for someone other than them to go and kill the priest because they're so indignant that he was a child molester -- and suddenly a MURDERER is a HERO?! And we wonder why we live in such a fucked up world?! The inmates are running this fucking asylum, people. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I look at that photo of the "pellet gun" and I think that CNN screwed up and posted a picture of a REAL handgun -- as in "firearm." I have never seen such a realistic-looking pellet gun. As I said, that magazine well, those control levers... I really think that's a picture of a real gun, not the pellet gun allegedly taken from the teenager. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Where are these tiny, microchip-sized GPS devices that can so easily be "retrofitted" into existing guns?! Is this guy a MORON or what?! What would indefinitely power a GPS device that is small enough to be put into a typical handgun? How would it be madeso that it could not be disabled by a determined criminal? Does this jerkoff understand that the GPS satellite system does not know that your GPS handheld receiver (read that again: RECEIVER) is receiving its locator signal? In other words, consumer GPS devices do not talk to the satellites. They receive the signals from the satellites which tell the device where it is located on the earth. The power to send a continuous (or even just continual) signal to the satellites to talk back and forth would be far too great a requirement for the standard handheld GPS to manage. And would you want this thing right near you blasting out enough radio waves to reach space? People bitch about the alleged cancer-causing radiation from cellular phones that have only to broadcast to a cell tower 1/2 mile away... - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Um, and a clever criminal who stole a gun would not be able to maybe DROP it a few times and destroy the sensitive electronics in the GPS device implanted in it? A city councilor who suggests such an idiotic science fiction non-solution, unable to see the obvious flaws in the plan's workability, does not deserve to be a "leader." - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

This is what I agree with. Humans are resilient, and they can bounce back from being abused. They cannot bounce back from being murdered; hence, I believe that murder is a more severe crime against someone than molesting or raping them is. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Ironically, that was not one of my posts in which I was trying to get a thread-related message across. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Student takes hostage with pellet gun, is shot by police Okay, this link has the CNN story about this. They have a photo with a caption that says, "The Seminole County sheriff said his deputies thought this pellet gun was a 9 mm handgun." That fuckin' gun looks REAL. I mean, you can see the takedown lever, the hammer is back, the slide stop lever looks real, the magazine release looks real... You can see up into the magazine well, for cripes sake! I cannot and will not blame a cop for mistaking that for a real gun, and therefore a major deadly threat, and shooting the kid. What kind of idiot kid pulls such a dumb stunt, anyway? If kids weren't so dumb, and cracked open a newspaper once in a friggin' while, they'd read about similar situations and they'd learn that COPS WILL SHOOT YOU REGARDLESS OF WHETHER YOUR GUN IS A FAKE OR NOT BECAUSE THEY CAN'T RISK THE CHANCE THAT IT'S REAL. But kids don't bother to read or pay attention to the news, so they never learn stuff like that. And I don't think the schools spend time teaching, "How not to do something stupid enough that the cops'll shoot you for it," because knowing that is taken for granted. (I've attached the jpg photo from the website.) - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Bill, I've been avoiding "personal attack"-type statements with alacrity since being back. I would hope you recognize this fact. That comment was intended to underscore my worry about people who care so much about "children" that they would endanger their own ability to remain present in their children's lives because they need to go out and kill molesters. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Sorry about your loss of your daughter. As I said before, it is perfectly legal for you to intervene with deadly force if you come upon someone in the act of a forcible rape. Have at it! I support killing such a fucker immediately. A murderer claiming to have moral high ground to murder molesters is a hypocrite. His "morals" are void by virtue of being a murderer. You are actually arguing for the right of murderers to make life-or-death judgments. That's fuckin' madness. I suggest that your judgment is clouded by excessive protectionism of children. If you weren't blinded by this need to make sure children are hyper-protected from harm, you'd see that you are arguing a very indefensible position. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

God damn, isn't that what I've been fuckin' saying all along?! How come I get lambasted for it? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Well it is San Francisco. I'm surprised they didn't mistake it for a dildo. They'll probably do DNA tests on it to determine if that perhaps happened before they found it. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

That's my view, too. Anyone who is released from prison ought to be someone that we feel is worthy of having all his rights and freedoms restored. If we don't feel good enough about him to give him that, it's proof that we really don't feel he should be out of prison, and sentences should be adjusted to reflect that. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

If the state has the power to "invade the privacy" of sex offenders, it has the power to "invade the privacy" of any offender. Constitutional rights, and their retention, are not prejudiced based on the type of crime of which one is guilty. Either you support the idea of keeping tabs on people who have been convicted but have "paid their debt" or you do not. You can't have a double standard. PLENTY of violent offenders repeat their crimes -- do you honestly believe there's a shortage of recidivists, when every day you open the paper and there's the story of a guy with "a lengthy criminal record" doing another crime against someone? And in direct answer to your first question, there is no conflict in my position: the former is an invasion of someone NOT convicted of ANYTHING; the latter is a penalty aspect of having been convicted of a crime. If, as you say, the state has no sway over someone once he's paid his debt, then convicts would across-the-board have all of their former rights back. As it stands, it is a great challenge to be a felon and get back your rights to vote and own guns. Do you have a problem with that, too? Or do you want the sentence to be the sentence, and when the guy is let out of jail -- EVEN A MURDERER -- he gets his gun rights back? It's easy to say you want people's punishment to be the prison time. The problem is, we note that we can't keep a burglar or something in prison til he dies, but we also recognize that he did demonstrate what kind of person he is, and he's unlikely to have just magically changed while in prison. My own position is that if you get a prison sentence and serve it completely, when you get let out, you should have all of your rights restored automatically. But I feel that if that's going to happen, far more people need to be in prison til the day they die. -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

If, by your hyperbole, you mean you oppose all those people having to register, should I take you to mean that you don't think sex offenders should have to register? I mean, I didn't offer the suggestion that nose-pickers should have to register; I said "violent criminals". How does it serve a community to know where the sex offenders are -- who are mostly a threat to children and women -- but not to know where the violent criminals are, who are a threat to everyone? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

The people offering you a job. It's their house, you play by their rules. - Jim Yes, well WHY is it considered FAIR GAME for them to care about what you do on your own time in the first place?! Forget about whether they are allowed to make these stipulations. IS IT [I]RIGHT[/I] FOR THEM TO INTRUDE THIS WAY IN THE FIRST PLACE? I say No. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Gave birth to "a" daughter, eh? You'd better mean "their" daughter! ... That's great news! Congratulations, Tom & Mom!

He's probably too cool to use the internet in the first place! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Not weird at all! I have something like 10 or so books about knots. Any of you have the king of all of them -- The Ashley Book of Knots? I'm lucky: my brother bought it for me as a birthday gift a few years ago.

Decaf PEPSI, maybe. I don't drink coffee -- and if I did, I would never be sucker enough to pay the outrageous prices for Starbucks! People gotta be out of their mofuckin' minds, paying $4 and up for a fucking cup of coffee! And then they'll bitch about the price of gasoline. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

What kind of stupid-ass accusation is that?! I said it was a bomb because THAT'S WHAT THE FUCKING NEWS STORY SAID! I should have somehow known that they would say "bomb" when they didn't know it was a bomb? There are supposed to be, um, you know, experts who know about this kind of stuff? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

"Because if you're not doing anything wrong and have nothing to hide, you shouldn't mind." People have lost their grip on the notion that we should not have to live our lives suspected all the time -- by our government, by our employers -- and because SOME people don't care about the right to be left alone and treated as innocent, ALL of us end up subject to the things they don't object to. -Jeffrey What's wrong with me smoking weed in the privacy of my own home if it doesn't affect my ability to do my job successfully? Read what I wrote, again. I was not siding with those who would put such restrictions on you. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"