Posts Tagged ‘crime’

You’re sitting in Starbucks having a coffee and relaxing when another customer walks in with a big, shiny handgun in a holster on his hip and heads over to the counter.

Do you:

A)    Hit the deck in the fear that there’s about to be a robbery?

B)     Feel uncomfortable because of the menacing presence of this stranger and his gun in such a non-traditional, non-threatening setting?

C)    Feel reassured due to the presence of an apparently law-abiding citizen who is there to protect you with his crime-deterring gun in case some bad guy shows up?

In many states, seeing a civilian man wearing an unconcealed gun and holster in public may not be such an unusual occurrence. Image credit: © iStockphoto.com/sleddogtwo

Think these are crazy scenarios?

Well, think again.

These kinds of questions are being asked and talked about across the U.S. as the pro-gun and anti-gun lobbies go head-to-head in communities with so-called “open carry” laws. That means that citizens are permitted to legally and openly carry a handgun with them, as long as it is holstered and visible. Some cities and other communities are exempt from such laws, making open carry weapons illegal. OpenCarry.org, a gun rights group that supports open carry rights, maintains a map on its Web site showing the laws in each state. In Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia and any communities that have their own restrictions, you are legally allowed to carry a handgun as long as it is visible, according to the Web site PaOpenCarry.org. You can’t, however, carry a gun with you in a vehicle unless you have a license to carry a firearm.

How does the open carry issue make you feel?

In a story yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, supporters and opponents on both sides of the highly emotional issue weighed in. The feelings on both sides are sobering.

The Starbucks scenario is not so abstract – in many states around the U.S., a person is allowed to legally carry a holstered weapon on their person in stores and other public places, unless the stores decide to ban guns on their properties, according to The Wall Street Journal story. That means that stores and chains like Starbucks are essentially being forced to take sides on the issue, which can cause havoc with supporters on both sides of the controversy. So far, Starbucks is choosing not to restrict open carry handguns in their stores. Other businesses have chosen to ban open carry guns on their premises.

There’s no easy legal answer here.

Yes, the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

But there are many interpretations of the amendment out there, and times have certainly changed since the ratification of the U.S. Constitution way back in 1788 and of its first 10 Amendments, also known as the Bill of Rights, in 1789.

So what to do?

More than anything, we think the safety of the public at large should be the central issue here, and that the best answer for that is getting and keeping both illegal and legal guns off our streets.

While guns are out there in our communities every day, whether concealed legally or illegally or carried in full view, their presence in a free society isn’t needed on a day to day basis.

Many gun advocates argue that having guns out in the general population makes society safer by having guns in the mix if criminals attempt to harm someone else.

But that isn’t necessarily the case. Having a gun available in many situations that escalate into violence or arguments would mean injecting a deadly option where it wouldn’t immediately have been available otherwise. Gun rights supporters, including the National Rifle Association (NRA),  insist that guns don’t kill people without the participation of a human being who fires the weapons. That’s true but that’s oversimplifying it.

If an argument happens in a Starbucks coffee store or anywhere else, the presence of a loaded gun now turns a possible fight into a potential powder keg that could have deadly consequences.

There are far too many illegal guns on America’s streets today, but that shouldn’t mean that we increase and encourage the spread of many more legal guns amid the population to balance out the threats.

There is a tipping point where more guns means more danger in society.

We have enough danger.

Instead of adding more open carry guns, we need to work harder to get illegal guns off of our streets, however difficult that is to do.

More guns on our streets, even if they are carried by law-abiding citizens, won’t make us safer.

A 13-year-old boy is not an adult.

Yet when a 13-year-old boy commits a heinous crime, our court system in the U.S. can treat him like an adult and lock him up for life.

That was the case for Joe Harris Sullivan, who was convicted 20 years ago in a Florida court of beating and raping an elderly woman after an in-home robbery — all when he was 13 years old.  He’d been in trouble with the law before and at such a young age he had a substantial rap sheet.  The judge in the case took his 17 prior offenses into account at Sullivan’s sentencing, where he was committed to prison under a life sentence with no chance for parole.

Image credit: © iStockphoto.com/Zemdega

The appropriateness of that conviction is now at the heart of a review before the U.S. Supreme Court, according to recent story in The Washington Post. A similar Florida case  is also being reviewed separately by the Supreme Court involving a boy who was 16 when he helped several other youths rob a restaurant.  While on probation the next year, that boy, Terrance Jamar Graham, participated in an armed burglary.  The judge looked at Graham’s criminal record and sentenced him to life without parole, under the assumption that he would never change his criminal ways.

Neither of these crimes are minor.  They are abhorrent.  They were violent. They are inexcusable. At the same time, though, they were committed by children who were 13 and 16 when the crimes occurred.  Should these children have received life prison sentences with no chance ever for parole?

That’s the issue that will be addressed by the Supreme Court.

The non-profit, Montgomery, Ala.-based group, Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), represents Sullivan in the case.  The EJI provides legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners who may have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system. The group’s lawyers see these kinds of cases all too often.

The key issue in both cases “is whether the fundamental principles supporting a 2005 Supreme Court decision that declared the death penalty unconstitutional for juveniles should also be applied to life imprisonment sentences meted out to juveniles convicted of nonlethal crimes,”  according to a news story in The Christian Science Monitor last May.

In that 2005 case, the Supreme Court narrowly ruled that juveniles could not be given a sentence as harsh as the death penalty. In the majority opinion in the case, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote that “The reality that juveniles still struggle to define their identity means it is less supportable to conclude that even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is evidence of irretrievably depraved character,” according to The Washington Post. “It would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor’s character deficiencies will be reformed.”

These cases are filled with tragedies on every side, from the victims to the lost lives and futures of the two boys who carried these crimes out some 20 years ago.

But the answer is clear that despite the severity of the crimes, both were committed by boys who certainly lacked the maturity and experience to stop them from their heinous acts.  Were the Florida courts wrong earlier to mete out life terms without parole? Could those judges have known with certainty that the youth before them were not capable of being rehabilitated? Should we as a society accept that life without parole is acceptable for criminals at so young an age?

These are not easy questions, but the bottom line is that a person who makes a huge mistake as a child and commits a crime should at least have a chance somehow to make something out of their life someday.  As a society, as human beings, there must be ways for people to heal, to be rehabilitated, to try again.

Yes, they may still fail. But we as a society fail even more if we don’t provide some mechanism for compassion, for healing, for betterment in the lives of young people who make grave mistakes when they are just kids.

The Supreme Court’s decisions in the two cases are expected next July. We hope they are appropriate decisions that prohibit U.S. courts from sentencing minors to life sentences without parole in the future.

Everybody deserves a second chance under our American legal system.  You do the crime, you do the time, and then you go back into society and try to make something of yourself.  That’s what former NFL quarterback Michael Vick is trying to do.  So why are so many people on his case?

Public reaction has been mixed after the Philadelphia Eagles announced yesterday that the team signed Vick to a one-year contract,  according to a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer.  Why, critics are asking,  should the Eagles have signed the former Atlanta Falcons QB  — who was indefinitely suspended from the NFL and recently served 18-months in federal prison for running a dog fighting ring after his 2007 conviction?  How could the Eagles have hired an animal abuser?  Why would the Eagles have done such a stupid thing?

Well, I don’t like what Vick did either.  I am an animal lover who has three dogs and a cat.  I find his actions repulsive and inhumane, as did the courts and the judge who sentenced him to a 23-month prison term. But should that stupid action on Vick’s part mean that for the rest of his life he is only judged on this one heinous,  selfish, arrogant, mean and horrendous act?

The only reasonable answer is no.  For any of us who make a huge mistake or do something vile or stupid or hateful, somehow there has to be a way out through a second chance, through forgiveness, through lessons being learned in life.  And I believe that Vick or anyone else who commits a crime deserves such a chance.

As a free society, with laws and punishments and repercussions for our actions, there must also be a means for healing, for moving forward, for rehabilitation.  You’d want the same opportunity for yourself if you did something stupid and went to prison for it.  Starting now, Vick’s past is his past.  He served his time.

Now let’s see how he handles his second chance.  This chance  is there for him to fly as an Eagle and as a member of the Philadelphia community or for him to squander and perhaps forever be banished from professional sports as a failure and former felon.  It’s in Vick’s hands and heart now.

An online poll by the Inquirer on whether Vick should have been signed by the Eagles is so far split almost evenly, with 48.7% of the respondents supporting the move, while 51.3% opposed it as of 5 p.m. today.

There are already some Eagles season ticket holders who are posting their tickets for sale on Web sites in protest of his signing by the team,  according to a report in the Inquirer.  I think that’s ridiculous.  I think that attitude is part of what’s wrong in our country today, from people who believe they are holier than thou, until their own asses are on the line.  No one seems to give the other guy much slack.

Vick did a terrible, horrible, repulsive thing.  But he went to prison for it and paid for his past actions with 18-months of his life in a federal prison cell.  Now it’s time to give him another chance and see if he makes the best use of it.