Klarinet Archive - Posting 000566.txt from 2001/03

From: CassildaYhtill@-----.com
Subj: [kl] violence
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 09:48:01 -0500

Rien Stein wrote,

>The one thing I definitely doo not like about the USA is the freedom to
carry arms around. It absolutely is of no use.

Basically I agree with you, only there is one mistake. This girl was talking
about taking a knife to school. There is no freedom to do that here. It is
against the law and against school rules *everywhere* in the USA to take
weapons in the school. Most schools have zero tolerance. She would get in
major trouble, probably expelled, if she got caught with a blade in the
school. Even if someone in the school found out she was just talking about
it on the Internet, she could get suspended for that. It has happened a lot
lately with the copycats after the California school killing.

I agree the USA has a problem with too many weapons, but I think in Europe
people have a stereotype and think we are all aggressive and we all go around
armed to the teeth here. That is exaggerated. Most of us don't go around
armed and we are against it. We think adults should have the *right* but I
think most of us also believe and act on it, that we also have the
responsibility not to use the right stupidly.

>And if you kiil one of them and are so unfortunate as to be black, you can be
>pretty sure you will be sentenced to that capital punishment.

It is true black people are more likely to get the death penalty than white
people, but of all murder convictions, only a small percent get the death
penalty. Women hardly ever get the death penalty, so really it is pretty
sure she would not get sentenced to death. This is another stereotype in
Europe I think, that we just hand out the death penalty constantly. They put
to death a lot of people in Texas, but most other places they don't. FWIW I
am personally against capital punishment. We don't have capitol punishment
in the District of Columbia and some other places in the USA. I wish we
would get rid of it everywhere because it makes the whole society into
killers. It is not even practical because some juries will refuse to convict
of the maximum crime knowing there is the death penalty, so people who are
dangerous get convicted only of some lesser offense and go free to commit
more crimes. Also it costs too much too keep these people on death row and
getting appeals forever, and there are mistakes with innocent people
convicted. It is better to lock them up where they can't do any harm and try
to at least give them some useful work to do. Then if it turns out there is
proof it was a conviction of the wrong person, at least the government can
let them go, better late than never. But i is true that taking the knife to
school and then using it would mean severe punishment. Even if she didn't
kill somebody it could ruin her life.

>Violence never is a solution....

I totally agree with you about that.

Cass Hill

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