Police Should Have Paddles
As I was speeding through a neighborhood on our way home at 9:45 p.m. on a frosty evening, my wife started telling me: “Slow down. You are going to hit someone.” I argued that it was both late and cold and so no kids should be out, and that I had been driving all day on our return trip, and being 3 minutes from the house, was ready to get home. A minute or so later, she said one of the best things I have ever heard: “The cops should have paddles and spank people when they are going more than 9 miles over the limit. Not so many people would speed if they got paddled in public for it.”
I think that it is funny, but it is also very true. I would rather pay $180 bucks or sit in some traffic school than be held up by my beltloop and paddled by some big officer and his boomstick on the side of the interstate for all to see. This got me to thinking of other things.
We were visiting her family in Southern Georgia for the Holidays. In Southern Georgia, at least in the country part where her family lives, almost everyone has a gun. They use them for hunting, putting down sick animals, and shooting at cans and the like. I noticed a while back that you never see anything on the news about forced entry into homes, or rape, or murder. This may just be because it is a small town, but I think that a lot of it has to do with the fact that everybody has a gun.
In the city where I live, I would estimate that maybe 1 out of every ten households has a gun. I would also think that the households that have one gun also have an average of three more in that house, where the ones without guns have valuables but no real defenses (dogs or security systems maybe, but no guns). W e see break-ins, murders, fights, thefts, robberies, and such all the time. I think that if we saw more deaths and shooting injuries while getting robbed there would be fewer incidents like that. It seems to work in South Georgia just because the average person would estimate that 9.5 out of every ten households has at least one gun, and each that has one likely has at least 7-10 more in the house.
Hunters, rednecks, hillbillies, whatever they are…they have safe houses because they have an arsenal. I am no huge gun advocate. Guns are dangerous when people do not respect them. I don’t think that every person should have a gun. A friend of mine shot himself in the foot and carries his gun to weddings, church, and funerals because he is afraid someone will kill him on the toilet and can’t admit that he doesn’t need a gun. I think he is stupid for that, but he has a gun anyway. However, if more people had them, fewer crimes would occur.
I also hate the idea that I can shoot someone who is robbing me blind or threatening my family in their beds and get sued by that losers’ family for their loss. If you are stupid enough to go int someone’s house without permission (or a real job to do), you deserve what you get. Police break and enter (hopefully always with a warrant), Dog the Bounty Hunter asks permission, but robbers go in when you are sleeping.
I don’t know the right way, or the wrong way. I don’t think that people should get sued for doing their jobs (especially protecting others) or defending their households. I do know a few things though:
1) If someone breaks into my house, they get what they get.
2) If police publicly gave three licks for speeding and minor traffic violations there would be a lot fewer idiots on the road.
3) Michael Fay will never vandalize another car. I bet his ass still hurts on cold mornings.
This is so true, but kinda preverted.
This is what tickets are for?
What the heck?
Yeah, but tickets aren’t collected and eventually become warrants. Plus the court system is so strained that cases often take months for traffic, and years for civil and criminal cases. Everyone is sue happy, and people still speed and race around even with the tickets.
I don’t think that everyone who breaks traffic laws are evil. I would have gotten a few spankings myself even, but I do think that it would reduce the total amount of incidences that occurred, or at least the major ones. I had a guy lead a car chase through my neighborhood and almost ran over me, my wife, my son (who was about 9 months old at the time) and my bother. The cops pulled him out when he stopped, kicked him a few good times, and then tossed him in the car.
Police brutality? really? I mean, the guy just almost ran over my whole family, I wish they would have given me a few swift shots on him. I just think of it like this–>
1) If you are for the death penalty, a bullet costs eleven cents. Get it over with (of course after you have proven them guilty BEYOND a shadow of a doubt) and quit with all of the damn appeals and living on death row. It costs us money.
2) Why are prisoners allowed to watch TV and lift weights, play cards, smoke, exercise, etc. etc. but not allowed to work? Our penal system costs taxpayers tons of money every year to pay for people to be “rehabilitated” until they get out (and I believe the majority are repeat offenders). I think that the strain could be significantly lifted from taxpayers if prisoners were made to work, profits going toward their room and board. People argue that it is inhumane to force prisoners to work without retaining their wages but I argue that not only have they given up their rights when they committed the crimes but have also run a tab of at least $23 per day that they are in jail. That is a debt that they should pay back, in my opinion.
To me, jails and prisons don’t seem to be scary enough for many people to want to stay out of. There is a lifestyle that appreciates and even encourages jail-time. Why?
If you rape, I think you should be handled by the rougher prisoners. You should be someone’s bitch for the rest of your life. If you mess with a child or someone that has no chance of defending themselves, you should be publicly hung or executed. If you kill, you should be sent to war on a suicide mission, or deprived in some way of your life, but these are just my views.
I simply feel that if punishments were more public, they would actually do what a real punishment does. In fact, in psychology, they define a punishment as something that decreases a behavior, and a reward is something that increases a behavior. So, our “punishments” are actually not punishments for many people.
I don’t know. I am sure that there are a slew of issues with my argument, but i know this: If I caught someone messing with my family they would be lucky to make it to court, or even out of my house, because I don’t trust the system to do the right thing the way it stands. It is simply too strained. Prisons are costly and overfilled, and there are too many people getting away with things that would have seen immediate and final correction in almost any other society in history.