Hate crimes

This is interesting:

Indigenous woman yells ‘I hate white people’ before punching white woman, but it’s not a hate crime judge rules

For the record, I am against hate crime legislation. Such laws only serve political purposes, and highlight our differences rather than our similarities. In the end, these laws just provide fodder for hate groups.

The punishment for a specific crime is designed to both discourage the offense and punish an offender. If setting a higher punishment for crimes based on the class of victim serves to reduce the occurrence of the crime against those victims, then why should not that additional protection be available to everyone? Hate crime legislation, by providing special protections and privileges to select classes of people, only penalizes those not in one of the selected classes.

Vote your conscience?

Interesting story: Some of the delegates to the GOP conference don’t want to vote for their voter-selected nominee. Instead, they want to vote their conscience.

I’ve got news for you, people – it’s  not your conscience that matters, but rather the conscience of the voters you represent. Do your job and represent the voters of your state, as agreed. Right or wrong, it’s their choice, not yours. If you can’t represent the will of the people, then get out of the way.

(Note that this is not to be taken as an endorsement or rejection of any particular candidate; I would hold this position regarding a delegate’s vote this no matter who might be the candidate and regardless of political party affiliation)

Is Hillary ignorant, or just pandering?

Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve just come from Hillary’s gun-control web page, however, and I’m concerned. Either she does not understand existing gun laws or gun crime statistics, or she is hoping you don’t. Either way is very, very bad. Let’s take a look at her gun control position…

< Begin long-winded rant… >

Continue reading “Is Hillary ignorant, or just pandering?”

Gov. Brown signs new restrictions on firearms

I hope that each of you will review these new California gun laws, and in doing so realize how little impact they will have on criminals while having a large impact on law-abiding citizens.

Realize, too, that while mass shootings involving so-called “assault weapons” are highly-publicized, they account for a relatively few deaths – fewer than you might think. Some statistic for your review: Continue reading “Gov. Brown signs new restrictions on firearms”