I just can’t accept – today – that my best contribution to a broken system is to arm myself. It just makes me too sad. It feels like surrendering, and playing by the bad guys’ rules, rather than raising the level of civilization. You may be right. But I’m not ready.

But would you agree that there are some men who, regardless of their education, upbringing, nurturing, social status, are just plain evil? Would you say there are some people who steal, rob, rape, murder without conscience? Psycopaths?

It is up to the authorities to protect us I believe. I belive the judicial system is there to protect us too.

Its just not happening. Police women carry a weapon. Other women do too. My sister does. You are raised in a culture that says its wrong for a woman to carry a weapon.

Tell me you still won’t be carrying a weapon if something happens to you (god forbid) or a child of yours, or a close relative or friend.

By the way I don’t own or carry a weapon.

Here’s another option: What if parents raised their sons to respect women? What if we raised our daughters to respect themselves? What if we treated each other like we were all human?

I understand your frustration…but I can’t wrap my mind around the idea that it’s a woman’s job to arm herself and go vigilante on men to make more room in the prisons, because something else is broken. And I certainly don’t think the authorities are telling me to submit.

Sure, I’ll take self-defense classes. I’m not crazy. But I’d rather work on judicial reform, poverty issues and the educational system than buy a gun so I can thin the herd if I’m attacked.

I believe the men who do this kind of crime would move away from a place where they may get shot.

When I speculated this my wife said “There would be a lot less men around”. I think we could use a lot less of that kind of men around.

As for the comment that its an uglier world than it was a few years ago… well, perhaps its always been an ugly place and we
can all no longer ignore it.

I think you are right about feeding and housing lifetime criminals. What signal do we send when the worst thing that can
happen to them is free room and board for the rest of their lives?

Nothing in our justice system says we have to keep them around for 10-20 or more years while they file endless appeals and we pay for both the prosecution and the defense! That just doesn’t make sense.

The jails and prisons are filled to max and more because we can’t seem to bring ourselves to deal with them.

There is no rehabilitation for those types of criminals. Statistics show that most crimes are done by repeat offenders.

It sickens me every time I see a news story about some man who
killed his ex after being arrested over and over for violation
of a restraining order, or a murderer who was released to kill
again, or a child molester who gets out of prison on probation
and heads for the nearest playground or schoolyard.

Wake up. I wouldn’t miss any of them. One strike and you’re out.
Murderers have no right to life. They give theirs up when they
take an innocent life.

They should pay for their crime. I mean, stealing a car means
part of the sentence is that they work while in prison to
pay for the car. Part of the release is total restoration.

This isn’t cruel and unusual treatment. It just makes sense.

You’re right, if we could stop it in progress, there would be less. I also believe we can do that in ways that don’t involve bullets: like not talking on our cell phones when we’re wandering around alone so we’re aware of what’s happening around us, like looking people in the eyes instead of looking past them when they make us uncomfortable and by listening to our instincts. What can I say? Somewhere not so deep down, I’m a hippie that way.