Comments on: If Worms Carried Shotguns

By: A Proper Fear | Probable Cause

A Proper Fear | Probable Cause — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 18:40:28 +0000

[...] my article, “If Worms Carried Shotguns,” I wrote about our collective inability to reduce our prison population — and thus perhaps [...]

By: A Jury of His Pears | Fresno Criminal Defense

A Jury of His Pears | Fresno Criminal Defense — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 00:59:47 +0000

[...] If worms carried shotguns, robins wouldn’t eat them. [...]

By: John Knutton

John Knutton — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:59:05 +0000

Your post was a very interesting read. I think that American society has become extremely inhumane in its treatment of children, from trying 13-year-olds as adults, to locking up 15-year-olds to life in prison. Child are children, and people seem to forget that it is not the government’s responsibility to raise children, it is the parents’ responsibility. When children misbehave, and commit crimes, certainly the government should play a part, but instead of spending millions on jails, perhaps the focus should be on proactive programs that teach parents how to raise children, and be better parents.

Society needs to be less focused on how we should punish people, and rather should focus on how to prevent things like a child shooting and killing his father in the first place.

I’ve enjoyed reading your blog. I’m a 3L at Barry Law in Orlando, Florida, and am a research assistant for Professor Leonard Birdsong.

Thanks!

By: Jackie Styles

Jackie Styles — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:35:38 +0000

Garrido should be shot. Wait, I know…

Lynched. Yeah that’s it. By an angry Republican mob. That would learn ‘em. And cost alot less than his upcoming constitutional rights.

By: Rick

Rick — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:44:37 +0000

Ray: Regarding “Repugnicans,” I was trying to be only mildly insulting. As was pointed out by Doug, they’re really not alone in deserving reprobation. I just happen to think, as I said in an earlier response, that they are the primary force in pushing draconian laws.

These laws, by the way, also have the opposite effect of what they intend. Perhaps that would be a good topic for another blog post.

By: Nancy Schultz

Nancy Schultz — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:28:09 +0000

If worms carried shotguns, they’d be called the FPD.

By: Ray

Ray — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 07:41:25 +0000

There’s a set of psychological problems that’s collectively referred to as “Right-Wing Authoritarianism”. It involves things like submission to authority, closed-mindedness, faulty logic, aggression towards opposing ideologies, dogmatism, compartmentalized thinking, and, you might be interested to hear, being excessively punitive.

Learning more about this mindset may be helpful to doing something about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

As for “kids these days”, I think they’d do much better if they were treated like adults earlier on — they would rise to the calling. Give them real roles in real social situations instead of leaving them at school primarily so they can be babysat, in a social situation that has no real context or purpose. That’ll devolve into Lord Of The Flies. Of course kids these days are consequence-challenged. No real purpose, no real role, steeped in advertising til you can see the consumerism swirling up behind their irises.

(“Repugnicans” isn’t all that funny from my perspective. Surely there’s a more humorous yet sufficiently vitriolic term of scorn available?)

By: Elvoyce Hooper

Elvoyce Hooper — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 05:21:22 +0000

I had a case where a 19-year-old burglarized his next door neighbor. His fingerprints were found in their home. I obtained an NISP indication and was going over the plea form with him and it was incredible. He did not know what a trial was. I had to explain in detail what a trial was. What a judge did. I tried to use television crime shows, but he had never watched any that he could recall. I had to explain the function of the District Attorney and what my function was Etc. Etc. Now my client could read and write but new nothing of his world outside of his immediate neighborhood.
Once I finished a basic civics lesson which took about 45 minutes going over and over the same point and finished I asked the kid (19 chronologically but 14 educationally), what did he do with his time? He dropped out of highschool in the 10th grade and has been living with his mother and has never worked. He said play video games.
It is even worse when kids spend hours on box and game boxes. I have had several very young clients who had no concept whatsoever of a trial or how the justice system or the government functioned. When questioning them I found that they put a tremendous amount of time in playing games and very little time in watching television or doing anything else.
This is not an endorsement of television programming. I hate most of television programming. I don’t even own a television, but I learned what a trial was like when I was a kid just by watching televison. Even television provides substantially more information then gaming. Does anyone out there have similar experiences?

By: Amy Kleinpeter

Amy Kleinpeter — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 04:39:44 +0000

I like that phrase…amazing how as we age, our father’s grumpiness starts making sense. My dad’s favorite phrase went more with your last full paragraph – -”Idiots, Idiots, the whole world’s full of idiots! Arrghghhghgh….mumble..mumble”

Yeah…I say that myself too many days now.

I agree both Democrats and Republicans are cowards bordering on an angry mob when it comes to sexual offenses. This one case is so weird for so many reasons — using it to keep potheads in prison is ridiculous, but we all know it’s going to happen, and God forbid anyone is arrested for peeing in public — that ’s a sexual offense!

By: Rick

Rick — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 02:47:37 +0000

You pretty much missed my point entirely, probably because of my provocative comment about Repugnicans.

And from what I can see, Democrats are afraid to vote a particular way, even though it’s the right thing to do, but it’s the Republicans who are beating the drum: hence my pinning the “blame” on them.

But the bottom line is that everyone knows that a) something needs to be done about this problem and b) statements like those made by Republicans that Garrido is what we get when we pass these laws (even when they know that’s false) only worsen the situation and prevent us from being able to deal with it intelligently.

But, yes, both Democrats and Republicans are cowards on this issue.

Thank goodness I belong to neither group.