Felons, Guns, and Injustice

I won't deny it, I am a felon. I made a mistake when I was 20 years old and I served my time. When you are release from incarceration you supposedly have paid your debt to society but this rarely rings true. Society views all people with a criminal record the same no matter what their crime was. You loose multiple right when you become a felon; your right to vote, your right to bare arms, and your right to be treated equally under the constitution. Most people will say that it serves us right. We broke the law and deserved to be punished, but when and where does the punishment end?

First and fore most prison and jail do not rehabilitate anyone. When someone is sent to prison or jail you basically just sent them to a school for criminals. When you go in you may know how to steel a car but by the time you come out you can cook dope and stick a blade into someone's heart through their ribs without drawing blood. Well I guess it's not always that extreme. The point here is people do suffer while in prison it's not a field trip to Wally World so when some one is released and have completed any stipulations set forth by a judge then they should be viewed as an equal citizen.

Someone with a criminal background has to work harder and perform better when it comes to employment that your normal everyday Joe . It starts before you even have the job. When you apply for a job and have to check a box revealing your criminal past you application will most likely find it's way into the round file a.k.a. the trash can. This is one of the most frustrating things for us would be job seeking felons. Why apply to just to get turned down again and again just because when I was 18 I stole a CD and push a rent a cop as I ran from the store. You may think what I just described is petty shop lifting but oh my friend think again, that is first degree robbery a class A felony. When you have this information is kind of puts a different spin on the person's criminal background doesn't it.

Let's talk about voting real, real quick. So this is the one that leaves me lost like a deer in the headlights the most. So because you broke the law why should you not be able to vote? I really don't under stand. Voting for a politician has absolutely nothing to do with the crime someone committed whether dishonest or violent. Originally I thought about saying that politics had nothing to do with crime, stopped, thought about it, laughed, and remember politicians are just crooks in suits. So again why can't a felon vote?

Enough about voting I could never come up with a logical explanation anyway, let's talk about the fun stuff, guns. So now this is the one that I understand the most and I agree with it to an extent. So we look at the world and all the violence that is going on and what do we notice? I can wait, does anyone know? Fine I'll tell you. If someone wants to obtain a gun illegally they can. Think of all the shootings that occur in the US. Rarely do you hear of one where Bubba used the shotgun he bought down at Wal-Mart legally. Most commonly you hear of the deranged mental patient or emotionally abused teen who magically "found" a gun and decided it was a sign to assassinate all the random people who had wrong him. What bothers me is all the real active criminals can find a way to obtain a gun and the law abiding citizens who made a mistake in their distant past are left helpless and unable to defend them selves. What am I suppose to do when Jack the Ripper comes a calling and I have to fend him off with a spatula and oven mitts? Oh that's right though, I deserve to be punished, but do all those around me?

Technically in the US you can petition the government for you write to bare arms again. They even have a specific agency assigned to determine who is eligible to receive this right back but wait, it would seem that congress has cut the funding for this agency. The ironic part of the funding cut is the agency still has employees they just don't have the funding to perform the task at hand. Here I think is the perfect example of someone who should receive their rights back. A gun dealer in Texas is taking he staff to dinner across the border in Mexico. He instructs all his staff to clean out the car so that there are no firearms or ammunition left in the car. His staff informs him they have and they proceed to cross the border. The car is stopped and there is one box of ammunition found. Being that it is the gun dealers car he is responsible and is arrested. He is charged with a class A Felony for transporting ammunition across the border. So this gun dealer comes back to the US is released with out serving jail time but still carries this crime on his record. The gun dealers business and livelihood has now been taken away from him. This is the perfect example of how every person with a criminal background has extenuating circumstances surrounding them. Every ruling to return firearms into some ones hands should be a case by case basis.