Delija said:
So you think that people who DO want to shoot their guns into the air inside city limits should be allowed to? Delray Beach on New Years eve is a densely populated place. This was a danger to anyone. It DOES matter, whether it affects you or not.
It so happens that I've spent a lot of time in Delray Beach. No, I don't think that people should shoot guns into the air inside its city limits, or in any other city, or anywhere else in which there's even the slightest possibility that someone might be injured. I also have never advocated any such position or even implied that I did. I don't think that anyone else here has done so either. I'll reread any message that does advocate or imply such a position if you will point it out.
Everyone else here is discussing the entirely different issue of whether the law should be changed to make discharging a firearm a felony instead of a misdemeanor. You seem to believe that such a change in the law would prevent idiots from behaving like idiots. I don't. And I mistrust laws made or changed impulsively in reaction to specific incidents. My own experiences in Delray Beach involve fairly lengthy visits to relatives there over a span of decades. Your city does not seem to have suffered from chronic firearms discharge during all that time, and I doubt that there are people running through the streets at this moment firing weapons into the air--certainly not because the crime is a misdemeanor rather than a felony.
I am troubled by the increasing felonization of America. My concern is that we have become an increasingly punitive society in which the drive for draconian punishments has overwhelmed our common sense. Of course it is easier to punish people harder and more severely than it is to attempt to prevent crimes. Your support for a change in the law to make this crime a felony might make you feel virtuous but in fact it will do absolutely nothing to reduce the problem--unless, of course, everyone who is suspected of discharging a firearm within the city is sent to prison for a long time or executed on the spot. Those people will not do it again. But others will.
We need to stop and think carefully, for a long time, whenever we have an urge to felonize any aspect of human behavior no matter how undesirable the behavior. Felonies destroy people's lives, and their families' lives too. This impulse is not one we should succumb to and this direction is not one we should take except
rarely and only after much clear consideration. Remember that even the death penalty does not prevent people from murdering other people. And, in fact, automatic death penalties for certain crimes may spur a criminal to murder witnesses and victims who otherwise might have been spared.
So, no, I am not excusing anyone stupid enough to discharge a firearm into the air when there is the slightest chance of causing harm. I am saying that your thinking is wrong when you say that you shouldn't be concerned if that behavior is penalized as a felony instead of a misdemeanor. Florida presumably has severe penalties already for someone who injures another person that way.
