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The idea is to make the dangerous behavior illegal in the first place, so that someone can be stopped before harm can happen to someone else.
But see, this is exactly the problem. What might be dangerous for me to attempt, might be perfectly safe for someone else who has more experience, skills or natural talent. Why should the law be written to limit the abilities of more competent people when less competent people mess things up?
So true! I used to be very adept at driving while drunk. Never got into even one accident. However I was pulled over one time for having tinted windows, and happened to be drunk at the time.Why that officer didn't just cite me for the tinted windows and let me continue on my way is quite beyond me (note: heavy sarcasm required)
I never drove drunk again after that, let me tell you.
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If a loved one were killed/injured by some jackass who just couldn't wait to yammer away on his/her cellphone, or at the very least use a hands free version of it that would be a tradgedy.
I do not think that word means what you think it means. It would be very sad, yes, and IMO criminal, but it would not be a "tradgedy" or even a tragedy. A tragedy occurs when a virtue of some individual turns out to be the cause of his or her downfall.
OK, let's not sink to the internet game of one-upsmanship of picking on other's typos/spelling errors as a means to establish intellectual superiority, shall we?
And yes I think the fact that the virtue of some said person (in this case a self-absorbed type who simply MUST chat on his/her phone whilst driving) could quite possibly turn out to be his downfall, as they could now be responsible for injuring or killing a fellow human being.
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Government should not be getting in the way of our choices, including the choices to be irresponsible and criminal.
Whoa!:eek:
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Put another way, when we make things like speeding or prostitution or recreational drug use or using a cell phone while driving crimes, we diminish the effectiveness and austerity of government itself. These "crimes" are so prolific that enforcement becomes a matter of probability, making government seem ineffective, no one has ever specified real harms that come from them, merely an increased risk that some harms might occur, and worse, the punishments for these crimes is not proportionate to the crime itself (how could it be if no real harm was caused?) but to the harms that might, maybe result if other things happen too (things which might well be outside the defendant's ability to control). These latter two make government pernicious and mundane, mundane because it threatens to insert itself into each individual's daily lives as a replacement for his own power of judgment, after all, why not make sugary cereal illegal for much the same reasons? And pernicious because, in attaching penalties whose severity far outstrips the real harm done by doing these things, and instead matches the potential harm that might be caused, we make our laws and penalties look silly.
You make things like speeding, etc illegal because there is always the chance you may get caught and that acts as a deterrent. It is rather a ridiculous argument to say that because it cannot be 100% enforced, it is therefore useless. Have you ever recieved a speeding ticket? Yes? Did it make you reconsider speeding the next time?
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This means holding an individual responsible for only the harms he has really (not potentially) committed. Otherwise, you make every man guilty for any man's crime.
So, by this line of reasoning I should be able to walk around the local college campus firing off various handguns, rifles, machine guns, and until such time as I actually hit anybody, the police should just leave me alone?