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Well, to me age is not a milestone for maturity. All opinions matters, just because I am a teen does not mean my opinion does not matter. I have been alive for fourteen years, that is not as long as most people on here, but I still have life experiences. So, my opinion matters. Also, here are replies to all of my recent comments:Comment from William MoserFalse premise #1: Without government controls and your oversight, firearms owners run around recklessly endangering the public and visitors to their homes, where loaded firearms are laying around for drunks and three-year olds to pick-up.More to your point; your driving skills and habits, your dental skills and safety are germaine to a public that will be affected by your interactions with them. Firearms at the range, in the home, car, on a person affect nobody absent an extreme emergency…and at that point everybody is affected by the badguy.Nobody I have ever known who keeps firearms, especially if they carry, does so casually and without training.False premise #2:. Permanent-record Universal Background Checks for all transfers of firearms will prevent or mitigate gun-violence.This assumes criminals give a flying f*¢✓ about your registration. More to the point, non-permanent NICS is in place with safeguards for citizens' Rights to be free of arbitrary, capricious bureaucratic gamesmanship to de facto infringe on their 2A Rights. It still happens though and, like my brother-in-law who found himself on the ‘no-fly' list, getting it resolved is not straightforward.The way every one of these UBC bills is written, every transfer from loaning, gifting, inheriting firearms plus the return must be permanently recorded. Handing a firearm over for a friend to try at the range technically would require a UBC.All purchases of ammunition…same. And just for good measure, the place of storage must be divulged with possibly a receipt to prove you have an 'approved’ gun-safe.UBC makes nobody safer and is just another means for escalating costs, bureaucratic hassles and legal liabilities against lawful citizens’ RTKABA.Actually, yes that is true. Do you know how many kids got injured from firearms? According to the AAP, “There were at 241 unintended shootings by children in 2019, causing more than 100 deaths and nearly 150 injuries.” A firearm can be pick up by a kid who may accidentally shoot themself, or a teen who is suicidal. There is a reason for gun control or mandatory safe storage, which actually is not required in the United States, but might be covered under child abuse law. At least, I am sure in my state it is covered under second-degree child abuse(O.C.G.A 16–5–70(C), which states “(a) A parent, guardian, or other person supervising the welfare of or having immediate charge or custody of a child under the age of 18 commits the offense of cruelty to children in the first degree when such person willfully deprives the child of necessary sustenance to the extent that the child's health or well-being is jeopardized.(b) Any person commits the offense of cruelty to children in the first degree when such person maliciously causes a child under the age of 18 cruel or excessive physical or mental pain.(c) Any person commits the offense of cruelty to children in the second degree when such person with criminal negligence causes a child under the age of 18 cruel or excessive physical or mental pain.(d) Any person commits the offense of cruelty to children in the third degree when:(1) Such person, who is the primary aggressor, intentionally allows a child under the age of 18 to witness the commission of a forcible felony, battery, or family violence battery; or(2) Such person, who is the primary aggressor, having knowledge that a child under the age of 18 is present and sees or hears the act, commits a forcible felony, battery, or family violence battery.(e)(1) A person convicted of the offense of cruelty to children in the first degree as provided in this Code section shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than five nor more than 20 years.(2) A person convicted of the offense of cruelty to children in the second degree shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than ten years.(3) A person convicted of the offense of cruelty to children in the third degree shall be punished as for a misdemeanor upon the first or second conviction. Upon conviction of a third or subsequent offense of cruelty to children in the third degree, the defendant shall be guilty of a felony and shall be sentenced to a fine not less than $1,000.00 nor more than $5,000.00 or imprisonment for not less than one year nor more than three years or shall be sentenced to both fine and imprisonment.”So, as you can see a gun can affect other people, especially kids. Especially, when every day 87 kids is lying in an operating room because he/she got shot by a firearm. I have seen a lot of parents who don’t have the training and carry and usually, they allow their kids to use their firearms or leaving them for kids to find easily, which then lead to their kids ending in the ER with a big gunshot wound, I have seen it multiple time. Now universal background check would not solve anything. According to a study published in the American journal of epidemiology, which stated:“ California’s 1991 universal background check was not associated with changes in firearm suicide or homicide.”Now, the licensing system works as stated in a John Hopkins study. The study was also published in the American Journal for public health which is peer-reviewed.American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) - Media Bias Fact CheckKEY STATISTICAfter Missouri repealed its licensing law in 2007, the state saw a 16.1 percent increase in firearm suicide and a 25 percent increase in firearm homicide. Following Connecticut’s implementation of a licensing law, the state’s firearm homicide rate declined 40 percent and the firearm suicide rate declined 15.4 percent.[1]“Requiring a license or permit to purchase a handgun reduces firearm homicides and suicides, as well as trafficking and shootings of law enforcement officers. It is one of the most effective policies we have to reduce gun violence.”Objectives. To estimate and compare the effects of state background check policies on firearm-related mortality in 4 US states.Methods. Annual data from 1985 to 2017 were used to examine Maryland and Pennsylvania, which implemented point-of-sale comprehensive background check (CBC) laws for handgun purchasers; Connecticut, which adopted a handgun purchaser licensing law; and Missouri, which repealed a similar law. Using synthetic control methods, we estimated the effects of these laws on homicide and suicide rates stratified by firearm involvement.Results. There was no consistent relationship between CBC laws and mortality rates. There were estimated decreases in firearm homicide (27.8%) and firearm suicide (23.2%–40.5%) rates associated with Connecticut’s law. There were estimated increases in firearm homicide (47.3%), nonfirearm homicide (18.1%), and firearm suicide (23.5%) rates associated with Missouri’s repeal.Conclusions. Purchaser licensing laws coupled with CBC requirements were consistently associated with lower firearm homicide and suicide rates, but CBC laws alone were not.From the 1995 implementation of its law through 2017, Connecticut saw a 32.8% decrease in firearm suicides (Table 2 and Figure 2; placebo = 0.06; 2/35) and a 3.3% decrease in nonfirearm suicides (placebo = 0.60; 15/25) relative to its synthetic control. In 1999, Connecticut adopted a law akin to an extreme risk protection order law. Under this law, police are authorized to temporarily take guns from individuals when there is probable cause to believe that they are at imminent risk of injuring themselves or others. Despite this law, very few gun removals were carried out until 2007, after the mass shooting at Virginia Tech.25 Research has shown that individuals subjected to these orders are more often suicidal than homicidal and that the removal law is associated with decreases in firearm suicides.26,27To examine the possible effects of the removal law on our models of firearm and nonfirearm suicides in Connecticut, we split the effect estimate into 2 periods: 1995 to 2006 and 2007 to 2017. From 1995 to 2006, there was a 23.2% decrease in firearm suicides and a 3.2% decrease in nonfirearm suicides in Connecticut relative to the synthetic control. From 2007 to 2017, there was a 40.5% decrease in firearm suicides and a 3.4% decrease in nonfirearm suicides.From 2007 to 2016, following the repeal of its purchaser licensing law, Missouri’s firearm homicide rate rose 47.3% relative to its synthetic control (Table 2 and Figure 1; placebo = 0.00; 0/6). Over the same period, there was an 18.1% increase in nonfirearm homicides relative to the synthetic control (placebo = 0.00; 0/8). The estimated effect on firearm homicides was 2.6 times larger than that for nonfirearm homicides. There was an abrupt increase in firearm homicides immediately after the law’s repeal and no such change in nonfirearm homicides (Figure 1 and Appendix Figure F, available as a supplement to the online version of this article at http://www.ajph.org). Missouri’s repeal of handgun purchaser licensing was associated with a 23.5% increase in firearm suicides (placebo = 0.00; 0/7) and a 6.9% increase in nonfirearm suicides (placebo = 0.25; 1/4) relative to the synthetic control (Table 2). Full truncated 10-year model results for Connecticut, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, as well as additional figures for all 4 states, are available in the appendix.Sources:McCourt, Alexander D et al. “Purchaser Licensing, Point-of-Sale Background Check Laws, and Firearm Homicide and Suicide in 4 US States, 1985-2017.” American journal of public health vol. 110,10 (2020): 1546-1552. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2020.305822Purchaser Licensing, Point-of-Sale Background Check Laws, and Firearm Homicide and Suicide in 4 US States, 1985–2017Licensinghttps://advance.lexis.com/documentpage/?pdmfid=1000516&crid=3caafedf-890b-4984-bad7-e0851f984be1&nodeid=AAQAAGAAGAAB&nodepath=%2FROOT%2FAAQ%2FAAQAAG%2FAAQAAGAAG%2FAAQAAGAAGAAB&level=4&haschildren=&populated=false&title=%C2%A7+16-5-70.+Cruelty+to+children&config=00JAA1MDBlYzczZi1lYjFlLTQxMTgtYWE3OS02YTgyOGM2NWJlMDYKAFBvZENhdGFsb2feed0oM9qoQOMCSJFX5qkd&pddocfullpath=%2Fshared%2Fdocument%2Fstatutes-legislation%2Furn%3AcontentItem%3A61XD-TBS1-DYFH-X27G-00008-00&ecomp=L38_kkk&prid=545be38a-4f4d-4b82-ad51-025e35c03959Guns in the Home2. Comment from Shawn WhartonAll of those things you named involve you interacting with other people. Owning a gun does not involve interacting with other people. The times when owning a gun involve interacting with other people do, for the most part, require a test or training of some sort.If I want to hunt, where I may encounter other people, I have to have a hunting license. In most states, if I conceal/carry, I must have a license.Actually, a lot of state does not require a license for conceal or open carry. Hawaii and California did and they got sued for a second amendment violation, in which the 9th circuit court of appeal sided with both California and Hawaii.The en banc court affirmed the district courts’ judgments and held that there is no Second Amendment right for members of the general public to carry concealed firearms in public. (Peruta v. County of san Diego)(9th circuit)(2016)The en banc court affirmed the district court’s dismissal of an action challenging Hawai‘i’s firearm licensing law, Hawai‘i Revised Statutes § 134-9(a), which requires that residents seeking a license to openly carry a firearm in public must demonstrate “the urgency or the need” to carry a firearm, must be of good moral character, and must be “engaged in the protection of life and property.” Appellant George Young applied for a firearm-carry license twice in 2011, but failed to identify “the urgency or the need” to openly carry a firearm in public. Instead, Young relied upon his general desire to carry a firearm for selfdefense. Both of Young’s applications were denied. Young brought a challenge to Hawai‘i’s firearm-licensing law under the Second Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court upheld Hawai‘i’s statute. ( Young v. State of Hawaii)(9th circuit)(2021)Sources:https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2016/06/09/10-56971.pdfhttps://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/03/24/12-17808.pdf3. Comment from Jason CarpenterDriving a car is a privilege, dentistry is a practice, cutting hair is trade… defending your life from an attack is an INALIENABLE RIGHT DERIVED FROM GOD. You are free to defend yours however you chose, but as for me, I prefer the option which gives me the greatest advantage.Yes, driving a car is a privilege, but we have limits to make it safer. The right to self-defense is an inalienable right but the right to bear arms isn’t. Also, there is no such thing as god. Also, if you want to go by god-given right the 13th amendment would be invalid since God gave you the right to own slaves. Also, the right to bear arms was never mentioned in the bible either.4. Comment from Jim PorterThe Boulder shooter passed the Left’s vaunted universal background check, it does nothing but inconvenient the law abiding citizen. Nothing the gun grabbers have offered has stopped 1 shooter, why? Because you can’t legislate or predict behavior. More people die from drunk drivers than guns and even though there are stiffer penalties, it deters little. How about going and addressing the elephant in the room, mental illness? You might save more lives.First, there is currently no federal universal background check, and yes Universal background checks don’t work. Now, not all gun control laws are effective, but some are such as licensing systems. As stated in the answer earlier. Here is the evidence provided again.KEY STATISTICAfter Missouri repealed its licensing law in 2007, the state saw a 16.1 percent increase in firearm suicide and a 25 percent increase in firearm homicide. Following Connecticut’s implementation of a licensing law, the state’s firearm homicide rate declined 40 percent and the firearm suicide rate declined 15.4 percent.[1]“Requiring a license or permit to purchase a handgun reduces firearm homicides and suicides, as well as trafficking and shootings of law enforcement officers. It is one of the most effective policies we have to reduce gun violence.”Objectives. To estimate and compare the effects of state background check policies on firearm-related mortality in 4 US states.Methods. Annual data from 1985 to 2017 were used to examine Maryland and Pennsylvania, which implemented point-of-sale comprehensive background check (CBC) laws for handgun purchasers; Connecticut, which adopted a handgun purchaser licensing law; and Missouri, which repealed a similar law. Using synthetic control methods, we estimated the effects of these laws on homicide and suicide rates stratified by firearm involvement.Results. There was no consistent relationship between CBC laws and mortality rates. There were estimated decreases in firearm homicide (27.8%) and firearm suicide (23.2%–40.5%) rates associated with Connecticut’s law. There were estimated increases in firearm homicide (47.3%), nonfirearm homicide (18.1%), and firearm suicide (23.5%) rates associated with Missouri’s repeal.Conclusions. Purchaser licensing laws coupled with CBC requirements were consistently associated with lower firearm homicide and suicide rates, but CBC laws alone were not.From the 1995 implementation of its law through 2017, Connecticut saw a 32.8% decrease in firearm suicides (Table 2 and Figure 2; placebo = 0.06; 2/35) and a 3.3% decrease in nonfirearm suicides (placebo = 0.60; 15/25) relative to its synthetic control. In 1999, Connecticut adopted a law akin to an extreme risk protection order law. Under this law, police are authorized to temporarily take guns from individuals when there is probable cause to believe that they are at imminent risk of injuring themselves or others. Despite this law, very few gun removals were carried out until 2007, after the mass shooting at Virginia Tech.25 Research has shown that individuals subjected to these orders are more often suicidal than homicidal and that the removal law is associated with decreases in firearm suicides.26,27To examine the possible effects of the removal law on our models of firearm and nonfirearm suicides in Connecticut, we split the effect estimate into 2 periods: 1995 to 2006 and 2007 to 2017. From 1995 to 2006, there was a 23.2% decrease in firearm suicides and a 3.2% decrease in nonfirearm suicides in Connecticut relative to the synthetic control. From 2007 to 2017, there was a 40.5% decrease in firearm suicides and a 3.4% decrease in nonfirearm suicides.From 2007 to 2016, following the repeal of its purchaser licensing law, Missouri’s firearm homicide rate rose 47.3% relative to its synthetic control (Table 2 and Figure 1; placebo = 0.00; 0/6). Over the same period, there was an 18.1% increase in nonfirearm homicides relative to the synthetic control (placebo = 0.00; 0/8). The estimated effect on firearm homicides was 2.6 times larger than that for nonfirearm homicides. There was an abrupt increase in firearm homicides immediately after the law’s repeal and no such change in nonfirearm homicides (Figure 1 and Appendix Figure F, available as a supplement to the online version of this article at http://www.ajph.org). Missouri’s repeal of handgun purchaser licensing was associated with a 23.5% increase in firearm suicides (placebo = 0.00; 0/7) and a 6.9% increase in nonfirearm suicides (placebo = 0.25; 1/4) relative to the synthetic control (Table 2). Full truncated 10-year model results for Connecticut, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, as well as additional figures for all 4 states, are available in the appendix.Sources:McCourt, Alexander D et al. “Purchaser Licensing, Point-of-Sale Background Check Laws, and Firearm Homicide and Suicide in 4 US States, 1985-2017.” American journal of public health vol. 110,10 (2020): 1546-1552. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2020.305822Purchaser Licensing, Point-of-Sale Background Check Laws, and Firearm Homicide and Suicide in 4 US States, 1985–2017Licensing5. Comment from Eric SorrentinoLicensing systems work? Really? So you can show proof of this?IL has a license system in place. How's that working out?Oh wait…. This is just one more in a long list of things you've said with no basis in fact.Here is the evidence you wanted:KEY STATISTICAfter Missouri repealed its licensing law in 2007, the state saw a 16.1 percent increase in firearm suicide and a 25 percent increase in firearm homicide. Following Connecticut’s implementation of a licensing law, the state’s firearm homicide rate declined 40 percent and the firearm suicide rate declined 15.4 percent.[1]“Requiring a license or permit to purchase a handgun reduces firearm homicides and suicides, as well as trafficking and shootings of law enforcement officers. It is one of the most effective policies we have to reduce gun violence.”Objectives. To estimate and compare the effects of state background check policies on firearm-related mortality in 4 US states.Methods. Annual data from 1985 to 2017 were used to examine Maryland and Pennsylvania, which implemented point-of-sale comprehensive background check (CBC) laws for handgun purchasers; Connecticut, which adopted a handgun purchaser licensing law; and Missouri, which repealed a similar law. Using synthetic control methods, we estimated the effects of these laws on homicide and suicide rates stratified by firearm involvement.Results. There was no consistent relationship between CBC laws and mortality rates. There were estimated decreases in firearm homicide (27.8%) and firearm suicide (23.2%–40.5%) rates associated with Connecticut’s law. There were estimated increases in firearm homicide (47.3%), nonfirearm homicide (18.1%), and firearm suicide (23.5%) rates associated with Missouri’s repeal.Conclusions. Purchaser licensing laws coupled with CBC requirements were consistently associated with lower firearm homicide and suicide rates, but CBC laws alone were not.From the 1995 implementation of its law through 2017, Connecticut saw a 32.8% decrease in firearm suicides (Table 2 and Figure 2; placebo = 0.06; 2/35) and a 3.3% decrease in nonfirearm suicides (placebo = 0.60; 15/25) relative to its synthetic control. In 1999, Connecticut adopted a law akin to an extreme risk protection order law. Under this law, police are authorized to temporarily take guns from individuals when there is probable cause to believe that they are at imminent risk of injuring themselves or others. Despite this law, very few gun removals were carried out until 2007, after the mass shooting at Virginia Tech.25 Research has shown that individuals subjected to these orders are more often suicidal than homicidal and that the removal law is associated with decreases in firearm suicides.26,27To examine the possible effects of the removal law on our models of firearm and nonfirearm suicides in Connecticut, we split the effect estimate into 2 periods: 1995 to 2006 and 2007 to 2017. From 1995 to 2006, there was a 23.2% decrease in firearm suicides and a 3.2% decrease in nonfirearm suicides in Connecticut relative to the synthetic control. From 2007 to 2017, there was a 40.5% decrease in firearm suicides and a 3.4% decrease in nonfirearm suicides.From 2007 to 2016, following the repeal of its purchaser licensing law, Missouri’s firearm homicide rate rose 47.3% relative to its synthetic control (Table 2 and Figure 1; placebo = 0.00; 0/6). Over the same period, there was an 18.1% increase in nonfirearm homicides relative to the synthetic control (placebo = 0.00; 0/8). The estimated effect on firearm homicides was 2.6 times larger than that for nonfirearm homicides. There was an abrupt increase in firearm homicides immediately after the law’s repeal and no such change in nonfirearm homicides (Figure 1 and Appendix Figure F, available as a supplement to the online version of this article at http://www.ajph.org). Missouri’s repeal of handgun purchaser licensing was associated with a 23.5% increase in firearm suicides (placebo = 0.00; 0/7) and a 6.9% increase in nonfirearm suicides (placebo = 0.25; 1/4) relative to the synthetic control (Table 2). Full truncated 10-year model results for Connecticut, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, as well as additional figures for all 4 states, are available in the appendix.Sources:McCourt, Alexander D et al. “Purchaser Licensing, Point-of-Sale Background Check Laws, and Firearm Homicide and Suicide in 4 US States, 1985-2017.” American journal of public health vol. 110,10 (2020): 1546-1552. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2020.305822Purchaser Licensing, Point-of-Sale Background Check Laws, and Firearm Homicide and Suicide in 4 US States, 1985–2017LicensingEdit: Federal universal background checks are on their way…H.R.8 - 117th Congress (2021-2022): Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021PolitiFact - Support for universal background checks on gun buyers is near 90%Edit 2: More replies to comments.Comments from Eric SorrentinoYou realize that doesn't support your position, right?Yeah, how did does that post not support my position?Did you actually read your copypasta?Yeah, I did. And I supported what I have been pushing.2. Comments from Chris MillerPeople were killing people long before guns were invented! Even now, countries like Germany, France, Australia, and UK, still have murders committed every day, the only difference is, most of them are done with knives and other weapons, with a few guns in the mix.That’s true. But taking away guns lower the rate of homicide. There is a reason for Europe's homicide rate to be lower than the U.S.3. Comment from James PearsonIt’s odd that my state (Maine) is rated F for gun law effectiveness, yet has a moderately high rate of gun ownership and one of the lowest violent crime rates in the country.But the graph showed that higher gun ownership equals a higher rate of violent crime and property crime.Garrett Murphy's answer to What is more effective in detering crime; Gun Control Laws or Gun Ownership?4. Comment from Jon KelleyPoint 1 - Looks like subsection (c) is what will be applicable, in the case posited. Fair enough - we don’t have kids, so my sidearm waits handy in my nightstand. If grandkids come over, the first thing I do is go in there, strip out the magazine and the hot round, and separate slide and frame. Then, I take the recoil spring assembly out and put it in my pocket. There - deactivated. And, when they leave, it takes me about a minute to put back together. (I built it, so I can do that in my sleep. If it was a 1911, I could probably do it in my sleep with just one hand. I need to get another 1911…) And, well, it’s a bit obvious that the odds of being shot go up when there are firearms around - those among us with functional brain cells simply do our level damnedest to push that probably down to zero.As far as the suicide aspect goes, one does not need a firearm to commit suicide (as evidenced by my finding a friend of mine hanging from his garage rafters by his belt. (I was 12. So was he.) TOD estimate figures if I’d gotten there a half-hour earlier, I could probably have stopped him. What, you ask, caused him to implode? His mother was a Jehovah’s Witness, and kept trying to force him into it as well. Just because his sister took to it doesn’t mean he was going to - and he just rejected it. Unfortunately, I was the only one who would listen to him when he talked about it, and at his funeral, I kept it together until his parents said, “We have no idea why he would have done this.” I exploded - “I’ve been warning you for SIX BLOODY MONTHS - where the HELL have you been all that time?” Followed by a five-minute rant heavily laden with profanities, blasphemies, and epithets. My old man thinks he’s fluent in profanity, but I graduated high school knowing how to swear fluently in four languages…) That was a house that had zero firearms, his parents had never fired a shot. Me? I grew up around firearms, I knew where they were. When I was about four, my granddad wanted me to see how dangerous they could be - he told me to go out in the garden and pick a watermelon. Then to set it on a stump. Then stand by him and put my fingers in my ears - while he let drive with a cap & ball revolver he’d built. The biggest piece of that watermelon I found was about the size of my hand - and that one shot taught me more than a one-hour lecture would have. (It also fascinated me - I started shooting when I was six - 42 years ago. Started handloading at 10. Purpose-building loads and experimenting at 12, for informal one-mile competition shooting [bragging rights and dinner, mainly. All shooting .30–06. And I’ve long since lost count of how many I’ve taught safe handling and basic marksmanship, and I’ve put over 100 through my “advanced” run. But, I digress.)Point 2 - Tennessee just became the 20th state to allow “Constitutional carry.” Frankly, I find this trend pleasing - it’s a nice reversal from all the Democrat horseshit we’ve been being fed of late, and I’m hoping that support for those asinine bills in Congress can fade a bit…Point 3 - You can replace “God-given” with “pre-exists government” and get the same logical effect. And, while the bible may not have expressly covered the right to keep and bear arms (which, for the time, would have been swords, slings, knives, clubs, &c,) Jesus was no pushover. Christians are told to not commit murder, they are not told to not kill in self-defense. And, while I don’t recall the passage, Jesus Himself is purported to have said, “And he who hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.” Obviously, the idea of defending oneself physically was important (and “turning the other cheek” referred to verbal insults, not physical battery.)Point 4 - Once you place a license in front of its exercise, it is no longer a “Right.” It has become a “privilege,” subject to the whims and dicta of government (and probably an unelected bureaucrat.) All they need to do is a little tweak to invalidate the licenses, and they can rake it in on training and license fees again. Or, they can come up with an all-but-impossible requirement, and no-one can pass the licensure exam.And, since everyone was a Good Citizen and went and got their licenses, which then tracked their firearm purchases, the government knows just where to go to seize the firearms - so they can either turn their hardware in, or the government can come and take it, but either way our Good Citizen is now possibly out a few thousand dollars’ worth of firearms, without compensation (itself a violation of Amendment V, leaving aside the dubious “public good” aspect of the whole exercise.)Do not get me started on “red flag” laws - they’re badly written, violate most of the Bill of Rights at a stroke, and illogical (as they do not deal with the primary threat.)Point 5 - Ref Point 4Now, I called “Red Flag” laws a few names you may not appreciate, so let me justify my description.Amendment I - If someone on the “Authorised Tattletale” list for your state doesn’t like something you say - Red Flag!Amendment II - I don’t need to explain this one.Amendment IV - Unreasonable search & seizure? Really? Considering the warrant won’t specifically say exactly what is to be seized, just “firearms and ammunition - maybe” (what happens if you don’t own any “firearms and ammunition?”) that’s a bit vague. Some will argue that it is not - but if they’ve got their vaunted registration setups, they should be able to come up with a list of firearms.Amendment V - Deprivation of property without compensation. Takings clause (is the “public good” really being served here?)Amendment VI - In many cases, you won’t get to face your accuser and make your case against him. Moreover, you have to prove your psychological fitness to a man whose degree is in law, not psychology.Amendment VII - I think the value at question will be rather more than $20 - so a jury trial (unless waived in favour of a bench trial) would be warranted (but likely not granted.)Amendment VIII - Depriving someone of several thousand dollars’ worth of property, potentially for something as inconsequential as an offhand remark or a years-old social media post, isn’t “cruel & unusual punishment?” It’s not excessive? I’m inclined to think that it rather is.Amendment XIV - Section 1, Privileges & immunities clause. Deprivation of property without due process of law (the hardware is seized before the hearing.) [This one’s a bonus.]Seven Amendments in the Bill of Rights with just one law! Seriously, are they going for a record here? And they still haven’t dealt with the primary perceived threat - the person himself.How would I do it?A complaint would have to be verified by law enforcement if it came from a citizen, a law enforcement officer could lodge a complaint, as could a physician or psychologist (Masters-level practitioner or doctorate.)Notice of the hearing is given, to take place w/in 96 hours of the complaint being lodged. A subpoena is also served to the complainant, if not a LEO (if a LEO, his presence will simply be commanded.) The LEO who lodged the complaint is also to appear. Failure to show will automatically render the ERPO null and void. Witnesses may be requested and/or subpoenaed at this time.At hearing, there will be a judge (effectively a moderator) and a psychiatrist or psychologist (the evaluator.) It is the psych that will pass final judgement on the case.The complainant makes his case, the respondent is allowed rebuttal. Witnesses may be called, as required.If the respondent makes an effective case and proves his fitness to the satisfaction of the psych, all parties depart and the ERPO is annulled.If the respondent does NOT make an effective case, there are a few options:Psych Hold: The respondent may be subjected to a psychological hold for greater evaluation for a period of 48–96 hours. Under no circumstances is the hold to last more than 96 hours, unless the respondent is being committed as a result of the hold/evaluationReport for a more thorough, individual psych eval. Not quite a neuropsychological evaluation, but an assessment of baseline personality and attitude (yes, I know, psych evals aren’t any indication of future behaviour. But, we’re proving some panty-waisted Nancyboy wrong, here.) This could result with the respondent either walking free or being put in psych hold (48–96 hours.)Immediate Commitment. Exactly what it says on the tin - the psych evaluator thought you were so unhinged that you needed to be put away (at least for a while) while they put your mind back together.Commitment shall last as long as necessary for the respondent to pass a psychological evaluation. However, having been committed, he is expected to dispose of his firearms and ammunition within 96 hours of his release - either surrender to LE, or sell to an FFL (so he can at least get something back for it,) or transfer to a family member not living with him.Now, you’ll note a few things about my approach:Due Process is maintained - nothing happens until after the court hearingYour initial evaluation in court is done by competent authority (psychiatrist/psychologist,) and not by someone with an inappropriate degree (laws.)The focus of this order is on the person presenting the threat, not on merely one of the tools that could be used. Who’s to say that, if he did snap, he wasn’t going to use IEDs or string music wire about neck-high on the downhill runs of bicycle trails? There are lots of ways to commit fuckery and mayhem that don’t require a firearm, so focusing on firearms alone is misguided. Does that not make more sense?And, for the personal eval part of this little treatise:Master Wong - the fact that you are fourteen years of age does not make you “stupid.” It does make you somewhat “inexperienced,” and largely “ignorant” - but the great news is that both of those are self-correcting as you live longer (you gain experience and knowledge, which correct both of those.) This does not mean that you can’t form an opinion, and I am pleased to see that you are able to back up that opinion with citeable sources.Given the side of the issue that you seem to be on, however, riddle me this: Howcumzit whenever I hear about a “gun safety law” from a politician, it always amounts to a restriction or ban on ownership, and not actually, I dunno, teaching firearm safety? A restriction or a ban is a restriction or a ban, it’s not “safety.” I don’t get it. I keep telling my Congresscritters, “Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining…”Yep, subsection (c) of the code is what will be applicable in court. Okay, you don’t have kids but have grandkids, a little bit weird, but okay not everyone is fit to be a parent or wants to be a parent. Great, you are making sure your grandkids do not end up in a trauma bay, or operation room like 87 other kids every day in America.Now, you said that people do not need a gun to commit suicide. That is true. However, we can stop a ton of suicide if we can make sure that people who are suicidal do not get a gun, usually through a waiting period. Here is also a quote from Dr. Cassandra Crifaski from John Hopkins“Nothing about a licensing system will prevent a law abiding citizen from going through the process and obtaining a firearm.”Also, Havard school of public health also has said the suicide means matter since no suicide methods are as lethal as a firearm.Most efforts to prevent suicide focus on why people take their lives. But as we understand more about who attempts suicide and when and where and why, it becomes increasingly clear that how a person attempts–the means they use–plays a key role in whether they live or die.“Means reduction” (reducing a suicidal person’s access to highly lethal means) is an important part of a comprehensive approach to suicide prevention. It is based on the following understandings (click on each to learn more):Duration of Suicidal CrisesMethod Choice and IntentAttempters’ Longterm SurvivalFirearm Access is a Risk Factor for SuicideYouth Access to FirearmsMeans Reduction Saves LivesMeans Matterhttps://advance.lexis.com/documentpage/?pdmfid=1000516&crid=8d0f16fa-5220-4e7f-8c0f-7a6b600f033d&nodeid=AAQAAGAAGAAB&nodepath=%2FROOT%2FAAQ%2FAAQAAG%2FAAQAAGAAG%2FAAQAAGAAGAAB&level=4&haschildren=&populated=false&title=%C2%A7+16-5-70.+Cruelty+to+children&config=00JAA1MDBlYzczZi1lYjFlLTQxMTgtYWE3OS02YTgyOGM2NWJlMDYKAFBvZENhdGFsb2feed0oM9qoQOMCSJFX5qkd&pddocfullpath=%2Fshared%2Fdocument%2Fstatutes-legislation%2Furn%3AcontentItem%3A61XD-TBS1-DYFH-X27G-00008-00&ecomp=L38_kkk&prid=5cea0679-c8c1-47a4-aeb8-9407bc3c3f84Guns in the HomeAlso, I am sorry about your friend. I also lost someone to suicide.Anyway, the right to bear arms is never stated in either the sequel or the bible. Also, I remember a section of the bible stating it is not okay to kill in the morning. I guess self-defense does not apply in the morning.I guess medical licenses are unconstitutional since people have a fundamental human right to health care and the government could tweak and make it impossible to become a doctor and since that could happen I guess we should not have a licensing system for doctors or lawyers. Also, your logical fallacy is a slippery slope.Your logical fallacy is slippery slopeAlso, if a tyrannical government wants to seize firearms they would not need to come door to door to take them away.Amendment 1 violation for the red flag is nonsense. Amendment 2 up for argument. Amendment 4 would not be violated if the court assigned a warrant to seize firearms that is under the license of that person. Amendment 5 yeah public good is being served by preventing mass shootings. Amendment 6 facing police officers and your family member is enough. aMENDMENT 8 DEATH PENALTY IS CONSTITUTIONAL( Gregg v. Georgia) SO I WOULD SAY PREVENTING MASS SHOOTING OR SUICIDE THROUGH RED FLAG IS CONSTITUTIONAL. Amendment 14 with due process, I don’t know since it most likely won;t be seized before a trial. I agree with yours but the red flag law democrats proposed are definitely not unconstitutional. The rest about my experience are just nonsense. My mentor one time got his diagnosis said is wrong since he was a med student no one listens to him and the patient unfortunately died and after the autopsy my mentor was right.5. Comment from William Moser“241 unintended shootings by children in 2019…”In a country of 330M people this number isn't in the same galaxy as deaths from skateboards, bicycles, swimming pools, drugs, any freakish accident you can find.You, of course, will demand perfection, “If only one child can be saved…,” but really, you're blather betrays a classic, intransegent ignorance of statistical risks. How many lives are saved each year from defensive gun uses (DGU's)? Literally tens of thousands; this includes armed mom's defending themselves and their children…Actually, 87 children get hurt from guns every day I don’t think I have to tell you how much that is a year. And 330 M is not all kids so that number is wrong. Also, according to Dr. David Hememnway DGUS are around 60 to 80k and most of them are illegal.1-3. Guns are not used millions of times each year in self-defenseWe use epidemiological theory to explain why the “false positive” problem for rare events can lead to large overestimates of the incidence of rare diseases or rare phenomena such as self-defense gun use. We then try to validate the claims of many millions of annual self-defense uses against available evidence. We find that the claim of many millions of annual self-defense gun uses by American citizens is invalid.Hemenway, David. Survey research and self-defense gun use: An explanation of extreme overestimates. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. 1997; 87:1430-1445.Hemenway, David. The myth of millions of annual self-defense gun uses: A case study of survey overestimates of rare events. Chance (American Statistical Association). 1997; 10:6-10.Cook, Philip J; Ludwig, Jens; Hemenway, David. The gun debate’s new mythical number: How many defensive uses per year? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. 1997; 16:463-469.4. Most purported self-defense gun uses are gun uses in escalating arguments, and are both socially undesirable and illegalWe analyzed data from two national random-digit-dial surveys conducted under the auspices of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. Criminal court judges who read the self-reported accounts of the purported self-defense gun use rated a majority as being illegal, even assuming that the respondent had a permit to own and to carry a gun, and that the respondent had described the event honestly from his own perspective.Hemenway, David; Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah. Gun use in the United States: Results from two national surveys. Injury Prevention. 2000; 6:263-267.Gun Threats and Self-Defense Gun Use

This answer pertains to buying in the United States and is the story of my first purchase. Hope it helps.IntroAs professionals in the art and design field, we have lived frugally for years. Our first jobs brought us to very expensive cities like San Francisco and Boston where owning a home was financially out of reach. A 20% down payment needed to get into a modest home in Boston was $120,000. We focused on saving as much as possible while living in apartments above and below all sorts of characters. Once our children were born, the creativity required to make apartments work went into overdrive. With our first child, Mom and the baby slept in the 1 bedroom while hubs slept on a mattress in the hall next to the front door. When our second child was born, we moved to a bigger apartment. This worked well until Mom got her first two children’s book illustration deals and needed a room with a door to keep children from the paints and expensive scanner. This time Hubs had to sleep in the living room while Mom and new baby got the bedroom and toddler baby got the second bedroom. As they grew to sleep through the night, Hubs moved back into the bedroom but one of the babies had to move their pack-and-play into the bathroom at night. Add to these constraints the lack of yard and long commutes and suddenly moving for a new job in a more family friendly location seemed like a good idea.We decided to take a position in Money's #1 best place to live in 2018, Frisco TX, USA, a suburb of Dallas (Frisco, Texas Is No. 1 on MONEY's Best Places to Live list). The state is experiencing the fastest growth in the US for the last 20 years with jobs projected to grow by nearly 15% over the next four years, according to Moody’s Analytics. But growth alone is not what makes Frisco the best place to live in America. Rather, it’s the way the city has translated its growth into a higher quality of life. For example: Frisco’s outstanding public schools have the highest graduation rate of all the cities and towns MONEY evaluated this year. The average commute and home prices are each half of what we experienced in Boston.8 months after arriving, we purchased our first home. Despite our best efforts to research, inspect, and read every document in the home buying process, we were deeply disappointed to find out essential information had been withheld from us until after we signed. Here is how to avoid making the same mistake.Top 10 listFind out about “fracking.”See where oil companies are drilling around you: https://www.drillingmaps.com/map.htmlLearn the concept of “split estate” and how homebuilders retain mineral rights with minimal disclosure https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fracking-rights-specialreport/special-report-u-s-builders-hoard-mineral-rights-under-new-homes-idUSBRE9980AZ20131009 .Know that most title companies, realtors, and inspectors aren’t required to tell you if a property is a split estate and won’t because it may reduce willingness to buy. Only “Landmen” search these. Consider talking to one before you start home searching.Estimate the effect of fracking on your property value: http://www.resource-media.org/drilling-vs-the-american-dream-fracking-impacts-on-property-rights-and-home-values/Understand the health risks: https://www.denverpost.com/2012/03/19/cu-denver-study-links-fracking-to-higher-concentration-of-air-pollutants/ , https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180409103920.htmKnow if the state will force you to allow fracking through “forced pooling.” http://www.ncsl.org/research/energy/compulsory-pooling-laws-protecting-the-conflicting-rights-of-neighboring-landowners.aspx.Fracking in urban areas is a growing issue. See notes below for more of our story and a guide to help you.Get the mortgage first: Mortgage companies will only give you a good rate if you already have a lower offer from another provider. Each of these quotes takes over 1 hour of your time to fill out paperwork, and that doesn’t include the time the mortgage company needs to make a decision. If you want to make multiple companies compete on price for your business, plan to spend 10 hours filling out forms online and taking their phone calls. Do this before you search for your dream house. You really don’t have time to do this during the tight deadlines of closing unless you make it a part time job. Mortgage companies want to limit your ability to rate shop. Start early to make sure you get a competitive rate. An effective strategy is to get a low quote from an online-only lender and then bring it to a more established bank and ask them to beat the price. Remember, most banks only compete with written offers.Know the good school districts. Tools like Zillow are great for finding homes but often produce misleading information. At the time of this writing, Zillow and other tools like it allow you to search for homes by the quality of schools, except they don’t know what school your homes are assigned. Zillow takes the closest schools to your home and assumes they are the ones your children will go to in that home. This may not be correct. That is why Zillow school listings have an (unassigned) next to them. Go to https://www.greatschools.org to get the real answer.Tell your mortgage broker, and realtor up front that you will not attend a closing unless you get all the paperwork 48 hours in advance. At closing they will expect you to sign ~ 200 pages. We asked our folks to get us the paperwork a day before closing and they sent 10% of it. We reviewed it and everything looked fine. Unaware that the entire packet was much larger and contained a lot of complex info like leans on the property, clauses in the mortgage, and disclaimers about frakers depreciating the value of your home, we showed up. Once you are in the room, there is a lot of pressure to get everything signed. We asked for 2 hours to read the documents but the realtor, mortgage agent, and title agent sat at the table tapping their pens waiting for us to finish reading. Thinking this would only take 20 minutes, we scheduled work meeting for later in the day. Not the best environment to have important conversations about the deal. This is where most people find out about huge issues like “split estates” (see #1). The industry pros know buyers will feel too far down the road to figure out what that means and just sign the deal. Don’t let it happen to you. Set expectations up front.Inspectors. As soon as you make an offer on a house and it is accepted, you are on a short clock to do all your diligence. Inspectors are people you pay to make sure issues are found. We needed several but didn’t know it. Get names ahead of time so you can have them ready. We ended up needing all of our inspectors on 12 hrs notice because of a holiday. You end up working with people who are available, not necessarily who’s the best.General inspector who reviews the entire house. Make sure they take good photos of everything that is an issue. Our home owner had a large squirrel problem in her attic for years and didn’t believe us that it would take thousands of dollars to repair until she saw the inspection photos of the chewed wiring, insulation, hole in roof and poop everywhere. Be there in person for the inspection. When they are done, they will generate a list of issues that is often over 100 lines long. You won’t know what is actually important and what isn’t. Before they leave the house, ask them to highlight the things that are big issues that should really be fixed. It will make prioritizing your repairs a lot easier.Pests and termites.Heating, electrical, and air conditioning. The home we were buying was 25 years old with all equipment original. The HVAC tech was able to estimate the expected life span of each piece. This helped us negotiate with the seller and prioritize a repair budget.Foundation. In Texas, the soil is clay and shifts a lot. This breaks the foundation of homes with regularity. A “foundation engineer” did measurements to help us know if a big repair was in our future. Luckily, it wasn’t.Homeowners agreement (HOA). If you are moving into a developer community, they likely have an HOA. In Texas these associations have the ability to take your house if they want to. So you have to make them happy. When we asked for a copy of the HOA document, nobody had one. Not the seller, not our friends in the neighborhood, not the HOA rep on the architecture board. Make sure you have an HOA document review as one of your contingencies. Finally someone produced the digital document. It was over 200 pages and completely unreadable with legalize. Worse yet, the PDF wasn’t searchable. It was just a scan of the original paper documents. A large section of the paperwork was scanned twice making the document even harder to read. The best way to deal with this seemed to be to open it in Adobe Acrobat, and then try to turn on character recognition making a searchable PDF. Buying an apartment in a big building is different than buying a single home in a community. We wanted to know if they would let us rent the property, use AirBnb, change the lawn, move our fence. Some of these HOAs are very restrictive. Ours recently updated their policy to include 16 colors we could paint our front door. Also, the city of Frisco required that 80% of our lawn be grass. We were thinking of putting in a waterless desert garden but I guess that’s out.Homeowners association. You need to know if the homeowner association has any problems with the existing house they will want you as a new owner to fix. One of our friends bought a house, and then the HOA told them they didn’t like the shingles and required them to replace the entire roof. This was about $5,000. The Title company should have caught this but didn’t. Make sure to check.“Landmen.” These are the people who search records to determine if you own mineral rights to the property. That is what allows oil companies to frack under you (see “forced pooling” in #1). If this is important to you, seek them out before you find a house to understand what is true in your area. None of the people we paid including our real estate agent, inspectors, mortgage agents and title company ever disclosed we might not own our mineral rights. Even after closing, we still don’t know.Now you are ready to search for a house. The steps above should let you know what area is best for you to look for homes. Hopefully away from fracking, in good schools, with a mortgage APR that you can use to estimate how much you can afford. We found Zillow/Realtor.com to be the best for searching options. Our practice was to look through everything online, make a short list, and then tour with agents. We asked the agents to search homes for us but didn’t find they spent enough time to actually find what we were looking for. They missed obvious stuff like a big backyard and good schools. However, they were great at spotting potential issues with a home during tour like a bulging foundation, water damage was that covered up, re-sellability etc…Offer. Know the amount of repair costs you can deduct from the initial offer. Our strategy was to search during the off season where there would be less options but seller might be willing to offer better prices. We started in Oct and closed in November. In determining our offer price, our real estate agent made a detailed report of similar homes in the neighborhood to determine what was fair. The seller’s agent did something similar but included homes that were not similar to ours and cost more because they backed onto a lucious golf course. Watch out for this. We offered near asking because the price was fair, but a little less because we knew it would need repairs. The seller waited a week to have another open house hoping to get more offers before accepting ours. We didn’t negotiate much at that time because the weather had been bad for the two open houses the seller had, likely keeping potential buyers away. We felt that if we negotiated hard at that point, the seller would just hold a third open house and find someone else to start a bidding war. What we didn’t know was that this isn’t the real offer. You have to get inspections and then negotiate price again. What is important to know is that certain states have a rule that the price negotiated after inspection has to be within a certain range of the original price. In Texas we were later told the maximum drop in price could be 6%. As with many big things in the home buying process, no one told us about this beforehand. Because our house was fairly well kept up, the repairs we needed fell inside this 6% window. If the home had needed something larger like a new roof, heater, air conditioners… we would have been in trouble. You can also put in conditions of the deal. If they aren’t met, the deal doesn’t go through. We made contingencies out of getting the HOA documents, foundation repair warranty, and satellite dishes were taken down from the roof and HOA association good standing.Inspections. As discussed above, knowing the inspections you want, including Landmen and having them scheduled ahead of time will make a big difference. it is possible to have everyone there at the same time. General, HVAC, Pest, Foundation folks can all come at 9am and be done by noon. Make sure to speak with each before leaving to make a short list of the big issues they found. It makes prioritizing your repairs much easier.Closing. As stated above, there are two big things to know. 1) The title company does the closing and it is their job to make sure nobody else has a right to the land. However, they are probably only looking above the grass. Our title company made no effort to assess mineral rights and didn’t tell us that was not part of their service. The bank made us sign a piece of paper saying we understood that a mining company may or may not be able to frack underneath us and that we would be responsible for partial or complete damage to the property as a result. Well, we were not aware and didn’t like the sound of that. 2) the title company will likely have over 200 pages for you to sign. Get this ahead of of the meeting so you can read everything and ask questions. I recommend 48 hours. The signing meeting isn’t a great place to get answers and possibly pull out of the deal. Our title company sent us 20 pages ahead of time and we thought that was the complete package. it wasn’t. There was not mortgage information, survey reports, title documents etc… Make sure they know you won’t come unless you have it all ahead of time. There is a high probability they will tell you the documents will arrive ahead of time and then not deliver. Plan to have a push-back signing date. At closing, ask the title agent to introduce buyer and seller by email so you can ask any questions and return any security deposits you might hold from their lease back.Move-in/out. In this area, it is common for seller to rent the home back to buyers for a certain number of days to move back. They pay your mortgage prorated by days. You also commonly hold onto a security deposit. Make sure to get the title company to introduce buyer and seller by email so you can make arrangements to return the money.More details worth knowing about “fracking” when you buy a new home.As first time home buyers, we assumed that buying a home meant buying the rights to use it above and below the ground. If we didn’t have those rights, we assumed someone would be required to tell us. We selected our location with the safety of our children in mind. At no time in the buying process did anyone tell us that it is now common for homes to be sold as “split estates” where regular people like us own the rights above the grass, and someone else owns the “mineral rights” below the grass. Not owning mineral rights means someone else can set up an oil well and “frack” under your property at any time without telling you. We assumed that this wasn’t a concern in urban areas like Frisco anyway because so many people lived there. Not true. “Fracking” in urban areas is the new trend. Urban cities like Denver Colorado, Naples Florida, Las Angeles California and Dallas Texas are experiencing a boom in “fracking” within a baseball’s throw to homes and schools. Home builders across America including D.R. Horton, Ryland Group Inc, Beazer Homes USA Inc and PulteGroup Inc have been hoarding mineral rights under new homes as the US. Reuters reviewed county property records in 25 states. The story caused two Attorney Generals in Florida and North Carolina to investigate deceptive sales practices resulting in D.R. Horton, the largest home builder in the US to give rights back to many of its customers. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fracking-rights-specialreport/special-report-u-s-builders-hoard-mineral-rights-under-new-homes-idUSBRE9980AZ20131009 Look at this map https://www.drillingmaps.com/map.html. Although there are no wells currently in Frisco, Denton, the neighboring country has over 5,000 drilled wells pumping out 2,000 barrels of oil a month. There are over 280 wells within city limits including one next to the local college football stadium http://www.texas-drilling.com/denton-county.Think the government will never let this happen in your area? The residents of Denton decided they didn’t want any more fracking and passed a law restricting it. Within a year the state governor passed House Bill 40 making it illegal for homeowners to ristrict frackers https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33140732, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/22/denton-texas-banned-fracking-. Here is a great example of how the process works. Former Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm is in a lawsuit between jilted gas driller Trinity East and the City of Dallas over “Special Use Permits” for gas drilling in prohibited areas in return for $19 million in upfront leasing payments. The citizens of Dallas had formed a committee who had already voted “no” on allowing the permits. Yet those votes were overturned during a surprise re-vote in another meeting. https://www.downwindersatrisk.org/2016/01/witness-for-the-defense-wherein-we-go-to-bat-for-mary-suhm/Think the Federal Government has regulatory oversight of fracking to ensure public safety? In 2005, Congress passed a law prohibiting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from safeguarding drinking water that might be harmed by fracking. The law also allows oil companies to keep secret the long list of chemicals they pump into the ground as part of the fracking process. This was made possible by a study commissioned by the federal government to assess the dangers of fracking. The study was done by overseen by Cadmus, a research firm in Massachusetts. They had difficulty assessing the impact of fracking on the local water supply because the the oil and gas industry declined to provide information about the fracking fluids they used, asserting that they were trade secrets. There wasn’t enough time or money for Cadmus to begin monitoring groundwater before, during and after fracking jobs to see if the process affected water quality. As a result, they concluded that fracking posed a risk to drinking water and another study with better design was needed to determine how much. The federal government changed the conclusion to say fracking posed no risk to drinking water. The Cadmus scientists who did the research disagreed. Chi Ho Sham, the team’s group manager said “the data and analyses tell us there is risk associated with it, and we were asked to report there is no risk, and we can’t say that.” The Cadmus group had their company's name and their own removed from the final document. Immediately after the report’s publication, Weston Wilson from the EPA’s Denver office filed a formal whistleblower complaint. The EPA’s inspector general launched an investigation into Wilson’s complaint -- but closed it after Congress passed the Energy Policy Act in 2005, codifying the misleading conclusion of the study https://www.dallasnews.com/news/environment/2017/12/05/water-tainted-fracking-scientists-said-safe-now-say-censored. If not for this loophole, the EPA could have developed standards for the entire country. State rules could have been tougher, but not weaker, than the national standards, and if states failed to regulate effectively, citizens could have petitioned the federal government to intervene. Without it, citizens have little recourse in opposing the laws that enhanced fracker’s ability to operate without oversight. Examples include:Resource Conservation and Recovery Act 42 U.S.C. 6921(B)(2) exempts oils and gas companies from proper disposal of the hazardous, toxic, and radioactive waste generated during production as identified in the EPA's 1987 report.Clean air act 112(n)(4)-42 U.S.C 7412 (n)(4). Oil and Gas companies are exempt from adhering to limits on hazardous air pollutants like benzene that the US recognizes as dangerous.Clean air act 402(I)(2)-33 U.S.C 1342(I)(2). Oil and Gas companies are exempt from the requirement of planning how they will protect toxic runoff from contaminating surface water, streams and wetlands. https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2017/11/22/special-report-how-the-u-s-government-hid-frackings-risks-to-drinking-water/This all this is a lot of fuss about nothing? Exxon CEO and board chairman Rex Tillerson, head of the world’s largest drilling company is suing to stop construction of a water tower that would supply nearby drilling operations because of the “constant and unbearable nuisance” that would come from having “lights on at all hours of the night …traffic at unreasonable hours … noise from mechanical and electrical equipment” http://www.resource-media.org/drilling-vs-the-american-dream-fracking-impacts-on-property-rights-and-home-values/. Read the full suit here: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/water20140220.pdf.Think all this fracking only happens in Texas? Weld County, a suburban community for Denver commuters is the fourth-fastest growing community in the nation. Like Frisco Texas it’s economy, quality of life is high, and jobs are plentiful. As population in the area is expected to double by 2050, drilling applications in the state have risen 70 percent in just a year. Oil rigs are going in near high priced homes and schools, causing health issues and large drops in realestate prices https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/us/colorado-fracking-debates.html. Residents fought back with a ban on fracking near their homes and schools, but like in Texas, they were denied by a ruling at the state level https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/us/colorado-court-strikes-down-local-bans-on-fracking.html?module=inline. Worse, Colorado has a law that forces homeowners who own their mineral rights but don’t want oil companies to frack near them. This law requires the homeowner to pay a penalty in the form of the full cost of equipment and operating costs for the well as well as a 200% fee based on the costs of oil rig exploration. Lots of other states have similar laws http://www.ncsl.org/research/energy/compulsory-pooling-laws-protecting-the-conflicting-rights-of-neighboring-landowners.aspx.Another story in Frederick, Colorado, a suburb 30 minutes from Denver and Boulder illustrates the future of other communities. Home owners in an expensive subdivision left for a weekend trip and came back to find a 142-foot-tall drill rig in the backyard. Notice the photos of the well around the playground. https://grist.org/climate-energy/the-fracking-rig-next-door-photos/. Nearby Red Hawk Elementary School has a well going up 350 feet from where its second-graders play. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/06/fracking-colorado-school-vexes-residents_n_1575733.html , https://www.coloradoindependent.com/2012/04/03/degette-urges-epa-to-consider-potential-health-threats-from-gas-drilling-operations/ , https://www.coloradoindependent.com/2012/06/04/colorado-kids-to-encana-dont-frack-our-schools/. http://www.dailycamera.com/erie-news/ci_20126684/noaa-study-erie-gas-drilling-moratorium-fracking-propane-butane. A Colorado court has invalidated a local ban on fracking by towns who don’t want it https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/us/colorado-court-strikes-down-local-bans-on-fracking.html?module=inline .A University of Colorado-Denver School of Public Health study this year showed that people living within a half-mile of oil-and-gas fracking operations were exposed to air pollutants five times above U.S. hazard standards. The cancer risk estimate of 8.3 per 10,000 for populations living within 500 feet of an oil and gas facility exceeded the U.S. EPA's 1 in 10,000 upper threshold, according to study published recently in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. https://www.denverpost.com/2012/03/19/cu-denver-study-links-fracking-to-higher-concentration-of-air-pollutants/ , https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180409103920.htmWhat about Cary North Carolina, #5 on Money's best places to live list of 2018? Cary is with the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill “triangle” and is home to Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill where Michael Jordan got his start. The economy has been booming for years thanks to a decades long tax plan designed to attract businesses http://time.com/money/collection/2018-best-places-to-live/5361443/cary-north-carolina-2/. Lots of people move their from NY for a better family life. What new residents don’t typically know is that energy companies have been anxious to frack near the most densely populated area of the state. A large band expected to produce profitable energy lays at the top of Wake County, right under the city of Durham https://rafiusa.org/issues/landowner-rights-and-fracking/fracking-map-in-nc/. That means frackers could soon be underneath Cary. Even more alarming, North Carolina has a policy called “forced pooling” which, gives the state the right to compel a homeowner who owns their own mineral rights and does not want oil companies to frack underneath them into allowing oil companies to frack. In most states, this requires that a certain percentage of surrounding land already be leased voluntarily. In North Carolina, current law does not specify the percentage of land that must be voluntarily leased in a given area https://rafiusa.org/issues/landowner-rights-and-fracking/forced-pooling/. North Carolina is still deciding how to work with energy companies. More about its land formations and fracking opportunities can be seen in the map at the bottom of this page: https://files.nc.gov/ncdeq/Energy%20Mineral%20and%20Land%20Resources/Geological%20Survey/Oil%20and%20Gas%20Research/NCGS%20OFR2013-01%20Reid%20and%20Taylor.pdf.DisclaimerHope my experience is helpful to you. This is my first home purchase so there are likely many important things left of this list I do not know or understand. I am not a real estate professional of any kind and do not represent myself, or this post as having correct information. It is simply the story of my first home purchase. Please consult a qualified professional when purchasing a home.

There are many reasons that the government should not introduce the death penalty.Perhaps we should hear from an expert in law enforcement:LAW ENFORCEMENT VIEWS“I ... know that in practice, [the death penalty] does more harm than good. So while I hang on to my theoretical views, as I’m sure many of you will, I stand before you to say that society is better off without capital punishment… Life in prison without parole in a maximum-security detention facility is a better alternative.”-Police Chief James Abbott of West Orange, New Jersey (2010)Studies indicate that the death penalty DOES NOT DETER CRIME:National Research Council of the National Academies Deterrence ReportA report, released on April 18, 2012, by the prestigious National Research Council of the National Academies and based on a review of more than three decades of research, concluded that studies claiming a deterrent effect on murder rates from the death penalty are fundamentally flawed. The report concluded: “The committee concludes that research to date on the effect of capital punishment on homicide is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases, or has no effect on homicide rates. Therefore, the committee recommends that these studies not be used to inform deliberations requiring judgments about the effect of the death penalty on homicide.Consequently, claims that research demonstrates that capital punishment decreases or increases the homicide rate by a specified amount or has no effect on the homicide rate should not influence policy judgments about capital punishment." (emphasis added). Criminologist Daniel Nagin of Carnegie Mellon, who chaired the panel of experts, said, “We recognize this conclusion will be controversial to some, but nobody is well served by unfounded claims about the death penalty. Nothing is known about how potential murderers actually perceive their risk of punishment."The report found three fundamental flaws with existing studies on deterrence:The studies do not factor in the effects of noncapital punishments that may also be imposed.The studies use incomplete or implausible models of potential murderers’ perceptions of and response to the use of capital punishment.Estimates of the effect of capital punishment are based on statistical models that make assumptions that are not credible.READ MORE ON THE REPORT HERE: DETERRENCE: National Research Council Concludes Deterrence Studies Should Not Influence Death Penalty PolicyBeyond one police chief or one study, here’s a group of CRIMINOLOGISTS on the subject: Criminologists' Views on Deterrence and the Death PenaltyA 2009 survey of the most leading criminologists in the country from found that the overwhelming majority did not believe that the death penalty is a proven deterrent to homicide.Eighty-eight percent of the country’s top criminologists do not believe the death penalty acts as a deterrent to homicide, according to a new study published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology and authored by Professor Michael Radelet, Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and Traci Lacock, also at Boulder.Similarly, 87% of the expert criminologists believe that abolition of the death penalty would not have any significant effect on murder rates. In addition, 75% of the respondents agree that “debates about the death penalty distract Congress and state legislatures from focusing on real solutions to crime problems.”The survey relied on questionnaires completed by the most pre-eminent criminologists in the country, including Fellows in the American Society of Criminology; winners of the American Society of Criminology’s prestigious Southerland Award; and recent presidents of the American Society of Criminology. Respondents were not asked for their personal opinion about the death penalty, but instead to answer on the basis of their understandings of the empirical research.(M. Radelet and T. Lacock, DO EXECUTIONS LOWER HOMICIDE RATES?: THE VIEWS OF LEADING CRIMINOLOGISTS, 99 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology489 2009)To read the study, click here: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/files/DeterrenceStudy2009.pdfFor a more recent and comprehensive study we turn here:Brennan Center for Justice Report: What Caused the Crime Decline?In February 2015, the Brennan Center for Justice released a report examining potential explanations for the dramatic drop in crime in the U.S. in the 1990s and 2000s. The death penalty was one of the possible contributing causes the researchers evaluated. The report's conclusion: the death penalty had no effect on the decline in crime. The authors explained: "Empirically, capital punishment is too infrequent to have a measureable effect on the crime drop. Criminologically, the existence and use of the death penalty may not even create the deterrent effect on potential offenders that lawmakers hoped when enacting such laws." The authors noted criminals do not consider the consequences of their actions, particularly when the consequence is rarely applied, as in the case of the death penalty. "Much psychological and sociological research suggests that many criminal acts are crimes of passion or committed in a heated moment based only on immediate circumstances, and thus potential offenders may not consider or weigh longer-term possibilities of punishment and capture, including the possibility of capital punishment."They concluded, "In line with the past research, the Brennan Center’s empirical analysis finds that there is no evidence that executions had an effect on crime in the 1990s or 2000s." Ultimately, the report attributed the drop in crime to various social changes and policing tactics, with increased incarceration having no effect in the 2000s and only minimal effect on property crime in the 1990s.What Caused the Crime Decline? examines one of the nation’s least understood recent phenomena – the dramatic decline in crime nationwide over the past two decades – and analyzes various theories for why it occurred, by reviewing more than 40 years of data from all 50 states and the 50 largest cities. It concludes that overly-harsh criminal justice policies, particularly increased incarceration, which rose even more dramatically over the same period, were not the main drivers of the crime decline. In fact, the report finds that increased incarceration has been declining in its effectiveness as a crime control tactic for more than 30 years. Its effect on crime rates since 1990 has been limited, and has been non-existent since 2000.More important were various social, economic, and environmental factors, such as growth in income and an aging population. The introduction of CompStat, a data-driven policing technique, also played a significant role in reducing crime in cities that introduced it.The report concludes that considering the immense social, fiscal, and economic costs of mass incarceration, programs that improve economic opportunities, modernize policing practices, and expand treatment and rehabilitation programs, all could be a better public safety investment.Read the report, O. Roeder, L. Eisen, and J. Bowling, What Caused the Crime Decline?, Brennan Center for Justice (Feb. 12, 2015), here.What Caused the Crime Decline?Four Misconceptions About CrimeVicente Benavides was released from prison on April 19, 2018.Vicente Benavides Freed After 25 Years on California's Death RowVicente Benavides, 68, spent nearly 25 years on California’s death row for the 1991 sexual assault and murder of 21-month-old Consuelo Verdugo before the California Supreme Court overturned his conviction on March 12, 2018. Benavides is represented by Cristina Borde of the Habeas Corpus Resource Center.Let’s start with INNOCENCE. Here is one organization that has begun to track men and women who are wrongfully convicted, in some cases, after DECADES in prison/on death row. The Exonerees - Exoneration ProjectThere are MANY OTHER ORGANIZATIONS working to do the same thing, and which have their OWN tallies: The Cases & Exoneree Profiles - Innocence ProjectThe Innocence Project has achieved 350 DNA exonerations to date. https://25years.innocenceproject.org/impact/“You can release an innocent man from prison, but you can’t release him from the grave.” — Freddie Lee Pitts, who was exonerated from Florida’sdeath row for a crime he did not commit 1Exonerations of Innocent Men and WomenAs of October 2015, we have executed over 1,414 individuals in this country since 1976.2156 individuals have been exonerated from death row--that is, found to be innocent and released - since 1973.3In other words, for every 10 people who have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S., one person has been set free.These 156 exonerees bear witness to the fact that we have made grave mistakes in the application of the death penalty. Many of them are powerful advocates against the death penalty:Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown were exonerated in 2014. Under coercion, the mentally disabled half-brothers confessed to the 1983 rape and murder of an 11 year old girl in North Carolina and were sentenced to death. While Brown’s sentence had later been commuted to life imprisonment, McCollum spent three decades on death row before DNA evidence proved their innocence.Read MorenavigaterightKirk Bloodsworth, who was sent to death row in Maryland in 1984, was convicted of the rape and murder of a young girl based on false eye witness identification. He was released in 1993, after DNA testing confirmed his innocence.4Read MorenavigaterightAnthony Graves was sent to death row in 1994 for allegedly assisting Robert Carter in the heinous killing of Bobbie Davis; her daughter, Nicole; and Davis’s four grandchildren. His conviction was largely based on Carter’s testimony, despite the fact that there was no physical evidence linking him to the murders.Read MorenavigaterightJuan Roberto Meléndez-Colón spent nearly 18 years on death row in Florida for a crime to which another man confessed to 16 people.Read MorenavigaterightRandy Steidl was convicted in 1986 for the murder of newlyweds Dyke and Karen Rhoads. He spent 17 years in prison, 12 of those on death row. In 2004, he was finally freed after the Illinois State police found that Steidl had been wrongfully imprisoned.Read MorenavigaterightDelbert Tibbs was traveling through Florida when police stopped him to question him about the rape of 16-year old Cynthia Nadeau and the murder of her friend Terry Milroy. Although he physically did not match the description of the suspect whom Nadeau had originally described, she changed her mind after seeing his photo and erroneously identified him as the perpetrator.To learn more about exonerated men and women, visit the Death Penalty Information Center’s Innocence DatabWrongful ExecutionsToday, due to the work of advocacy organizations, investigative journalists, attorneys, and academics, we know that people have been executed despite serious doubts about their guilt. Here are a few of their stories:Troy Anthony Davis was convicted of the shooting-death of off-duty police officer Mark McPhail. His conviction was based on the testimony of nine witnesses, seven of whom later recanted their testimony or admitted it was false.5Read MorenavigaterightCarlos DeLuna was executed in Texas in 1989 for the stabbing death of Wanda Lopez.6DeLuna maintained his innocence throughout his imprisonment and insisted another individual by the name of Carlos Hernandez was really the killer.Read MorenavigaterightGary Graham (A.K.A. Shaka Sankofa) was sentenced to death at the age of 18 in 1981 in Texas for the robbery and murder of Bobby Lambert. His conviction was based largely on the testimony of one witness who said she saw him through a windshield from over 30 feet away.Read MorenavigaterightCameron Todd Willingham was executed in Texas in 2004 for the death of his three young daughters in a house fire. Willingham’s conviction was based on faulty forensic science which erroneously concluded that the fire was arson.Read MorenavigaterightShouting from the RooftopsWrongful convictions and executions happen because of factors such as:7Mistaken eye witness testimonyFaulty forensic scienceFabricated testimony or testimony from jailhouse informantsGrossly incompetent lawyersFalse confessionsPolice or prosecutorial misconductRacial biasIn 2006, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia famously said that if any person was executed in the U.S. for a crime that he did not commit, “the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops.”Now is the time to gather our voices and let it be “shouted from the rooftops” that innocent people have been put to death.Citations1Florida's Timely Justice Act Is Neither Timely Nor Justice2http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions-year3http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-and-death-penalty4http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Kirk_Bloodsworth.php5http://www.naacp.org/pages/troy-davis-a-case-for-clemency6http://www3.law.columbia.edu/hrlr/ltc/Numerous studies conducted in various states have concluded again and again that the death penalty is more expensive than alternative sentences.For example, a 2015 study showed that in Washington death penalty cases cost an average of $1 million more to prosecute than comparable cases where the death penalty is not sought. A 2012 study showed that death penalty has cost California more than $4 billion since 1978, and suggested that commuting all the state's death sentences to life imprisonment would immediately result in $170 million in savings per year. In Kansas, death penalty cases studied between 2004-2011 cost around four times more than cases where the death penalty was not sought. States could save millions of dollars a year by eliminating the death penalty.1And although the majority of the United States' death penalty cases are in 2% of the country's counties, the costs of those cases are shifted on to the majority of our taxpayers. For more information on the disproportionate costs of the death penalty, read hereBeyond the dollars and cents, however, there are other costs to choosing the death penalty — costs to society — which must be considered when analyzing the true price of capital punishment.The Death Penalty Diverts Resources from Proven Solutions to Crime and ViolenceState programs that successfully address the underlying, contributing factors to crime and violence already exist, but they do not receive sufficient resources. By redirecting death penalty dollars in a careful and targeted way, we can reduce crime, improve our communities and save money.Photo creditEarly Childhood EducationEvidence-based research suggests that children who receive early education are less likely to become criminals, which not only benefits society, but also saves the state money.Increasing High School Graduation RatesPrograms that target at-risk youth and expand the numbers of high school graduates help to reduce crime.Gang PreventionEducation-related and community-based programs help prevent at-risk youth from joining gangs.2Mental Health ServicesStudies of programs that provide mental health services for juveniles in Texas, Utah, and Colorado have all proven that “individuals who receive mental health treatment have a much lower probability of being arrested” and have a lower rate of recidivism.3Drug and Alcohol Treatment ServicesBy increasing the number of people sent to substance abuse treatment programs, states have successfully reduced violent crime, incarceration, and recidivism.4The Death Penalty Prohibits States from Providing Adequate Support to Victims and Their FamiliesFunding for the death penalty could be redirected to support expanded services for victims and their families, including grief counseling, funeral costs, school tuition scholarships or grants for children of murdered parents, paid leave from work to attend court proceedings, crime scene cleanup5, emergency funds6, and medical treatment.7Read more about victims and the death penalty.The Death Penalty Harms OthersRon McAndrew, a former warden on Florida’s death row, has said, “Many colleagues turned to drugs and alcohol from the pain of knowing a man died at their hands.” Some have even committed suicide.8Read more about the harm to prison workers.Of course the death penalty also harms the loved ones of those people sentenced to death. For more on the experience of losing a family member to the death penalty, watch Herb Donaldson's Tedx Talk, "How to Survive an Execution."As long as the death penalty is on the books, it will continue to siphon scarce public resources from programs that can strengthen our communities and prevent crime in the first place.Citations1http://http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty/#.UR_VCVpATR52Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice Harvard Law School, “Eleven Million Points of Light: How Abolition of the Death Penalty in North Carolina Could Improve Public Safety, Increase Opportunities, and Build Prosperity.” A Policy Brief. April 30, 2010.3Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice Harvard Law School, “Eleven Million Points of Light: How Abolition of the Death Penalty in North Carolina Could Improve Public Safety, Increase Opportunities, and Build Prosperity.” A Policy Brief. April 30, 20104http://www.justicepolicy.org/images/upload/08_01_REP_DrugTx_AC-PS.pdf5Victims’ Families6Victims’ Families7http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?list=class&type=53&class=20&all=18NEW VOICES: Former Warden Calls Executions Traumatic for Prison Staff“Even under the most sophisticated death penalty statutes, race continues to play a major role in determining who shall live and who shall die.”– US Supreme Court Justice Harry BlackmunRace is a Significant Factor in the Death PenaltyAs a society we cannot change the past, but we can act to transform our future. Studies spanning more than 30 years, covering virtually every state that uses capital punishment, have found that race is a significant factor in death penalty cases.As Justice Harry Blackmun explained in his 1994 dissent from the court’s refusal to hear the death penalty case Callins v. Collins,1it should not surprise us that “the biases and prejudices that infect society generally influence the determination of who is sentenced to death, even within the narrower pool of death eligible defendants selected according to objective standards.”The burdens and failures of the United States justice system fall most heavily and unfairly on communities of color.There must be a fundamental change in the system. The lynchpin for that change is ending capital punishment.Do We Have a Criminal Justice System Designed to Keep Us Safe?Our broken justice system begins with an approach to policing that disproportionately targets communities of color. Such focused attention by law enforcement has resulted in 60% of our prison population being comprised of people of color who receive longer sentences than their white counterparts. Finally, it ends with the ultimate and most disturbing of all of its disparities — unequal death penalty sentencing.What is clear is that the current system is broken and the burdens of its failures fall most heavily and unfairly on communities of color.Read more >>Death by DiscriminationRacial prejudice plays a significant role in the application of the death penalty in America, and capital punishment is used disproportionately against people of color. Although this idea is unfathomable to many Americans, the abhorrent practice is explicitly permitted by the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled in the 1987 case McClesky vs. Kemp that a pattern of racial disparities in the death penalty did not violate an individual’s Constitutional right of "equal protection of the law."Jury SelectionWhile the Constitution entitles capital defendants to a fair jury of their peers, too often fair jurors are excluded because of race. In some instances, unfair prosecutors intentionally exclude jurors based on their race because of a false belief that people of color cannot fairly serve as jurors and follow the law. Although the Constitution prohibits such intentional discrimination based on race, the courts have been lax in their enforcement, and procedural barriers too often prevent claims of bias from being heard.In other instances, seemingly neutral practices that permit prosecutors to exclude people who have concerns about the death penalty but who, in actuality can still be fair jurors, results in the over-selection of racially biased jurors. People of color, women and people of faith tend to have concerns about the death penalty and the jury selection process known as “death qualification” has a disproportionate racial impact—excluding qualified people from serving as jurors.2Read more >>Race of the VictimTime and again, studies have shown that the death penalty is sought more often against people who kill white victims than African American or Hispanic victims.Read more >>Race and InnocenceA variety of racial issues combine to dramatically increase the risk of sentencing innocent people to death. For example, eyewitness identification, the leading cause of wrongful convictions, is even less reliable when the witness is identifying someone of a different race.3In 2000, A Broken System, a landmark study on the capital justice system by researchers at Columbia University, found that “when whites and other influential citizens feel threatened by homicide, they put pressure on officials to punish as many criminals as severely as possible, with the result that mistakes are made, and a lot of people are initially sentenced to death who are later found to have committed a lesser crime, or no crime at all… It is disturbing that race plays a role in the outcome of death penalty cases, whatever the reasons.”4The death penalty is an arbitrary and discriminatory punishment that has no place in a country which prides itself on equal protection for all citizens under the law.CITATIONS1http://www.laweekly.com/1999-03-18/news/last-wishes/full/2http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/death-penalty-black-and-white-who-lives-who-dies-who-decides#Racial Bias Permeates the System3http://www.capitalpunishmentincontext.org/issues/innocence4http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR51/046/2003/en/bd8584ef-d712-11dd-b0cc-1f0860013475/amr510462003en.pdfThe death penalty takes a heavy toll on those directly involved in executions— prison wardens, chaplains, executioners, and corrections officers.Many of those involved in executions have reported suffering PTSD-like symptoms such as flashbacks, nightmares and other forms of distress. These symptoms are reported by multiple witnesses such as journalists, executioners, and wardens alike.“At night I would awaken to visions of executed inmates sitting on the edge of my bed,”--Ron McAndrew, Retired Warden, Florida State Prison“If you care about human life, it isn’t just the fetus you care about. You care about all human life. [An execution] is the most premeditated murder you have ever seen. A lot of people were complicit in [the execution]—the governor, the parole boards, the courts. But they call on a very few to commit the actual murder with the sanction of the state. Let me tell you that the first one shook me to the core…And after the fifth [execution] I could not do it anymore. I couldn’t rationalize it anymore.”--Dr. Allen Ault, former Warden,Georgia Diagnostic and Classifications PrisonIn addition to all the FACTUAL arguments, we begin turning to moral arguments, such as those from Sister Helen Prejean and her Ministry against the Death Penalty: https://www.sisterhelen.org/Sister Helen also makes an excellent case that the way the death penalty is administered is CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT. While the US SUPREME COURT has acted in some cases while not in others, Sister Helen lays out the facts of how American state and federal governments treat the euthanasia of animals significantly more humanely than the execution of prisoners. https://www.sisterhelen.org/tortured-to-death/Then there exists the politically CONSERVATIVE argument against the death penalty, being put forth by HomeThe arguments are QUITE similar to the topics I’ve previously presented, so I won’t go through them extensively:https://conservativesconcerned.org/why-were-concerned/We’ve learned a lot about the death penalty in the last 40 yearsFor three decades, we have tinkered with the death penalty in an effort to make it fair, accurate, and effective. Yet the system continues to fail.The risk of executing an innocent person is realThe DNA era has given us irrefutable proof that our criminal justice system sentences innocent people to die. Evidence we once thought reliable like eyewitness identification is not always accurate. DNA evidence has led to hundreds of exonerations, but it isn’t available in most cases. Despite our best intentions, human beings simply can’t be right 100% of the time. And when a life is on the line, one mistake is one too many.Read MoreThe complicated process has drained our resourcesThe death penalty is longer and more complicated because a life is on the line – shortcuts could mean an irreversible mistake. For this reason, the death penalty costs millions more dollars than a system of life without parole – before a single appeal is even filed.Read MoreThe death penalty has failed victims’ familiesThe longer process prolongs the pain of victims’ families, who must relive their trauma as courts repeat trials and hearings trying to get it right. Most cases result in a life sentence in the end anyway – but only after the family has suffered years of uncertainty. To be meaningful, justice should be swift and sure – but the death penalty is just the opposite.Read MoreThe death penalty doesn't keep us safe.In the name of helping law enforcement, the death penalty concentrates enormous state resources on chasing a small handful of executions while thousands of cases go unsolved. It’s hardly surprising, then, that police chiefs rank the death penalty last among public safety tools..Read MoreFairness in the death penalty is a moving target.We expect justice to be blind. Otherwise it’s not justice at all. Yet poor defendants sentenced to die have been represented by attorneys who were drunk, asleep, or completely inexperienced. Geography often determines who lives and dies, and after 30 years we have not found a way to make the system less arbitrary. Every effort to fix the system just makes it more complex – not more fair.Read MoreConservatives are readyThe mounting evidence of waste, inaccuracy, and bias has shattered public confidence in the criminal justice system. Death sentences are at an all-time low and public support for the death penalty has dropped in favor of life without parole. More and more of us are questioning the death penalty and realizing that it does not square up with Conservative ideology.