It's been a contentious topic, but I think I've managed to create a concise way to state "don't blame the victim."
The person responsible for a crime is the first person in the chain of events who breaks the law.
It can also be rephrased for morality.
If the victim has done nothing illegal or immoral then they're not responsible for the crime.
The main reason to be absolutist about this is you can keep expanding the victim selection process upstream forever.
"If the victim had not been a woman, or never been born, she would not have been raped."
"If the victim didn't even own a car, it would not have been broken into and the gun stolen out of the glove box."
"If the victim didn't own a gun, there wouldn't have been a gun to steal."
"If private ownership of firearms was illegal then thieves couldn't steal guns."
See where this illogical line of thinking goes?
Owning property causes theft when you don't blame the thieves.
You cannot sanitize the world enough to stop all crime.
So... Yeah... What California has done in order to un-felony all their felonies. Blaming the victims for the felons' actions.
ReplyDeleteWorks for them, or not as the case may be.
Good post. So why isn't some Gun Rights Organization like the NRA paying you to think for them? Oh, wait, I think I just answered my own question. Since the NRA likes blaming the victims.
In what way does the NRA like blaming victims?
DeleteThey're at the forefront, in many states, of using other groups attempts at getting our rights expanded as scapegoats as to why such expansions failed.
DeleteHere in Florida we had open and campus carry all but wrapped up and secured. Marion Hammer and the NRA got upset that "their" "pure" bill was corrupted by our petty, local groups and killed it.
They then publicly blamed us for the bill's failure.