Posted by
Matt Cole on Monday, June 22, 2009 9:14:31 PM
Why is it in America when tradgedy strikes we want to create some law, ordinance or rule to "prevent" it from ever happening again, yet it never prevents anything? An example is DUI laws. We have more DUI's today than ever it seems and yet we keep wanting to make the laws more strict on those who have driven and gotten pulled over and blown over the legal limit. But what do we do to those who drink, drive and kill? We give them 30 days if they're an NFL player.
Dante' Stallworth of the Cleveland Browns just got a whopping 30 days in jail for drinking, driving and hitting and killing a man in Miami. His defense? He flashed the lights to warn the guy before he plowed into him. Thanks Dante', you're all heart. I mean, you should warn a guy before you decide to run him over with your car, don't you think?
He's not the only guy who plays in the NFL who has gotten away with murder. Leonard Little of the St. Louis Rams hit and killed a mother and a daughter some 10 years ago and he was back on the playing field by the end of the season. How can you kill two people because of an irresponsible decision and be playing football again within months? How did our DUI laws to prevent this not prevent it? What can we do to stop this kind of senseless killing?
I'll give you an idea. Let's go back to doing things the way our Founding Father's intended. They believed and expected us to operate under the premise that you have the right to do whatever you want to do, whatever you want, so long as you didn't violate someone else's rights or damage person or property. If you did violate someone's rights or damage person or property you were to pay a price equal to the damage you did. They didn't want a bunch of laws to prevent things from happening; they realized they were going to happen anyway. They believed the way to deter crime was to make sure that the consequences of your actions fit your crime.
So here's how we prevent DUI's, or at least reduce them. If someone decides they can drink and drive and they make it from point A, the bar, to point B, home, without hurting anyone or damaging anything, why should they be punished? They didn't do anything to anyone nor violate anyone's rights. However, if that same person hits and kills someone on the way home because they were drinking and decided to drive, give them the death penalty! "That's to drastic" I can hear many of you saying. Well, we want more laws to keep a guy who can drink and drive without harming anyone off the street and in jail as a habitual criminal but, we don't really want to stop the killing. Otherwise Leonard Little and Donte' Stallworth, among many others, wouldn't be alive to get back on the field or back to their jobs.
If you make the decision to risk your life to drink and drive, then by all means go for it. I know, MADD, SADD, GLADD, RAD, WHATEVERADD think this is crazy. What if it's your daughter that's killed, they'd say. Well, if it was my daughter that Leonard Little ran over or Donte' Stallworth mowed down, would I feel satisfied it wouldn't happen to someone else's little girl? NO! Forget prevention and let's go back to accountability. When we have the guts to do that, maybe, just maybe we'll finally start seeing a reduction in senseless deaths and injuries. Until then, wear your seatbelts; Little and Stallworth maybe be driving on a road near you!