-=> Quoting John Sampson to Walter Luffman <=-
 WL>Good intentions, poor thinking by the author, bad law.  Nothing
[...]
 JS> You know what they say about the road to h*ll being paved with good
 JS> intentions. I don't believe, however, that Lauttenberg had good
 JS> intentions. He had political mileage in mind and NOT the Second
 JS> Ammendment.
You're probably right about this.  
 JS> I have yet to see a gun control law work in the manner it was intended
 JS> to work. ie. prevent a criminal from obtaining a firearm or preventing
 JS> a criminal from committing a crime.
Even most of the extreme-silly-fringe liberals acknowledge
that no law will directly affect any criminal's ability to get
guns...including full-auto weapons and armor-piercing ammo if
they really want it and are willing to pay the going
black-market price.  The liberal argument is that taking guns
out of _our_ hands (and homes, and gun shops, and even some
police armories) will make it harder for criminals to get guns
legally...as if they buy them legally in the first place.  And
of course, if the liberals have already confiscated our guns,
criminals can't steal them from us.  In a strange way, I can
almost admire their "flexible" mental processes.
 JS> There are circumstances where a person is legally here (has an
 JS> immigrant visa or has adjusted status to permanent resident), has
 JS> committed a crime that several years ago didn't qualify as an
 JS> aggravated felony but does now. He may have NOT been placed in removal
 JS> proceedings because at the time either the crime he was convicted of
 JS> wasn't a deportable offense, OR, it was impractical to commence
 JS> proceedings for whatever reason.
 JS> However, NOW, he's an aggravated felon and therefore is most certainly
 JS> removable.
Yes, this would certainly be a retroactive law under any
definition.  I'm not entirely certain we should enact such laws,
though -- the person should have been considered "not deportable"
in the first place, but he wasn't because the law didn't say so.
Once we've given our word (as stated in the law) as to the
conditions under which an individual is permitted legal entry, we
should live up to our word.  This does not imply that we can't
change the rules regarding future applicants for legal entry, of
course.
Retroactive laws that grant special _beneficial_ status to
individuals are another matter.  These should always be allowed,
but the actual enaction severely limited; and we must limit them
to named individuals rather than faceless groups, since we're
changing the bargain in their favor and at our expense.
Walter, Forked Deer River Ilks
wluffman@usit.net
... How many fools does it take to make up a public?
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