A California man is sentenced to life in prison for stealing $1.00 from a coin case in an unlocked car. A Brooklyn 99 cent store owner is fined $30,000 for selling a toy gun set for ages 6 and under that includes a plastic police badge, a plastic waist holster and plastic hand cuffs. A man from Queens on probation for two years for his first DUI has probation officers enter his home at 8:30 PM. Without warning or warrant they searched his apartment refrigerator for any beer or alcohol. A 14 year old High School freshman was expelled from school for blowing spit balls from a “lethal weapon”, which just happened to be the tube from his ball point pen…The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has decided to ban bake sales or pizza sale fund raisers. These actions can all be argued as violating our constitutional rights. Every day one can read of similar stories occurring. People just shrug their shoulders. What’s happening to American freedom? In the California case a man was sentenced under the (three strike rule). It doesn’t matter that none of his crimes were of a violent nature. He is just one of over 3,700 other prisoners serving life sentences for non violent crimes. In 1994 California passed the three strike law using the emotional case of Polly Klaas. It was meant to keep murderers, rapists and child molesters from getting out of jail. The bill has been stretched to include just about any crime. In 2004 reformers wanted to change the bill eliminating non-confrontational criminal actions from the life sentence law. The revision (Prop 66) failed.
In January the NY Post ran a story of the Brooklyn store owner fined $30,000 because of New York’s zero tolerance law for toys resembling firearms. It didn’t matter this was clearly a toy with a plastic orange tip on the barrel. John Stossel recently ran this story on his show called “regulated to death”. It seems the shop owner lost his business. He was unable to pay the fine.
In the case of the man on probation for his first DUI this surprise inspection was in addition to losing his license for two years and having a breathalyzer installed on his vehicle for three more years. Add to that thousands of dollars in fines and legal fees. He just happened to get stopped in Nassau county, N.Y. where pressure from groups like MADD have the courts letting convicted felons walk with less punishment then those with DUI convictions.
In the case of the 14 year old, school administrators decided that his spit ball shooter fell under the Federal Gun free school act. He was an ROTC student that planned on applying to military academy before this incident. He has been told the charges would be expunged if he attended diversion classes for a year.
Finally in the case of the banned cake sales at public schools, Dr. Lauren Smith the director of D.P.H. claims that our children are obese and feels this regulation is necessary. She stated that she realized these fund raisers were vital for school sports, bands and other activities. The D.P.H. suggests that the sales organizers think about using healthy items. Senator Susan Fargo said “Things have gone to far so we had to step in.” With all due respect who asked her?
What ever happened to common sense?
Sources:
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2011/feb/07/schools-weapons/
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/fake_gun_fine_unreal_fdcYUeshHyvth4maEHXrpM
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20220507parents_rules_half-baked_states_junk_food_ban_could_take_bite_out_of_school_fundraisers/srvc=home&position=0
