Frankly, I can see a connection between history and what you're saying,
but it's very thin & tenuous. Very few of the U.S. founders, early
leaders and judges, were "ivory tower clerics."


Vito wrote:
You are looking a few years too early. Corporal punishment was still common
in the late 1700 and early 1800s.

Yep. Especially if you call flogging "corporal punishment" and the 1830s
& 1840s "early."




It's not just firearms as witness Kerry pandering to the hunters; it's a
movement to make self defense seem immoral and ultimately illegal. Like any
cultural drift it'd hard to define a start date, but at some time in the
1800s we quit punishing criminals and began locking them away - not as an
alternative punishment but to reform them. As you say it seems to coincide
with the religious hysteria that led to prohibition and the Comstock Act.
Why? Some blame the trauma of the (civil) war of yankee aggression. I admit
I do not understand why otherwise rational people act as they sometimes do.

Tell me about it.

IMHO the expense of attempting to reform people who have already failed
to benefit from public education (in many cases, disrupted the education
of others to boot)is an unreasonable burden on taxpayers. But it seems
unlikely that the U.S. "corrections" system is going to undergo any type
of major reform in the foreseeable future.

Eventually we may just go back to tribal law & feuds.

DSK