If you aren't going to allow people to be rehabilitated, why not just shoot them on sight?
What rehabilitation? The US prison system is not working.
Look at this: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/reentry/reentry.htm
Please note that on the second chart, it shows that every class of criminal that serves a single year in jail has at least a 60% chance of going back within three years.
Please note also that the violent and drug related offenders go up to a nearly 80% chance.
That is the result of a once a decade study. If you calculate the annual rate, you'll find that the chances of going back to jail for prison inmates involved in drugs or violence approach and sometimes exceed 95%.
It drops slightly if you include jail inmates, but it's still high enough that any idiot can see that the American prison system is not working.
But since all of those people have rights, in some states and places, more rights than the people they committed the crimes on, they continue to commit those crimes.
I own guns, for hunting and because father was a Marine that trained all of his children in using them. I don't have my CD with the gun control data on it with me, but I'll bring it tomorrow. Guns are not the problem.
No gun, acting on its own has ever killed anyone, by accident or on purpose. Some person was the reason for that death and banning guns doesn't change that. Training and required responsibility are the only things that will make the guns safe.
If you own a gun, you are responsible for every action of that gun. If you allow it to be stolen, then you can be ed with every crime committed with it. If a child gets a hold of it and uses it to shoot another child, you are charged with murder. Laws like that would make a serious dent in accidents with guns.
And before you say "Well, you can't always watch a gun" or something equally silly, I say bullshit.
Granddad's ranch has had guns on it for 118 years now, since it first became the family's ranch. In all that time, according to the family records, there have been just two accidents with firearms. The first was the result of too much powder in a black powder weapon and the second was also a mechanical failure.
No child ever shot another child, no weapon was ever stolen, no one has ever been shot by accident or otherwise.
(Well, Granddad might have peppered a few trespassers with rock salt over the years, but that's a bit different, there wasn't anything accidental about that.)
Banning guns doesn't work, it never has. Once the guns are there, banning them is about as useful as Prohibition.
Look at the cities that have the highest violent crime rates and then figure out which cities have the strictest gun control laws.
Look world wide.... Which country has the lowest violent crime rate? Which country has a trained and armed population?
Poll