Originally Posted by Frownland

Maybe mine and others' stances might seem extreme but the disconnect might be cultural. None of the below is about your stance, it's just what's influenced mine.

In the US, taking away gun rights isn't just one thing that felons have to deal with, it's one of thousands. To begin with, most of our laws are made to protect the upper class from the lower class since the upper class makes the laws. As a result, many acts of desperation create felons who struggle with their criminal status for life while widereaching upper class crimes such as embezzlement or the longterm violence of illegally poor working conditions are often punished with fines that the perpetrators can afford.

Our probation system is designed to punish slip ups typically not even related to the crime in question, which extends what could be a two year prison sentence to decades of struggling just to get to "normal". Felons face obstacles when looking for work that often resigns them to lower class positions that create desperation. They can't rent from many places on the assumption that they're violent. They (non-pedos!) can't be involved with their children's schools. They're required to be ready to explain themselves to get people to accept that they won't be violent where others are given the benefit of the doubt until they act like they're going to be violent.

I went into it before because it's a huge element of it, but the psychological toll of being told that you're inferior because you can't be trusted not to be violent in so many ways creates more criminals than it deters. It's similar to abused children being told that they're nothing or evil by their abusers' violence or words. They start to believe it and they act accordingly.

Lastly, Europeans think we're obsessed with race, but I think if you asked americans what a felon looks like it would be pretty telling. Our civil rights laws simply widened the pool to impact more poor people on top of the black people that were already being oppressed by our justice system.

If we had a functional legal system I'd probably be closer to your stance but I've seen it **** up too many lives and our repeat offense/probation violation statistics reflect that anecdotal evidence.