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... of talking about things that one does not quite understand.
There is a whole lot more to sentencing theory and practice than the facts of an individual case and the effect of the sentence on the individual offender.
"General deterrence" is one of the recognized purposes of sentencing. That is, deterring the public at large from doing what the individual in question did.
The reason why sentences are commonly bumped up when a firearm was used in the commission of the offence has little to do with the "seriousness" of the offence committed (robbery is robbery is robbery ...), and a lot to do with the public purpose served by sentencing. In this case, the public purpose is to deter people from using firearms to commit crimes.
I believe that much was made, in an earlier discussion of the recent decline in Canadian numbers for armed robbery, of the fact that using a firearm is considered an aggravating factor for sentencing purposes. That is, the argument was made, by those opposed to Canadian-style restrictions on firearms possession, that heavy sentences for using firearms to commit crimes were more likely the causal factor in the decline than reduced access to firearms.
I'm therefore wondering whether I'm seeing anyone speaking out of both sides of his/her mouth in this instance.
If increasing the sentence for an offence when a firearm is used to commit it is actually an effective deterrent to the commission of the offence, or to using a firearm in the commission of it, what's the problem?
There is actually a whole hell of a lot of "difference for the victim between having a gun stuck in your ribs" and being assaulted in some other way in the course of a robbery. It is a blatantly obvious and well-known fact that the mortality rate among victims of crimes such as robbery that are committed using firearms is higher than among victims of crimes committed without firearms -- that's why the mortality rate among victims of robbery is so much higher in the US than in other western nations, for example. So what's the problem with trying to reduce that risk to victims of crimes such as robbery, by attempting to deter the use of firearms in robberies?
It is a problem if one does not, for example, recognize "general deterrence" as a valid consideration in sentencing. One would be running rather directly contrary to the entire human history of punishing offenders, if one took that position.
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