Second Chances At What?

Today I had a relative of mine post on Facebook a warning to all mothers how her sister managed to prevent a strange man from kidnapping her niece while shopping in the dairy aisle of the local Walmart.  Thankfully, he messed with the wrong mama, and and my relative screamed, scaring him away from her daughter.  That said, it's entirely too frightening an experience, and it's a shame that we can no longer feel like our children are safe anywhere.

Why is that?  Why is it that there seems to be so many more perverts lurking about these days, waiting to do unspeakable things to our children?  What has changed with this world?  Well, the first thing I can think of is that too many people are worried about the rights of the accused and not of the victims.  We're worried that the perpetrator be rehabbed and not have any civil rights violated, all the while the victims receive little to no justice.  The person who has done wrong is put on a list and is often allowed to go back to life as it was.

I've seen news stories where life was made near impossible for people listed as sex offenders.  For some reason, I suppose that I was supposed to feel sorry for them, but I don't.  I can't.  I have no sympathy for someone who commits such crimes.

Personally, if I had my way they wouldn't be walking the street.  They wouldn't be walking at all.  If they were allowed to live at all, they would be missing certain appendages and be speaking like Mickey Mouse for the rest of their lives.  They would live in misery constantly and never be able to prey on another innocent.

How many times have we heard news stories of people who have committed such unspeakable crimes are repeat offenders?  Sometimes people shouldn't be allowed a second chance.  After all, what are they getting a second chance at?  Are they getting another chance at changing their ways and walking the straight and narrow?  Or, are they getting another chance to hurt more people?  Unfortunately, more often than not it is the latter rather than the former, and the knowledge of this empowers others to commit the same or even more heinous crimes.

There's often a lot of talk about how we should forgive those who do us wrong.  I'm not against that.  It is, after all, Biblically sound.  However, my husband and I have often discussed that while there can be forgiveness in some situations, it is naive to blindly believe that someone like that will never commit that crime or one similar again.