KLAMarine said:
Your description sounds reactive: police are reacting to a law being broken, in this case possession of illegal weapons. Proactive would be someone not possessing illegal weapons to begin with because they're illegal. I think it's easier to tally up cases of the former than the latter. |
You seemed to have missed the point.
Its reactivity is an ends to the means of proactivity.
It comes down to why something is illegal. Why is owning extended magazines illegal in some places? There is no victim there. The reason it is illegal is in order to allow law enforcement intervention before someone is victimized and to prevent victimization in general. It is reactivity in service of proactivity. I'm going to call it "Fundamental Laws" vs "Proxy Laws". A "Fundamental Law" is a law against something that is fundamentally wrong, such as murder or robbery. These crimes deprive individuals of their rights and harm society in the process. A "Proxy Law" is a law against something that is not fundamentally wrong or harmful, but still is beneficial as a law in order to either aid in prosecuting fundamental laws or aid in the prevention of other illegal activities.
You could also argue that this all loops around to the idea of the purpose of the prison system. In a healthy prison system, punishment isn't the primary purpose. The four goals are as follows: Retribution, Incapacitation, Deterrence and Rehabilitation.
Three out of those four goals are proactive. They exist to both deter an individual from committing that first crime (like you mentioned) and to prevent that individual from committing another crime (through incapacitation and rehabilitation).
Basically my point is a response to the "Criminals don't follow the law" line of thinking. While that is sometimes true, there are a lot of proactive benefits to enacting new gun control legislation, including allowing police intervention before a "fundamental law" is broken.