Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) has introduced a bill that would sharply increase the penalties for child sex offenders. The legislation specifically targets pedophiles and child sex traffickers. The minimum federal penalties for these crimes would be increased to life in prison or the death penalty. The bill is called the “No Repeat Child Sex Offenders Act,” and Luna says she introduced it to honor Sexual Assault Prevention Month.
The current US Code states that anyone who “knowingly transports any individual in interstate or foreign commerce” to engage in prostitution or sexual activity “shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.”
Luna’s bill would strike the language that states, “imprisoned not more than 10 years or both” and replace it with “and punished by death or imprisoned for life.”
Luna says, “It’s absurd to me, not only as a new mom, but also if you just look at some of the federal statutes, that there’s not more strict punishments for people that are doing this.”
She’s absolutely correct. The punishments for pedophiles and child sex traffickers are one area where public sentiment in America is very far from the law.
For one thing, it is impossible to reform pedophiles. If you talk to any parole officer who manages sex offenders when they’re released from prison and still under supervision, they will all tell you the same thing. Pedophiles never reform. They will always re-offend at the first opportunity, and they look for ways to get close to children so that they can molest them.
It’s not as if it’s just a majority of pedophiles that are this way, like 70% of them or something. Parole officers will tell you that it’s 100% of pedophiles. Letting them out of prison only sets up a situation where another tragedy is going to occur. Even though the Democrats now want to normalize and legalize pedophilia to protect gay and transgender offenders (and probably a lot of Members of Congress), this would be a catastrophic mistake. Pedophilia is very much an incurable mental illness, and honest professionals who have to work around molesters in the criminal justice system will all tell you this.
A wide majority of Americans have always supported the death penalty for child molesters, even though it’s difficult to find proof of this. The social scientists all stopped polling on the issue right around the same time that the big push for gay marriage was ramping up in America (what a weird coincidence!). One of the most recent polls you can find on this was a New York Times/CNN poll from 1997, which found that 65% of Americans support the death penalty for pedophiles.
In the past few years, Luna’s home state of Florida passed a new law that allows the death penalty for pedophiles. A similar bill has passed in the Idaho House of Representatives and is getting closer to full passage.
It’s unlikely that Luna will be able to get this new bill shepherded through the House before the end of the year. That’s okay, though. It’s not like Joe Biden, who took showers with his daughter, is going to sign a bill approving the death penalty for himself. But if Florida and Idaho both have the death penalty in place for pedophilia, it sets the stage for Luna to get the bill passed in Congress in the next year or so. Unlike Joe Biden, Donald Trump would definitely sign this bill into law.
