Vetoed Bounty Buying Bad Act

[Milqy]

A
BILL
To

Curb Bounty Hunters​

The people of Democracy Craft, through their elected Representatives in the Congress and the force of law ordained to that Congress by the people through the constitution, do hereby enact the following provisions into law:

1 - Short Title and Enactment
(1) This Act may be cited as the “Bounty Buying Bad Act”.
(2) This Act shall be enacted immediately upon its signage.
(3) This Act has been authored by: Milqy.
(4) The Act has been co-sponsored by: wetc.

2 - Reasons

1. This bill will hopefully curb the number of messages a person with a bounty gets.
2. Currently, the only law surrounding a bounty is the incitement of creating, and the murder when you collect.
3. This will make it so when you /msg, or directly ask a person with a bounty, if they will let you kill them for the bounty, they will be charged with attempted murder.

3 - Sections 1

1. When the victim accrues proof that a player has sent a /msg or asked to kill you for the bounty prize in any chat, that person will then send their proof to the DoJ for them to file charges against the player for attempted murder.
2. This will follow the players current criminal record, according to the law 13.4 - Attempted Murder.

 

[Westray]

Veto

This bill is hereby vetoed.

While I recognize with the nature of the bill, there are a few key issues with it in its current form.

The law of §13.4 Attempted Murder listed here clearly indicates that it is the act of hitting another player and causing more than 3 hearts of damage. The charge goes into a severity system of the following:

Murder - When a player is killed.
Attempted Murder - When more then 3 hearts of damage is inflicted.
Assault - When 3 or less hearts of damage is inflicted.

Consequently, these three laws coexist in clear definition of severity. This bill seeks to add an additional unrelated definition to Attempted Murder that may confuse individuals both in law enforcement and in the community overall. This is given there is no correlation between sending a message and causing 3 hearts of damage. Therefore it does not make sense to group them together into one term.

Additionally, this bill would create ambiguity of enforcement, as Attempted Murder is listed under PvP laws. This means that players could theoretically claim they are in the wilderness when messaging people, and use that as a loophole, given that PvP laws don't apply in the wilderness.

Therefore, with such considered, much of the concern comes down to ambiguity and confusion caused by grouping this offence with existing terminology. I appreciate the nature of the bill however in good conscience cannot sign it in its current form.

I would recommend that the respective Representative considers proposing an alternative version of their bill that creates a separate term for the law overall to avoid these issues.