It is the oldest mistake in Congress. “We must do something!” It’s a classic error of logic known as appelare desperadi, the appeal to desperation. It inevitably leads to disaster.
You must do the right thing, not just anything. This requires thought, reason, facts and a solid plan. If you’re stranded in a life boat and all you have is a drill, you don’t start drilling holes. You turn the drill into a motor and get yourself to shore.
We have had background checks for decades—experts report these have done nothing to affect the recent spate of crazed mass murderers. They also have no effect on deranged children seeking to murder their classmates. Proposed expanded checks, if you read them, will impose costs and delays on innocent people but have zero effect crime.
Red Flag laws obscure the fact that police already have the tools to control threats and to lock up dangerous people right now. You know the mass murderers have been repeatedly flagged and ignored by authorities. New laws won’t change that. Why doesn’t the “news” media make this clear instead of pounding a drum?
The unraveling of society is obvious to anyone with a brain – kids who want to murder their classmates, unhinged psychos shooting up stores and theaters, city-dwellers murdering their neighbors in historically black inner-city ghettos! The answer isn’t to outlaw guns owned by law abiding citizens or to pass new laws to replace old laws that no one enforces.
Violating the Constitution by confiscating property people legally own (known as “infringement”), eliminating due process, encouraging citizens to become snitches with no repercussions for false, hippophobic or malicious reports and turning police into warrantless nighttime invaders, are not answers. This is like drilling holes in your lifeboat.
Fueled by media reports, anti-gun-rights groups have succeeded in convincing some fearful Americans that gun ownership literally “proves” a person must be crazy. Will simple gun possession become grounds for red-flagging neighbor?
