The tragedy of the shooting in Tucson leaves people asking all sorts of questions. "Why did he do it?" "Why didn't someone stop him before he started shooting" "Can such tragedies be prevented" etc. One of the answers that the politicians love to give is that yes it can be prevented (giving comfort to their constituents) and all they have to do is pass a bill to provide more protection. Protection, a word which here means restrictive and ineffective laws, is usually anything but.
Consider, for instance, the Washington D.C. handgun ban. It prohibited possession of a handgun, even in private citizens homes in order to "protect" the citizens of Washington DC. Was it effective? Not really. Crime data indicated that there was still a very high number of violent crimes happening. (Recently the Supreme Court Struck the ban down in DC versus Heller). In fact most of the gun legislation that has come out of Washington hasn't stopped incidents like Columbine, the Oklahoma City Bombing, or most violent crimes. Maybe someone should do a favor for Congresswoman McCarthy (who recently introduced severely restrictive gun control legislation) and let her know that.
The problem isn't really the bullets and their velocity, it's the people who fire the bullets. Even if we had a total gun ban, they would still find ways to injury and hurt people.
What if we had no guns whatsoever? Wouldn't Loughner still have found a way to cause damage and kill the people he was targeting?
In an odd twist, while protecting us from bullets and not the people who fire them, politicians want to "protect us from people who talk on the radio. Representative Jim Clyburn has brought back his "radio fairness" bill to force radio hosts, programs, and stations to present both sides of issues they discuss.
Aside from the fact that most everyone can get both sides of a story with the flick of a wrist and decide the truth for themselves (making the bill's assumption insulting), this bill severely undermines freedom of speech. Of course Rep. Clyburn isn't anti American or anti Constitutional, but his bill sure is. The government mandating what and how a person may say something fundamentally undercuts the First Amendment prohibition on congress making no law to abridge the freedom of speech.
Imagine the reaction and outrage if Speaker Boehner got a law passed that mandating that Keith Olberman dedicate half of his program to defending Rush Limbaugh's radio show. The news outlets would go on non stop about how unconstitutional Speaker Boehner was and how he disrespected the First Amendment.
But if you listened to the news media you'd think that the world will end in a giant fireball because of the "political rhetoric" spewing forth from Conservative Talk Radio. It makes you wonder if they've actually listened to it.
Curtailing what is said over the radio waves and trying to ban handguns won't solve the problems their associated with. Having a moral and religious people (grounded in the respect for life) who are responsible for their actions, solves problems.
While I have absolutely no love for conservative talk radio, I completely agree with you about this bill.
ReplyDeletePersonally (and unrelated to Tucson) I think that Rush and Beck and Hannity are pretty irresponsible when it comes to the level of their rhetoric, and the way they play fast and loose with the facts (though no more so than Huffington and Moore and other liberal media personalities). I was an avid Beck listener for three years--every single day--until about 2007 when he started going nuts. And before that, I listened to Rush on and off. But now, I pretty much dislike all of them.
That said, this country is founded on free speech, and we should let Americans express whatever political opinions they want, regardless of how distasteful we find them.