There Oughta be a Law

Used to be a comic strip. 

Now it is the mantra of press, public, and legislative leaders every time someone, who is already breaking twenty existing laws, does something evil, egregious, tragic and awful.

Instead of lamenting the failure of enforcement, the failure of parents, the failure of the very fabric of our society, and the triumph of evil or even just willful stupidity, everyone screams, "There oughta be a law!"

After all, we have hundreds, thousands even, of legislators, sitting around with nothing to do but write new laws....and we are paying them aren't we?

And so somebody crafts one, folks lobby for it on Facebook, and it is passed, either to fail because of lack of enforcement, or even the utter impossibility of enforcement, just like the laws which existed at the time of the nefarious deed, which didn't stop it in the first place.

But everybody goes home feeling good.

The folks doing all the hollering for new laws have done nothing to prevent future instances of whatever crime horrified them. Drunks will still drive under the influence. Monsters will still kill.  There are some people that all the laws in the world won't stop. We call them criminals. Jails stop them at least a little.....until someone lets them out....but laws don't.

After all, have you noticed how well the prohibitions on illegal drugs have worked?

But folks feel good, so all is well.

All too often these feel-good laws impinge on the rights of decent, law-abiding citizens, and remove the protections that our nation's landmark of laws, the Constitution, granted them early in the history of our nation.

But no one really learns history in school any more and certainly very few read it for the lessons it can teach us about mistakes that went before and really should not be repeated.

People with substance abuse problems and a lack of personal responsibility in their make up won't wake up with it tomorrow just because of a new law. New gun laws don't remove guns from criminal hands. They will keep theirs while the law-abiding are handing them in........Ask Australia about how their crime rates declined under their own strict new gun control measures.

But go ahead, make new laws that only affect the law-abiding, who never broke the laws already on the books, but who will feel the noose of pointless legislation choking off their rights as Americans.

After all, we want to feel good, don't we.