

Responding Rationally to a Tragedy - stanfordreview
http://stanfordreview.org/article/responding-rationally-to-a-tragedy/

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bediger4000
Why do we always always have to respond rationally to a gun violence event,
ignoring instincts and emotions to arrive at loosening gun controls? We didn't
respond rationally to 9/11, or the Shoe Bomber or Mr Fizzypants the Underwear
bomber. We're still suffering from result-free universal surveillance, and
insulting and authoritarian airport security.

In short, the propagandists are picking and choosing which tragedies to
respond to rationally, and which to respond to with jackbooted
authoritarianism. Why?

~~~
hga
The propagandists are demonstrably responding to this tragedy with more
propaganda. The people of this nation got sufficiently upset with the
jackbooted authoritarianism approach in 1994 that they elected a Republican
Congress to stop it, among other things. The lesson that gun control equals
lots of politicians spending more time with their families sunk in pretty well
after Al Gore's loss in 2000 (it was one of many things, that if any one of
which had not been an issue he would have won on Clinton's record).

It wasn't till Obama had "more flexibility" after his last election that the
gun grabbers made another major push at the national level, and abjectly
failed. How much they'll pay for that we'll find out starting in November
(various Senators like Manchin won't come up for election for another 2 or in
his case 4 years, I guess he supposed we'll have forgotten by then).

(Note this is largely, but by no means entirely a partisan issue; almost no
one in the national Republican party cares about the issue, and at the Federal
level we've seen very little relief, the real action is state and local,
including elections for Federal offices in them. And it's not a litmus issue
like e.g. abortion, there are at least a few very anti-gun national level
Republicans like Pete King.)

Anyway, the politicians are most certainly acting rationally. Those in
completely safe seats like Diane Feinstein are all for gun control, the
national security state, etc. Those that aren't have a much stronger tendency
to listen to their constituents. Entirely rational responses.

Also, why shouldn't we respond rationally? Besides the total lack of evidence
that gun control works, these atrocities mostly happen in gun free zones (all
of the really big ones have, except for the Arizona Congresswoman's shooting),
e.g. this happened in Santa Barbara County, where the Sheriff issues very few
concealed carry licenses, and the state in its infinite wisdom banned
(unloaded) open carry. There's one obvious answer there, one that almost all
the nation's states have adopted, and with judicial action, we may see 90% of
Americans enjoying a right to carry concealed (Illinois now, California and
Hawaii someday, maybe).

Another is to get serious again about mental health. It's also no accident
that these atrocities are committed by the seriously mentally ill, but for a
bunch of reasons we almost always don't do anything about them until they
commit crimes.

