When gunnuttery and anti-unionism collide: Howdy, Tennessee!

[X_Digger]

27. That is disturbing, yep.

This removes any kind of objective criteria for deciding whether a piece of legislation / rule / regulatory scheme is effective or not. If crime goes down, the diminishing pool of victims is just as large to the absolutist who holds this position ("One death from guns is one death too many.&quot Even if crime goes up, the justification of "Well, we don’t know how many more might have died without this" is given credence. Strange how a failure of a regulation can lead to more of the same.

I do conflate the "if just one.." philosophy with the "one death is too many.." mantra, because it seems if you point out that the incidence of a particular crime is down, it’s often followed by the second phrase.

There seems to be a disconnect between goal, action, and consequence. It’s as though there is a measure of faith involved. "If this doesn’t work, we must not be doing enough. I know that if we do this, eventually lives will be saved." Rarely is there serious discussion about whether or not the approach can reasonably be expected to result in the goal, it’s "obvious" to those proposing action that A should lead to B. No rational discussion about the effectiveness of a law can be tolerated- those who do are painted as being against saving lives, or for killing innocents. In the absolutist’s mind, it’s all or none.

There’s also a disturbing ends justifies the means mentality involved. The lengths that these proponents are willing to go seems to know no bounds. Random pat-downs of the public, government tracking of ammunition sales, government tracking of guns via lojack type transmitters, door-to-door searches of those living in public housing- all have been proposed in the last year or two in various discussion forums; the same kind of thinking brought us Guantanamo, torture, and warrant-less wiretapping. I’m not equating strict gun control to these, just noting that in the heads of those who propose such actions, justification is clear and absolute. "Just one life..", "One death is too many."

No consideration is given to unintended consequences. The burden on anyone else is considered inconsequential compared to the "saving of a single life". Never mind that the trust placed in the government’s hands today can and most likely will be abused tomorrow under a different administration. It always amazes me that our party is usually so adamant in it’s protection of all amendments in the bill of rights except one. The same kind of incrementalism that the other side uses to infringe the other nine amendments- our own party tries to use those same tactics on the second.