President Obama yesterday unveiled a new plan to curtail the purchase of guns, to limit the size of ammunition magazines and to make stricter background checks necessary for purchases. The move comes in the wake of the shooting deaths of children in Newtown, Connecticut. Despite the backing that the president received in the immediate aftermath of that violence, it seems apparent that he’ll have a fight on his hands when it comes time to actually make changes.
Noted Obama of the move, "I will put everything I’ve got into this." He added, "While there is no law, or set of laws, that can prevent every senseless act of violence completely, no piece of legislation that will prevent every tragedy, every act of evil, if there’s even one thing we can do to reduce this violence, if there’s even one life that can be saved, then we’ve got an obligation to try. And I’m going to do my part."
The flaw in that hyperbolic logic, of course, is that measures that would "save one life" are relatively easy to discover and rarely actually worth implementing. Making the speed limit 5 miles per hour nationwide would save thousands of lives each year, but at a massive cost in productivity. Making cigarettes illegal (assuming that would work to take them out of the hands of smokers) would save thousands more, as would outlawing alcohol, fatty foods, high fructose corn syrup (wouldn’t want to irritate the farmers in Iowa though), artificial sweeteners, hormone-fed cows, insecticides and a host of others. Regardless, this president, like so many politicians before him, seems unfettered by the rules of logic, and so this battle will proceed with soaring rhetoric of questionable validity.
Noted Obama of the move, "I will put everything I’ve got into this." He added, "While there is no law, or set of laws, that can prevent every senseless act of violence completely, no piece of legislation that will prevent every tragedy, every act of evil, if there’s even one thing we can do to reduce this violence, if there’s even one life that can be saved, then we’ve got an obligation to try. And I’m going to do my part."
The flaw in that hyperbolic logic, of course, is that measures that would "save one life" are relatively easy to discover and rarely actually worth implementing. Making the speed limit 5 miles per hour nationwide would save thousands of lives each year, but at a massive cost in productivity. Making cigarettes illegal (assuming that would work to take them out of the hands of smokers) would save thousands more, as would outlawing alcohol, fatty foods, high fructose corn syrup (wouldn’t want to irritate the farmers in Iowa though), artificial sweeteners, hormone-fed cows, insecticides and a host of others. Regardless, this president, like so many politicians before him, seems unfettered by the rules of logic, and so this battle will proceed with soaring rhetoric of questionable validity.