Emotion Trumps Reason

I once heard a man say on TV, “legislation named after someone is typically bad legislation.” Because it based on emotion. It makes everyone feel better to have a knee-jerk reaction to a terrible event. But it rarely is based on facts or solid policy.

Particularly right now, too many arguments are being made and policies being put forth, in order to calm our nerves over such tragedies like we saw in Newtown, CT.  But why the righteous indignation now? Why the spending of political capital now? Good policy today was good policy yesterday (or Thursday). Even Jake Tapper cornered(ish) the President on this issue. 

The Republicans have been guilty of this before certainly but the Left specializes it. Of course it would be great if the world was free of guns but that is not the reality anyone lives in and the Left knows it. There is no way not to know it. Study after study shows the ineffectiveness of gun control legislation. In 2003, the CDC conducted a study that looked at a wide range of gun control laws and whether or not they were effective:

                “The Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes.”

In 1997, after a similar school shooting in England, the UK quickly acted to ban all handguns.  The BBC discovered:

                “A new study suggests the use of handguns in crime rose by 40% in the two years after the weapons were banned”.

But folks, even far outside the typical political Left chose to ignore reality. This post is about much more than gun control. It is about the rush to pass legislation as a response to people’s emotions instead of as an honest attempt to fix a problem.  Conservatism, honest conservatism, does not capitalize on crises. It doesn’t react to the whims and emotions of the people. It uses truth, it uses facts, it uses level-headed thinking to advance its agenda. 

-Isaac