Thursday, June 18, 2015

driving public policy with personal grief

Reacting to events that happened to SOME as if those events happened to ALL is what has driven sex offender policy. News spreads instantly, details are broadcast endlessly. We are encouraged to react with the same outrage those close to terrible events must feel.

As unthinkably horrible as what happened to Megan Kanka, Adam Walsh, and Jacob Wetterling was, it was a bad idea to look at those individual events and write laws in reaction to them. Those laws would not have stopped the bad things from happening to those children--or to other children--but those laws continue to ruin lives and wreck families all across the country. And most of the laws wrecking lives and families are for crimes not even close to what happened to Megan, Adam, and Jacob.

So...Charleston. Maybe the guy shouldn't have had a gun...but let's not write gun laws as if we can stop the next awful shooting from happening. We won't. Maybe the guy hated black people...but let's not decide policy as if we can control what happens in people's hearts and minds. We can't.

Let's not leverage the grief of the affected community to further our own political aims.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The media uses tragedy to entice the public, then there's an outcry from the public, then the lawmakers get involved and create the laws. There is no research on the law put into place, the general assembly does not take the time to review the laws they put into place. Look at gun control, Amendment 64 for legalizing marijuana just to name a few. The plan is to breakdown the Constitution to where we will have no rights. The gov tells the media what to report.

If a political candidate is light on Sex offenders, or the SOMB, aka SOB's in my book, they won't get voted into office. This country needs to vote for independents to make some changes. Otherwise, this country will continue to get broken down and we will have no Constitution and no rights. Wake up America!

Don't let the media continue to brain wash you!!!