Prohibition

Heard about the Gabby Giffords anniversary on the radio.  Three years ago this week a crazy man shot her and others. 

Anyway, like Jim Brady, Gabby's spouse is now a functioning figurehead for a gun prohibition lobby.

Why is the FIRST impulse of folks to go full blown Prohibition?  Not just for this, but for everything.  Booze, Cigs, Guns, Drugs, Poverty, Crime, Fornication, Blasphemy.  We have enough examples showing the side effects are as bad as the original worry, and that the prohibition never... you know... prohibits.

Yet the busybodies ALWAYS reach for it as the first arrow in their quiver.  They have learned something.  Creeping, ban by degree, over time, ratcheting down of a ban might be more possible to pull off than the 'ban all at once' variety.  Now that people are more on to the failures of Prohibitions in general. 

I think Prohibition is what people reach for because that is the easy and first solution to come to mind.  And they never think beyond that.  Like H L Mencken said, "For every complex problem there is a solution that is an answer that is clear and simple and wrong."  You know... whatcha bet he was talking about alcohol prohibition when he originally said that?

It's easy to write the law "no more X! and if you have X you will be punished!"

Well, here is another clear and simple solution:  "Put violent predatory people away until they are no longer predatory."  But writing that law, right, isn't so easy.

We should ban fornication!  That'll solve the VD, unwed mother, and sodomite problems in a stroke!  So to speak...