*Something* Must Be Done!

Our human nature prompts us to react when confronted with a stressful action or situation. The fight-or-flight reaction is physiological, and thus we naturally seek some sort of measurable response when we witness a bad act or bad situation. So it goes with atrocities like the Orlando shootings.

The peril that stems from our natural reaction lies in doing the wrong thing, or in having that reaction leveraged by those who cynically seek to advance an agenda.

First, allow me to congratulate the Left and President Obama. They have succeeded in turning the Orlando massacre away from its obvious roots in radical Islam and into a debate about gun control. I recently discussed how Obama is clinging to his narrative and how the american Left is defying all logic in its deflection and denial regarding the killer’s motives. Despite loud protests from other quarters, the debate has indeed been devolved into a discussion about “assault weapons” and how to restrict access to them.

That debate will likely result in something being done. That something will not produce tangibly positive results, since the proximate cause of this incident, i.e. the toxic teachings of radical Islam and our administration’s refusal to fully condemn them (or even name them), will have been pushed aside.

“Never let a crisis go to waste,” widely attributed to Rahm Emanuel, seems to be the driving force here. The Left has long been raging at its inability to impose stricter gun control measures on the nation over the past decade-plus since the expiration of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, legislation that didn’t reduce crime. In fact, gun crime rates have been steadily decreasing even as gun ownership has been skyrocketing and as more and more states expand citizens’ gun rights with right-to-carry and constitutional-carry laws. And, in fact, “assault weapons” are used only in a minuscule fraction of the total gun crimes committed in the US every year. Murder by rifle of any sort (including but not limited to “assault weapons,” whose definition is too nebulous to sort from the aggregate) amounts to only 2% of total firearm murders in 2014.

Nevertheless, it appears, at this juncture, that we will end up seeing some sort of token restriction enacted by Congress – something like a prohibition against purchases by people on the FBI’s terrorist watch list or on the no-fly list.

And, once something is done, people will settle down and move on to the next hot-button issue.

Will that something actually work?

The Orlando shooter was already an identified person of interest, yet he passed multiple background checks and multiple recertifications. There is a report that a gun shop attempted to warn the FBI about him after he attempted to buy body armor, but obviously that went nowhere. A coworker claims that he knew the shooter was a ticking time bomb, but either he or the company was deterred from saying something because the shooter was Muslim. The government has been spending all sorts of money on and violating all sorts of rights with its domestic surveillance programs, but didn’t detect or stop the shooter. And, once the shooter started his spree, it took the government three hours to resolve the situation. While information is still coming out, there are reports and questions regarding delays on the part of the police.

In short, this is another incident that involves multiple failures on the part of government. The giant finger of blame, however, rarely seems to end up pointing at government. Instead, it points at citizens who wish to retain their rights and at favored bogeymen (in this case, the Christian Right and gun rights advocates).

After 9/11, the government instituted numerous security measures, including the banning of boxcutters and small knives from checked luggage. However, the government’s apparently terrible at actually preventing banned items from getting onto airplanes. Nevertheless, the government continues to devote massive efforts to airport screening, and things that work, like the air marshal program, suffer.

But, airport screening is an obvious and in-your-face example of the government having done something, and that scratches people’s itches more than quiet and unrecognized air marshals sitting among them.

Richard Reid hid a bomb in his shoe, so now we all remove our shoes at the airport. Something was done. We went on with our lives, our rights infringed a bit more.

A plot was supposedly uncovered to bring liquid explosives onto a plane. So, now, they take away baby formula. Something was done. We went on with our lives, our rights infringed a bit more.

The government realized at some point that the ban on small blades was worthless and a waste of time and resources, and attempted to roll it back. People freaked, and the government backed down. Here we see how undoing something is far harder than doing something, and thus we should be cautious about what we do.

Will adding people on various watch lists to the “do-not-buy” NICS list actually stop a determined terrorist from committing mass murder? It takes a certain rose-colored-glasses naivete to think so. 87 people were killed by an arsonist in 1990. 168 people were killed in Oklahoma City in 1995 with a bomb made from fertilizer. And, there is the fact that criminals get guns and commit murder all the time, even in places where they are essentially banned. Literal tons of narcotics are smuggled into the country every day, and they are consumable. Why would we think that any sort of gun restriction will stand in the way of a determined mass murderer?

Besides, it bears repeating that the Orlando shooter was vetted on multiple occasions. A Wall Street Journal profile depicts someone who wasn’t keeping his extreme beliefs under the radar, yet he managed to be hired as an armed security guard.

Something must be done, we hear from many quarters. That something is, as expected, agenda-driven, and the driver is the man at the top (who is proving that he cares and wants to do something by showing us his anger. So, that something won’t involve any aspect of radical Islam, lest those who adhere to a faith that subordinates women and punishes homosexuals feel slighted by a society that seeks equality for women and homosexuals. Instead, that something will come from the Left’s wish list, and will involve infringing on citizens’ Fifth Amendment rights.

“Wait – Fifth Amendment?” you might wonder. “I thought the Second Amendment* covers gun rights?” It does, but the talk about adding people on some lists to a no-buy list is first and foremost a violation of citizens’ due process rights. A bureaucrat’s suspicion is insufficient cause to deny someone his Constitutionally protected rights.

And that’s why this particular something will be a futile gesture. It won’t stand up to court scrutiny. But, by the time it gets knocked down on due-process principles, the election will be over, Orlando will be relegated to history, and the politicians will have shown they did something.

What should be done? How about asking whether the administration’s refusal to even name “radical Islam” has a dampening effect on counter-terrorism efforts? How about questioning the motives of an administration that will bend itself into pretzel twists to avoid insulting those muslims who reject the tenets of liberty but has no concerns whatsoever insulting millions of americans who embrace the liberties upon which this nation was founded?