BrianGarst.com

Few are better than John Stossel at bringing reason to a situation characterized by its severe lack thereof:

O’Reilly says, “new laws that provide greater safety for public officials should be considered.  We simply cannot have chaos at this level.”

But we don’t have “chaos.” America is safer than ever.  Crime is down.  Political assassinations are rare.  They were once much more common.  Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy were murdered.  So were Senators James Hinds, Huey Long, Robert Kennedy and Rep. Ryan Leo. The shooting of Congresswoman Giffords was the first such incident in more than thirty years.  There is little that can be done to stop a crazy person from committing a crazy act.
…Bill is wrong to say that congress needs more security. Our imperial political class already spends too much on security.  I was once on a CNBC talk show with Treasury Secretary John Snow.  The Secretary was accompanied to the NYC studio by four secret service men who officiously ordered us about, demanding we leave each room that the Secretary entered.  This self-importance is  nonsense too.  Few people in NY even knew who John Snow was.  I bet more people want to kill me.

…Now Rep. John King (R-NY) [ed – It’s actually Rep. Peter King] wants to make it illegal to bring a gun within 1,000 feet of a government official. 1,000 feet?  No more hunting photo-ops!  I guess that would make all guns illegal in Washington D.C. again.

…The Arizona shooting is a terrible tragedy.  Overreacting to it would be a tragedy too.

All too often when the public becomes captivated with a single horrific event that tugs at the emotions of any decent human being, the tendency is to pledge “never again” and immediately respond with forceful action. But as I said before, this tendency often betrays the very values we seek to protect.

Part of living in a free and open society is understanding that bad things happen and you can’t always do something about it. Only after stepping back to allow tensions to dissipate can we properly evaluate the context of such shocking events, or determine what remedies, if any, are needed.

Gabrielle Giffords