Teenage yoga pants and my 45, what do they have in common?
A local school district was just on the news today because a proposed yoga pants ban was overturned due to the school already having a policy against tight or skimpy clothing. Someone felt that there was a need to add a new policy banning yoga pants because there was obviously a problem with children wearing yoga pants to school. The only reason this could’ve happened is because existing policies weren’t being enforced.
It’s the same thing with the weapon laws today, all these politicians rushing to ban this weapon and ban that weapon when there are plenty of adequate laws on the books not being enforced. The argument of just about every gun owner right now is “just enforce the laws we have!” The background checks work fine. Mental health records not being integrated properly into the system and obstructive HIPAA laws are the problem. Reckless owners that leave firearms unlocked for mentally unstable family members to handle are the problem. We can’t fix stupid. What we can do is enforce the law.
In Virginia, we have a new law making it a felony to fire handgun into the air. This came about because of a tragic New Year’s Eve death of a child from falling bullet. This law is reactionary bureaucratic crap. I’m not saying the death of a child is ok and should go unpunished. I’m saying the person that fired that bullet will be charged with a crime if they are ever found. They won’t be charged with shooting into the air (the law can’t be retroactive). They will likely be charged with manslaughter. Why do we need this extra law? Why do we need to have a specific law spelling this out? Firing bullets into the air is in my opinion stupid, if for no other reason than the reckless wasting of precious ammunition. However if a police officer witnesses someone firing a weapon into the air could he not charge that person with reckless endangerment? If he can, why do we need the other law? We’re just duplicating laws! It’s redundancy and it’s stupidity. Why create more laws just to fail to enforce those as well.
All we achieve with extra laws is complicating already complex legal situations. Excess laws make it harder on those that do abide by them. A criminal, by definition, isn’t going to follow the law so what are we accomplishing? The only answer is a budget nightmare.
These types of redundancies in the legal code should infuriate you, if for no other reason than wasting your tax dollar. New laws cost money! Funds are wasted in writing them, recording them, replacing volumes in print and online (programming costs), training for enforcement and on the occasion where a new law prevented the application of good judgement by trying the enforcer’s hand leading to unnecessary jail time it costs us to house and feed the offender.
Ok so maybe you think I am taking it too far. Think about other examples; Anti-texting while driving laws are redundant. When appropriate the police could use distracted or reckless driving as a charge instead. We could have saved money in every area mentioned above. How about a policy example; in Virginia right now inmates in the prison system are medically treated at taxpayer expense when needed. Now the prisons are applying for Medicaid for those prisoners to reimburse that taxpayer money with taxpayer money. The difference is now you are paying for a clerk to take an application and a highly trained medical analyst and physician to make a determination on whether the money comes from your right pocket or your left. What difference does it make? The inmate will get treatment regardless, the taxpayer will pay for it regardless but because we want to hide some prison costs we will pay extra wages for the same outcome? It’s ludicrous!
Get mad people! Stop the spinning wheels and the double dipping. If you won’t fight for my gun fight for your wallet.
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