Haste Makes Awful Legislation - Tucson Edition

I understand the more common saying is "Haste Makes Waste." However, our congress has shown time and again the haste make for awful legislation. Often the worst abuses from our government comes in response to tragedies or disasters. Egotistical politicians feel that if they don't do something - anything then they are not doing their job. Problem is bad things do happen. You could never pass a law that will ensure nothing bad will happen. In the wake of the recent shootings in Arizona one of my concerns was what sort of nonsense would congress come up with in response to this event. I expected a renewed call for gun control. I expected some would call for full time security for congress critters. Our Washington DC overlords did not disappoint as there has been various silly ideas bandied about in the last few days. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) takes the cake with his stupid proposal:

New York Republican Rep. Peter King said Tuesday that he will introduce legislation to ban the carrying of any firearm within 1,000 feet of what he described as “high-profile government officials.”

What!?! Not only would his stupid idea be impossible to follow or enforce, but it also would have done nothing to stop the crime it was in response to. Would that nut have stayed 1,000 feet away from the congressman just because of a law. Well, considering that the law against murder did not stop him from murdering several people I doubt new law saying stay away from the VIP's with a weapon would stop him either.

It does seem like our "friends" in DC are taking this shooting a lot more seriously than they take most mass shootings. Are they saying it is worse to shoot one of them than to shoot a regular citizen (known to congress as subjects). I deplore what that nut did in Arizona. However, if I have to choose between having the people scared of the government or the government scared of the people . . . . it is a pretty easy choice.

UPDATE:

Since I wrote this piece yesterday critical of Rep. King ridiculous legislative proposal, Chris Moody of the Daily Caller wrote a column titled "Washington’s top five most ridiculous reactions to the Arizona shooting
. Click the link.

Along the lines of stupid responses, Jonathan Last noticed that it didn't make much sense for President Obama to send the Director of the FBI to visit Arizona and then . . . . . . have the FBI set up a dedicated task force on the case involving “hundreds of FBI agents.” Don't get me wrong, this was a horrendous crime. However, the criminal was caught immediately after committing the crime.* Last makes a valid point that the FBI has finite resources and tying up "hundreds of agents" on this essentially solved case means they are not doing whatever they would have otherwise. Additionally, considering our federal deficit and growing debt it appears that decisions continue to be made with no regard for cost. Basically, we spent millions to get a task force to the scene so the administration could pretend to be doing something.

* Disclaimer: If you are a lawyer, or journalist or just the sort of person to get all worked about semantics then please feel free to pretend that I used the word "allegedly" at various points in the above post.