So then let's just get rid of all the stop signs.
Because people don't always stop for them. Law-doesn't-work, don't-need-it, unnecessary, bad-guys-won't-stop-anyway, blah-blah-blah.
I live on a reckless street. People speed. Residents, gardeners, visitors, contractors, you name it. There's total disregard of speed limits, or safety, or common consideration for the neighbors here. They speed like crazed demons. We have had our side mirrors sheered off, our parked cars side-swiped, nannies pushing baby strollers have to dive into the bushes to escape oncoming racers. The offenders are always going too fast for anybody to get a license plate number. They're never caught. I've had to replace TWO side mirrors, myself, because nobody stopped to apologize or exchange insurance information to fix my car that they just scraped up. We have old people living on our street who don't move fast. We have dog walkers and babysitters. We have children on roller skates and skateboards and scooters, chasing bouncing balls out into the street, bicycle-riders - and a whole bunch of other people who literally take their lives into their hands simply attempting to cross the street. It's freakin' RIDICULOUS.
It's a canyon road, with a pretty straight shot and no significant curves, from the big main street from which it stems - all the way to the top of the dead end, some two miles up. Until recently there was ONE and only one stop sign way up at the 1.8-mile mark, and all of us farther down have been plagued by the speeders, nonstop. (Indeed. Pardon the pun). FINALLY, after years of lobbying, petitioning, bothering our city council person, bothering the municipal traffic control people, bothering the local cops to come out and write speeding tickets, we FINALLY got one in our section of the road that many people mistakenly view as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
And guess what? They still don't stop. Knowing this, and realizing how many scofflaws there are, what's the point in having stop signs - if people will just ignore them or roll through them? They don't work, 'eh? Those stop signs don't prevent those reckless drivers and speeders from speeding, and they don't make those drivers come to a stop.
HOWEVER, they DO slow down. They slow down enough - even if just a little bit - that the little old lady a block farther down, or the nanny with the 2-year-old twins, or the mom with her five-year-old and their dog, and others like them, actually do have an extra second or two - to get out of the way, and up onto the sidewalk to safety. IT MAKES A DIFFERENCE. Even just that little bitty second or two.
Now, to apply the logic that the gun nuts love - "more laws won't work," "people will still be able to get guns," "you can't stop people who want to get a gun..." "useless, useless," blah-blah-blah...
Well, okay. Understood. Human nature being what it is, indeed we will NOT stop everyone who's hellbent on getting a gun - any more than erecting a stop sign on a speed-road will make speeders come to a complete stop. We will NOT stop every bad guy or nutcase from getting a gun. BUT WE CAN - AND WILL - SLOW THEM DOWN. WE CAN SLOW DOWN THE FLOOD OF WANTON GUN SALES. We can make it even just a TINY bit harder to get a gun, or more complicated, or more problematic, or more inconvenient, to get a gun. We can increase the discouragement factor. And maybe last year, if there were ten mass shootings around the country, perhaps this year, there'll be eight or nine. Maybe instead of 3000-some-odd people who get killed by gun violence PER MONTH in this country (it was described as the equivalent of a 9/11 EVERY MONTH), perhaps it'll be 2500 next month. Or 2000. Maybe ten more children will be alive. Maybe five more families will not have to bury a loved one a week before Christmas. Maybe even ONE OR TWO fewer mothers and fathers will cry themselves to sleep every night for the rest of their lives. And maybe if some nut cases are STILL hellbent on mayhem, they'll turn to a knife or something else, like that perpetrator did at Lone Star College yesterday. And yeah, there were victims. People were injured. But no one died. And it wasn't dozens of people mowed down in the space of a few heartbeats, either.
Guys - SERIOUSLY. Let's take a page from the anti-choice crowd. They're incredibly sneaky, shrewd, and resolute. Once Roe v Wade came to be, they began, slowly, steadily, and systematically, to try to slow it down, chip away at it around the edges, weaken it, block it, hobble it, IN ANY WAY THEY COULD, to put an impediment or other complication or difficulty in its path. Since they couldn't stop it or get rid of it outright, they opted for the erosion strategy. Kill it with a thousand little bitty cuts. Pick away at it year after year after year, while also wearing down the opposition because they never stop and they never give up and they never go away. And 30 years or so later, look at what they've been able to accomplish! Yeah, the right to choose is still on the books - kind of. But so many little holes have been poked in it by now that in many states it wouldn't stay afloat for two seconds, and for all intents and purposes, it's pretty much undone. In more and more states Roe v Wade has been whittled down to a mere technicality.
GUYS - WE NEED TO TAKE THAT APPROACH AS WELL - against wanton access to ANY AND ALL guns including mass-murder weapons. I don't care WHAT the NRA talking points are. THESE are the REAL Weapons of Mass Destruction. And they do NOT belong in civilian hands. And we the vast majority must no longer be held hostage to the bullying of the NRA and a dwindling number of crazed paranoiacs.
(Cross-posted in GD)
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