I am intrigued by many things. Many of them are related to the natural wonders of the world we live in, the world created by God. Others have to do with man, his actions, and his thought process. Such is the case with a theory that seems to be common among many in this country. We know criminal behavior exists in America, as well as good behavior. It should be no big secret that evil and good can and do coexist. They have done so since God created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. What I want to discuss in this post is the prevalent idea that we need more laws to help good overcome evil. You may think that isn’t the case, but I believe I can prove otherwise. I would also encourage you to read Trestin’s commentary on this subject, at Don’t Tread On Us.
The first and most glaring example is the effort to continually crack down on guns. Let’s start with the premise that the 2nd Amendment grants individuals in this country the right to keep and bear arms and go from there. I’ll try to keep it simple. Yes, we do have the aforementioned right, as well as the responsibility to use that right correctly. Do we all agree on that? I believe we do, so let’s move on. Do bad people have access to guns? Do they do bad things with them? The answer to both questions is, of course, yes.
What is your first response to that? If you are like most people, you are already thinking, well duh! Let’s keep the bad people from getting the guns and doing bad things with them. It’s a natural response, one I have had myself when I see a news report of some idiot going off half-cocked and shooting people they didn’t even know or care about. Here is my question to all of us who have had that thought before. How do you propose to do that? What measures would you like to see taken to prevent bad people from getting guns?
If I am completely honest with myself and the readers of Political Realities, I have to admit that I believe some gun regulations may be needful or helpful. Clearly, there are some people who have no business owning a firearm. At the risk of putting myself in the same category as President Obama, he has stated he believes in commonsense firearms regulations. There is just one problem that comes to mind. Those commonsense regulations put restrictions on the good guys, but what about the bad guys? Not so much, it seems.
Let’s change course for a moment and talk about another example that I can think of, one that seems to be the topic of conversation for a lot of people. Nearly every day, I hear advertisements on the radio, sponsored by Stopmethnotmeds. They are mounting an offensive against the movement in many states to require a prescription for any medicine containing pseudoephedrine . For those of you who don’t know what that is, it is the main ingredient used to manufacture methamphetamine. Commonly known as meth, this illegal drug is a scourge and bane on our society.
My home state of Oklahoma implemented a plan to restrict the sale of cold medicines that contained pseudoephedrine in 2006. These medicines were placed behind the counter and identification was required for its purchase. We thought we had a success story, as the number of seizures of meth labs dropped in 2007 and 2008. Then, in 2009, they began rising again, as the meth dealers, the bad guys, found a way around the requirement. Their meth manufacturing operations kicked into high gear and they have been going strong ever since. What was our solution to the problem? That would be House Bill 1235. This legislation would reclassify pseudoephedrine as a Schedule III drug, thus requiring a prescription to receive many medicines used to treat allergies and the common cold.
Obviously, this another attempt to restrict access to a substance that can be used for good, runny noses anyone, but has been abused and used for many bad things. I understand the sentiment behind the measure, but that doesn’t mean I agree with it. From the reading and research I have done, it appears it would do nothing to restrict the bad guys’ access to pseudoephedrine, as they will surely find a way around it. It’s what they do. What it will do is to require law-abiding citizens, who have no intention of abusing the medicine, to have a prescription before they can purchase it. Need I point out what that will require? Visits to the doctor to obtain the prescription, taking time off to make those visits. Instead of going to a local store to purchase the medicine so they don’t have to take time off work.
HB 1235 was defeated in committee, which I believe is a good thing. One thing I do not understand is the support given it by John Bennett, our State Representative in Sequoyah County. He is a good man and a strong conservative, but I do question why he coauthored the bill. I plan to ask him that question when I see him next.
I understand the need and the desire to keep pseudoephedrine out of the hands of the drug dealers. I also understand the need and the desire to keep guns out of the hands of the bad guys. However, looking back at the results of the laws passed to accomplish both objectives, I can’t say that either have been achieved. Therefore, I pose this question to any and all who may read this post.
Is passing more laws to stop criminals the right thing to do if those laws continually stack layer upon layer of regulations and restrictions upon law-abiding citizens? I am truly interested in your answers.
Linked at Sentry Journal.
Linked at Conservative Hideout.
Linked at Motor City Times.
Wow, a great topic for a lazy, philosophical Saturday =)
The thing about human nature, whether the person is generally good or evil, is that we as a species have an indomitable will to obtain the things that we truly want and/or need. When a human sets his heart on something, he will do whatever he can to achieve his goal.
So I think that no matter what we do, no matter how laws we pass, the people who wish to do bad things will find a way to do the bad things. Not only will they find a way to do bad things, but they’ll find a way to continue their misdeeds at the same rate prior to the extra laws passed.
Does this mean I think we should just throw our hands up and abandon law altogether? Obviously not, as that would be a bad thing. Human nature is an incredibly fragile thing, and I think there are things that people refrain from doing simply because there is an associated punishment behind the behavior.
So I think the best course of action is to make law that does two things. It should make it more logistically difficult for a person to commit the misdeed, and it should make it easier to catch and punish those committing the misdeed. What law should NOT do, is make it more difficult for a law-abiding citizen to live his or her life comfortably and relatively conveniently.
In this discussion, what we have to realize is that we’ll never be able to keep every single human from doing harmful and destructive things unless you want a world like 1984 or Brave New World. I don’t think any of us want that. So we have to accept that there’s going to be a certain degree of awfulness and horrific behavior if we’re to remain a free society.
All we can really do is punish those who break the law and the social contract, and hope that that punishment keeps most people in line.
I think you have done well in defining the problem and even part of the solution. For a lazy Saturday, that is.
Seriously, I especially like this portion of your comment.
If we can accomplish that, we would be doing good.
Criminals, by their very nature, and the definition of the word, care nothing for Law. Experience tells us that no matter how draconian you make the Law, criminals will find ways around it. Whether guns or drugs. As was seen in DC, Laws against possession of handguns didn’t stop anyone, much less criminals, from getting them. There are, and until the Final judgement, will always be evil and criminal people. Passing Laws that restrict the common Law abiding citizen’s rights will never change that. A harsh sentence is no deterrent either, as the un-law abiding among us don’t consider consequences. The only things warehousing does is keep them off the street for a while and take up space. I don’t know where we go from here, but more Laws are not the answer.
Thanks for commenting on Political Realities. I appreciate you taking the time to do so. I couldn’t agree more with your comment. Morality has never been able to be legislated and it never will be. Yes, laws are necessary, but to unduly restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens is going in the wrong direction.
Myself and a Tulsa Police Officer got with Representative Sean Roberts to sponsor a pseudoephedrine bill to stop the people that are shopping for the meth cooks called smurfs. OK-HB-2808 is a bill that does ( NOT ) require a prescription and puts the pharmacist in more control of saying no when we have a clear case of smurfing,
For the first time the persons past purchase history will be looked at buy the pharmacist making the sale. One of the many great things that are current tracking system does is record attempted illegal purchases to go over the limit of pseudoephedrine. Smurfs attempted this 66,000 times last year and that is a very big deal because the way tracking is set up now is if they are under the limit they get the pseudoephedrine and if there not then there blocked.
The smurf has come back time after time to different pharmacies trying to beat the tracking system to buy illegal amounts without anything being done about all of these illegal attempted purchases. Now the pharmacist will be able to see those past illegal attempts to say no on future purchases. The pharmacist will also do a consultation with the person wanting to purchase the pseudoephedrine to make sure their is a medical need for the product.
The pharmacist said no sale 66,000 times last year for illegal attempts to go over the limit and now he will have the past history to say no sale for those attempts.
For all of us ( non smurf ) allergy suffers no problem and just go get your pseudoephedrine when you need it watch as the 902 meth labs we had last year start going way down instead of up !
http://www.StopMethLabs,com
First of all, thanks for taking the time to comment on Political Realities. As for the solution contained in HB 2808, it sounds good, but I have to question how a pharmacist is going to make the determination to allow someone to purchase pseudoephedrine. Sure, there are some cases that will be completely obvious, but some are not. Will this put an undue burden on the pharmacist? At the very least, that is a legitimate concern.
OK-HB-2808 will for the first time have the pharmacist look at the past purchase history of the buyer. This will show if the person has been maxing out his pseudo purchases but more importantly if he has attempted to continue to buy an illegal amount.
The illegal attempts happened 66,000 times and those are the problem smurfs who buy for the meth cooks and before if they got blocked they would just go to another pharmacy and try to trick it again. Now they will be blocked because they have tried to make illegal over the limit purchases where they can’t buy anymore.
The other great thing and it has worked in Arkansas is a smurf especially if he is high on meth does not want to face the pharmacist and describe his symptoms especially if he had just bought a box the day before. This is why the Oregon prescription law worked so well because the smurf just does not want to face a doctor or pharmacist.
The pharmacist with the consultation combined with the past purchase history will stop a lot of meth labs.
We have another amendment I just finished and it will put the person on the block list if they attempt to buy an illegal amount twice. After that they are done buying pseudoephedrine in Oklahoma unless they send a application in to the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics in case of some type of mistake.
You will also have to have a Oklahoma drivers license or a official Oklahoma ID to buy pseudo. Anyone from out of state will be required to have a prescription.
We cut out all the multiple ID’s also and Representative Jadine Nolan is working on making the Oklahoma drivers license and the official Oklahoma ID to have the same number. This stops the person that goes buys the max limit with a passport, then goes in with his Military ID then state ID, then a different state ID, then drivers license and on and on. They have caught smurfs with over 20 different ID’s so this will stop a big problem.
If we get all of this passed I think we will see over a 70% drop in meth labs and maybe more.
Be very careful because the other bill that passed that was written by the pseudoephedrine lobby and sponsored by Representative David
Derby sounds like it will do something but will make things worse.
The drug lobby / Derby bill said they wanted to reduce he amount of pseudoephedrine a person could buy in a month from 9 grams to 7.2 and that sounds pretty good doesn’t it ?
Well, the carnival trick that no one knows is 99% of all pseudoephedrine comes in 3.6 gram boxes and 2 x 3.6 = 7.2 already so it is just a trick but sounds good if you don’t know better.
The drug lobby / Derby bill also wants to replace our electronic tracking with the drug lobbies tracking because they say it’s better.
Well, Kentucky was the first state to use the drug lobbies tracking system in 2008 and they saw meth labs go from 302 to 1,146 in 2011. I would say having meth labs triple and be higher then Oklahoma’s 902 is not a step in the right direction.
When you understand 85% of all pseudo sales goes to the meth cook market which is over a billion dollars a year, then you can understand why they are fighting so hard to keep things as they are.
If you have been to my web site http://www.StopMethLabs.com you will see a story of 15 month old Anden Jennings who burned to death in a Tulsa meth lab explosion. I actually to the out of state father to the hoe that was so burnt to try and fins a picture or something to remember of his son and that changed me and my eyes are wide open now. I know I never want to attend another child’s funeral from a meth fire.
I really could use some people E mailing their state reps to support OK-HB-2808 because we must take our state back from these meth cooks !
It would seem to me that the bad guys will always find ways around any new laws which are created to stop them while the good guys are most often the people who end up being punished by these new laws. Law abiding citizens are the ones who end up facing tougher restrictions and laws for doing nothing wrong and while I understand what the government is trying to do it seems as if creating new laws to stop criminals isn’t ever going to work.
My point exactly. Criminals aren’t going to care how many laws we pass to prevent their behavior. That’s why they are called criminals.
Great article, and I agree with Jack. Taking rights away from everybody because a few abuse them is not the answer, but it sure is a handy pretext for an overbearing government.
Yeah, it sounds good to the ears when someone proposes a law to cut down on the number of meth labs in Oklahoma. It sounds much worse when we stop to think about the ramifications the law will have on law-abiding citizens.
Interesting article.
Here is my problem with “more laws” passed:
Criminal laws are in effect to police peoples’ failures. Thus, saying you should have X, Y, and Z laws to restrict firearms is because some people have bad behavior. But people can invent a virtually unlimited number of bad behaviors so should we invent more laws for each new flavor?
Let me use a firearms example.
In Kalifornia it is legal to own a Glock 19 with a black grip. Glock comes out with the same model but with a green grip. This being a new model it is illegal to own it.
True example.
So Glock has to go through all the testing procedures with the green grip so that it can be sold next to the black grip gun.
How does this apply to new laws to stop bad people? Well it is illegal to murder someone. But it is also more illegal to murder someone because they’re gay or black or Hindu or whatever. Do we really need two laws for the same crime?
You cannot control people or their behavior. You can punish people for what they do but you cannot control them. More laws are simply an attempt to try and control people.
If people were raised correctly and responsibility was still a virtue I’m convinced there would be fewer laws.
Passing more laws only treats the symptoms of bad behavior it does not address the causes (social issues, mostly).
Anyway, that’s what I think.
I couldn’t agree more.
I loved the article!
My friends and I will sometimes joke around about how well we would do as criminals. The laws only stop the dumbest of the dumb criminals. I mean the ones that you see one world’s dumbest crooks TV show. It all goes back to, “if there is a will, there is a way.” If you want something bad enough or if you have the money, you can get just about anything you want that is illegal in this country. If you do it the smart way 99% of the time you won’t get caught if you are small enough.
More laws will only encumber honest citizens, not stop criminals.
I am amazed at the effort most criminals put into their law-breaking. If they worked half as hard at a real job as they do at not getting caught, they would be very successful.
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