I always find these memes funny, but I do quibble: the point of a law isn't always that you expect the bad guys to follow them. Sometimes it's about being able to bring law enforcement to bear if you happen to catch them at it. That argument stops making sense if society can't or won't enforce the law in such a way as to guard public safety, which is my quarrel with the gun laws. I mean, my practical quarrel, quite apart from the Constitutional issue.
In my county we have a perennial problem with safety-code scofflaws. The big problem, as I see it, is that people want to use the safety codes as a pretext for fighting eyesores. We've created a system in which the sillier aspects of the safety codes are used against solid citizens who really are guilty of nothing worse than what some (but not all) consider an eyesore, while the people engaged in truly horrendous eyesore offenses that stink the nostrils of their long-suffering neighbors can simply afford to ignore the code enforcement. A common criminal ignores with contempt any wishy-washy attempts to cite him for illegal gun ownership, whereas a similar charge might make a real mess of my life--though it's obvious that one of us is a real thorn in the side of society while the other is a reasonable productive solid citizen.
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I always find these memes funny, but I do quibble: the point of a law isn't always that you expect the bad guys to follow them. Sometimes it's about being able to bring law enforcement to bear if you happen to catch them at it. That argument stops making sense if society can't or won't enforce the law in such a way as to guard public safety, which is my quarrel with the gun laws. I mean, my practical quarrel, quite apart from the Constitutional issue.
In my county we have a perennial problem with safety-code scofflaws. The big problem, as I see it, is that people want to use the safety codes as a pretext for fighting eyesores. We've created a system in which the sillier aspects of the safety codes are used against solid citizens who really are guilty of nothing worse than what some (but not all) consider an eyesore, while the people engaged in truly horrendous eyesore offenses that stink the nostrils of their long-suffering neighbors can simply afford to ignore the code enforcement. A common criminal ignores with contempt any wishy-washy attempts to cite him for illegal gun ownership, whereas a similar charge might make a real mess of my life--though it's obvious that one of us is a real thorn in the side of society while the other is a reasonable productive solid citizen.
And to make matters worse, I need the gun to protect me against the criminal. The same problem doesn't arise in the parallel case of eyesores.
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