There is simply no tangible solution for the crazies

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You Can’t Regulate Crazy
By Adam Bates, July 20, 2012

As our perpetually jerked-knee news machine continues to rhetorically lynch everyone from Tea Partiers to Trekkies for the horrible shooting in a Colorado movie theater last night, maybe it’s time to ask ourselves whether there are some problems for which there is simply no tangible solution. What if there are some people who, to quote a famous and soon-to-be-demonized movie franchise, “just want to watch the world burn?”

Over the next several weeks, thousands of hours of air time and innumerable articles will draw battle lines in their quest to place the blame for this attack at the feet of this organization or that ideology. Lost in that parade of indictments, however, will be many important questions, chief among them whether there’s anyone (beyond the shooter) to blame in the first place. Why must we assume, without any debate at all, that this wasn’t simply the act of a deranged person willing to throw his life away to extinguish the lives of others? Why is the proposition that we can’t police every action every moment of every day so alarming to so many?

Why can’t we accept that millions of people watch violent movies and aren’t violent, that millions play Grand Theft Auto and don’t kill police officers and that millions own guns and don’t murder? Why is this “99 percent of Nazis wore socks, ergo ban socks” breed of “logic” loudest in America precisely when it’s most dangerous?

I’d like to believe that this is not another chapter out of the American authoritarian handbook on how to take power from the people and put it in the hands of the government. Unfortunately, I’m reminded that only eleven months ago Norway, faced with an even bigger body count in a similar attack, chose to respond much differently.

Anders Breivik, armed with a rifle and a bomb, killed 77 people and injured 319 more. To this day, there have been no major legal changes in Norway. Those with guns got to keep them, those with movies got to watch them, and those with video games got to play them. And, against the prognostications of the alarmists, Norway endured.

I sympathize with those who say that now is not the time for Libertarian soapboxing, that we should have the decency to allow those affected to grieve before the hyenas and vultures convene their demagogues. Unfortunately, the nature of our media and political system does not allow the luxury of such decency. 

Before the smoke had cleared from the theater, authoritarian factions across the political spectrum were queuing up to legitimize their opinions with the blood of the dead. With the marshaled forces of authoritarianism drawing bulls-eyes on movies, video games, political protestors, comic books, gun rights, the “lack of Judeo-Christian values,” and every other liberty under the sun, the cost of silence is too much to bear.

I don’t know how to answer the problems posed by the James Holmes and Anders Breiviks of the world (maybe there is no answer), but I do know that we can’t keep them from burning the world by regulating the world into a less appealing target. ..................................................................................................................................