Public policy

A couple of things crossed my desk today. First was a video by Hickok45, a popular YouTube video blogger, about the concept of the "gun culture." It's worth a watch.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G6tcDRMjToThe second was a statistical look at shootings -- especially shootings like the one that recently occurred. This wasn't a video, but rather a thread on a forum I go to: The High Road. Admittedly it's a gun enthusiast forum, but a lot of healthy debate happens none-the-less.There is a thread about the whole notion of "what should we do?" There's the notion of putting armed guards into schools. There's the talk about limiting our constitutional rights. All sorts of things have come up.A particularly interesting comment came up that implored "what if it was your child? Wouldn't you spend money on that?" What about putting everyone "insane" in an asylum?The reply was surprisingly good I think. Given the marginal dollar that the government can spend, what should we spend it on? Sure, there's the shooting that's happened -- and that, make no mistake, is a tragic affair. But what can we do?In a game of odds the big winners and losers come to mind all the time. How many people play the lottery knowing full well the nearly infinitesimal probability that they will win? But they play anyway. Spending the dollar or two every week. What could they spend that money on instead? Good food on the table? Education? Gas for their car? Instead the money is spent on a "dream" -- a utopian ideal that winning will fix it all. The odds are more than against that outcome.As bad as things are, would we not better spend the marginal dollar on things that affect us more -- even though they don't get as much press? What about AIDS research? Or obesity? Or even combating the notion that childhood vaccines are a hoax? Maybe even something different like getting rid of a couple of coal power plants? How many more lives could we save? How many lives of both children and adults?I'm not trying to minimize the events, but we must remain objective about what our goals are as a country and a larger population of the world. We should not do something ineffective just to convince ourselves that "we did something." Utopian dreams don't work; we don't live in the "perfect" society, nor will we ever regardless how hard we may try. We all just need to work to make things better without the blinders of the unreachable perfection.Let's be able to offer help to those that need help. Let's fight the good fight for things that we can try to win; we can't win against the indefinable "evil," we can against many other things. The fight against "the evil" (however one may define it -- and it varies by era) may make one feel good, but it doesn't do any good.