Laws, Crime, Punishment

This, as you can probably guess, is prompted by the myriad of gun laws that are being proposed and unfortunately passed throughout the country.The argument is that if you want something to stop, something like gun violence for instance, you pass some laws to regulate it. It makes sense until you really think about it.I think we have to go to the beginning: what is a law and what does it do? A law is a thing that defines a set of criteria for something and what happens if you contravene it. Let's take a simple and not controversial law like shoplifting. Shoplifting is against the law. If you get caught shoplifting you get charged with a crime. If you get convicted of that crime you must pay the penalty.This is important. The law doesn't prevent shoplifting, it just provides a mechanism to allow charging you with a crime.Another important point is that the punishment is relative to the individual. You or I likely wouldn't want to get convicted of shoplifting. For many people that worry just isn't there. If you live hand-to-mouth prison might not be that much different than where you are already. The risk/reward equation is different. Again, this doesn't prevent a thing. You can't, and in fact shouldn't, project your life circumstances onto the rest of society; just because you would obey a law (because you fear the consequences), doesn't mean that it's universal.Then you have an added angle to layer on top of all this: rationality. When I'm writing this I have a certain sense of what things are worth; I can think things through and come to a decision on the risk/reward for each and every one of my actions. If you were to, however, put my family in danger, that sense is quite skewed; I would literally be in a fight-or-flight mindset -- self (and more broadly family, friends, country, etcetera) preservation is a powerful motivator.There is another thing to consider as well: complete ir-rationality. When someone goes crazy the notion of cause-and-effect consequences don't connect. The law against killing someone (with or without a gun, it doesn't matter), even with the known result sometimes doesn't faze people. If you're life and future don't mean enough then nothing is going to stop you from taking an action.Certainly not a law.The you will be charged with breaking the law. Breaking the law that you ignored. The law you ignored due to circumstance, crazy, or calculated risk.The law doesn't provide guard rails to your life, nor to those around you. It simply provides the charge that can be used to dole out punishment if you're convicted.

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Which brings me full circle. You may ask "what's the harm in trying to make more laws?" The harm is that only the law abiding will abide by them. Just because you would does not make that universal.The answer to this isn't laws, which don't by themselves prevent anything. The answer is either stiffer penalties for the existing laws against violence (to shift the scale in the case of rational behavior), or trying to prevent people from getting crazy and containing them if they do (to help with the irrational behavior).