Wednesday, April 08, 2009

That's a worthwhile motto, right there - "Few things are more dangerously retarded than people in large groups."

More regulations don't make you safer.

The 5 Most Popular Safety Laws (That Don't Work) | Cracked.com:
"[National Speed Limits]

...After the National speed limit was repealed, the state of Montana removed all non-urban speed limits in their state. A few years later, engineers working with the state decided to venture out to see just what kind of post-apocalyptic Death Race wasteland their lawless state had produced. What they found was that, you guessed it, on the roads where they removed the speed limits, fatalities didn't go up at all.

Proponents of the national law still argue that traffic fatalities nationwide did drop during the national speed limit's lifetime. Buzz-killing critics of the law point out that no, no they didn't.

Why Doesn't it Work?

Because, and this surprised the hell out of us, people aren't completely retarded. As it turns out, people tend to drive at speeds they feel comfortable driving. Yes, there are reckless madmen out there, but they're not going to obey a couple of digits on a sign anyway. It just becomes a make-work project for traffic cops.

[The Amber Alert]

...Like covering up a hole in the wall with a poster, the Amber Alert system made everyone feel better without actually costing the government a dime.

From 2003 to 2006 independent researcher Timothy "The Griffon" Griffith conducted the first third-party investigation of the Amber Alert system. He found that, while state and local governments were claiming huge numbers of children "rescued," they were actually full of shit.

Most of the children "saved" by the Amber alert hadn't been in any danger in the first place (in most cases they'd been taken by legal guardians arguing over custody rights). The few children who WERE abducted by psychopaths usually died before the Amber Alert could even go online.

Why Doesn't it Work?

Few things are more dangerously retarded than people in large groups. There's a reason Batman works alone. Griffith and others came to the realization that, while the Amber Alerts weren't really helpful in saving children, they were great at drowning the surrounding community in a tsunami of irrational fear and paranoia. The chance of a child being abducted by a stranger is far lower than of the child, say, dying from drinking the bottle of floor wax you have in the cabinet because it has pictures of lemons on it. The latter just doesn't become a media event.

[Registering Sex Offenders]

Nobody wants to be the one to stand up for sex offenders, but you've got to have pretty damned good cause to make a person face what is basically a life-long punishment, served even after their jail term is over. Which sounds fine if we're talking about a serial rapist murderer, but not when something like public urination can land you on the registry right alongside him.

That would be just one reason studies show Megan's Law hasn't done a damned thing to stop child molesters.

Why Doesn't it Work?

So you take a guy who's committed a crime. Now you put him on a registry that may keep him from getting a job, or making friends, generally just totally isolating him for the rest of his life and giving him lots of free time. Do you think that makes him less likely to commit another crime?

And how does knowing there's a sex offender in your neighborhood help? Unless he's wearing some kind of clanging Sex Offender bell around his neck to let you and your child know he's approaching, it doesn't protect you from a guy looking to do it again. And then you've got the fact that 95 percent of sexual assault victims are victimized by somebody they already know anyway.

So what's the point? Deterrence? As it turns out, someone who is willing to abduct, rape and murder a child often isn't stopped by the fact that he'll get put on a "registry" if he's caught."

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