Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

How do you know when a new law or regulation is needed? It’s not enough that they simply “save lives;” any new law or regulation must be treated like the judicial system treats someone accused of a crime: improper without overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The burden-of-proof is to justify a new law or regulation is needed versus individual liberty; the less the law affects people, the less justification is needed, but if a new law or regulation crosses into people's liberty then that law is going to require extraordinary supporting arguments.

“Gun Control” falls into the New-Laws-Need-Review category: it’s not enough to say people can’t have guns just because others don't want them to, or some “safety” issue; proposers must clearly identify why a new gun control law is more important than individual liberty then provide substantial evidence that the law will achieve that goal. This applies to adding new government agencies; there must be evidence that the use of tax dollars has an overwhelming benefit that justifies impinging on the liberty of everybody. Most voters don't like new laws: it seems that a good political tactic for an elected official would be to proudly proclaim how many potential new laws they thwarted. They could run on stopping laws rather than creating them. Special Interest groups would be angry but a majority of voters who would keep them in office.