Earlier this week, a person drove a truck into some people in New York City. That was bad.
Still, a total death toll this year of Islamic terrorism in the USA of just 8 Americans doesn’t really amount to a big crisis.
About 57,000 Americans die every year from the flu and pneumonia, and the Republicans in Congress are responding to that by reducing Americans’ access to medical care. So why are people in Congress making such a big deal about just 8 deaths?
These deaths have drama! They’re calling the New York City incident “vehicular terrorism”, just so everyone is clear that we’re all supposed to be feeling terror now.
Following the drama like lawyers chasing ambulances, Robert Latta, Kenny Marchant, Larry Bucshon, Steve Chabot, Tim Walberg, Marcy Kaptur, Jennifer Gonzalez-Colon, Michelle Lujan Grisham, and Jim Renacci have introduced H.R. 4227, officially the most idiotic anti-terrorism bill every to be seen in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Robert Latta, the author of the bill, brags that the legislation, ”follows up on previous efforts by Latta to protect Americans against vehicular terrorism,” which sounds good, until you realize that this means that Congressman Latta has a previous history of introducing legislation that actually doesn’t work to protect Americans from “vehicular terrorism”.
What does H.R 4227 do? Nothing, really. The proposed legislation ”directs the DHS to report to Congress on their efforts to assess and prevent terrorist acts involving vehicles. Specifically, the report would include the current threat level for vehicular attacks, what the department is currently doing to prevent vehicular terrorism, how the threat can be mitigated, and a clarification on the extent to which DHS is doing outreach to private sector partners.”
So the bill orders the Department of Homeland Security to write a report.
The report will merely describe Department of Homeland Security programs. It won’t actually create any new programs, or change existing programs.
It’ll just be a report.
It will be a report including a “current threat level for vehicular attacks”, but how could anyone reliably judge the level of risk of someone suddenly swerving off the road, hitting people on the sidewalk, given that American streets are filled with cars and trucks all day every day?
I can’t wait to see what the Department of Homeland Security writes about how the risk of someone suddenly driving off the road and hitting people with a car a truck can be “mitigated”.
Really, with tens of millions of cars and trucks driving around at deadly high speeds almost all the time, what is the Department of Homeland Security supposed to do? Outlaw driving?
That would be kind of nice and peaceful for a while, actually, but there’s no way Big Oil is going to allow it to happen.
So, we’re going to get a report from the Department of Homeland Security including a description of its outreach to “private sector partners” looking to somehow reduce the risk of Americans owning cars and trucks. I’d love to read that part of the report. I imagine it might read something like this:
Dear corporations,
So, a guy drove his truck onto a sidewalk, killing 8 people. People are upset about it. Those same people, like almost every adult in the USA, drive automobiles capable of killing people if they drive onto the sidewalk.
This kind of thing almost never happens, but still, people are freaked out.
Right… Um…
…do you have any ideas?
Just thought maybe we could ‘partner’ some time about this.
Love, the Department of Homeland Security
What’s so odd is that Robert Latta, and many of his colleagues who cosponsored this bill, refuse to consider even outlawing guns that exist for no other purpose than to shoot deadly bullets. So now we’re supposed to believe that they’re going to force the Department of Homeland Security to protect us all from the extremely tiny risk of someone every now and then losing their gourd and driving onto a sidewalk?
I think we can call this piece of legislation the Appear To Be Doing Something About Something No One Really Can Do Anything About Act of 2017.