Written by Nick Caraway —

We will be hearing a lot of things over the next couple of days in regards to the mass shooting in Boulder. Maybe it will be in the mass shooting in Georgia. Heck, it could be any of the seven mass shootings we have had over the past seven days in this country. The conservative playbook is well-documented at this point.

1) It is too soon to talk about this.

2) Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.

3) It’s a mental health issue.

4) Thoughts and prayers.

Get out your bingo cards. You’re going to win with that combination in any order. The one variant that sticks in my craw is how the right always tries to poke holes in the argument to install background checks or ban automatic weapons. The gamut they use to point out the isolated cases where those provisions wouldn’t have helped. In other words, the enemy of good is perfect.

If there is no perfect solution then we shouldn’t use it because it’s not perfect. It would be like striking down all traffic laws. See, not everyone follows speed limits. stop signs, or  traffic lights. There isn’t always a police officer there to write a ticket for those offending. Occasionally, someone dies because someone broke a traffic law. Texas alone has seen 611 deaths this year due to automobile accidents. Therefore, traffic laws don’t work because they haven’t addressed the problem perfectly. Therefore, they should be abolished.

The arguments against gun control make about as much sense. If people are going to wait around for the perfect solution they won’t get anything. Of course, we know that’s by design. The goal here is to make the world a better and safer place. We cannot make it perfectly safe. Perfect doesn’t exist. If background checks will prevent some of these events from happening then we need background checks. If banning assault weapons will prevent these events from being larger then we need to ban assault weapons.

The enemy of good is great (or perfect). Often times good is the best we can do. There are more deaths every year due to handguns than assault weapons. We likely won’t see an end to handguns and it’s debatable as to whether we should. Assault weapons and background checks are low lying fruit. The vast majority of people agree with those measures and it won’t severely limit people’s freedoms. If you need an Ar-15 to hunt I’d suggest taking up golf.

Nick