With all of the crazy stuff happening in the world, there are some proposed laws out there that are pretty stupid. At least I think they are stupid and I will explain why. Two of the laws are proposed by Frank Burns, who is the Democratic representative of the 72nd district in the PA House of Representatives, which happens to be the area I live. The other law comes from our wonderful president.
The Bullying Law
Burns has proposed a law that would fine parents $500 if their kids are bullying other kids at school. I am guessing the nuts and bolts of the law have not been fully fleshed out, but it sounds like the fine would be a third strike. Honestly, I do not have much of a problem with holding kids and parents accountable for bullying. Schools have been accused of basically ignoring bullying or at least ignoring it in certain cases and using it against certain students. And how does the state define bullying? Will it be up to a teacher or other school official to decide what they deem is bullying? For example, if I say to one of my friends in class “hey dingleberry, pass me a pencil.” Will one teacher let it slide knowing we are friends, but another teacher (perhaps one who dislikes me) report me for bullying? Will there be an investigation or does this go as one of my strikes? Also, who collects the money? The state? The school district? Do we want to incentivize teachers to issue fines (do they get bonuses for bringing more fine money into the school)?
Blue Lives Matter Bill
This one is about people fleeing from police. Burns wants stiffer penalties for people who flee the police and the officer is injured/killed while in pursuit. He also wants any crimes against police officers or corrections officers to be considered hate crimes. Burns will post about how his law would have prevented the death of an officer that was killed by a criminal. However, we already have crimes for these things. Murder. Assaulting an Officer. Assault. MURDER. Do you really think a criminal is going to be like “damn, I was going to kill this cop, but now they got a law against that, soooo, I will surrender peacefully.” Look, Frank Burns’ heart is in the right place and I want to see our police officers offered as much protection as can be provided. I have a problem with district attorneys. I can already envision a scenario where some DA decides to hammer someone and add this charge to it because the officer stubbed his toe while running after the person. Or picture this: you are at a party, you are 19. The cops show up, everyone runs. The cops chase people and yell “stop!” Officer Johnson is a little overweight, he has a heart attack. The cops eventually catch you, but because of Officer Johnson’s heart attack, instead of an underage drinking fine, you now get an injuring an officer while fleeing charge tacked on, which is a felony. Seems a little insane, right? We do not need this law on the books. 
Executing Drug Dealers
President Trump has suggested that we execute drug dealers. Look, I am not 100% sure where I stand on the death penalty, but I am fairly certain that executing drug dealers is not on my list of acceptable uses. This is his solution to the opioid crisis. Something tells me that executions will not be set for all of the doctors out there who just prescribe opioids like they are they candy. Every small city has doctors who everyone knows just write prescriptions for whatever to whomever. You have a sore foot, here is some oxy. I highly doubt those are the people Trump has in mind. Even if we look at this from a different perspective. What if it is just dealers who have someone overdose on their product? How would this sit with Republicans? Or Libertarians? I thought these people were all for personal responsibility. You broke the law by doing the drug, death is just one of the consequences. I mean, where else could we apply these executions? What about people who illegally sell guns? Do they get the death penalty if one of their guns kills someone? Or bartenders? What if you serve someone too much alcohol and they drive home and kill someone? Is the bartender just as responsible? I know, the bartender did nothing illegal in that scenario. Okay, what if they serve a minor? And the minor kills someone, then do we execute the bartender? Do you see how idiotic this can become? Everyone bitches that we are too litigious of a society, but then they want more laws put in place.
We need laws. I am not saying that laws are bad. Unfortunately, we need smart laws. The kind that have been thoroughly debated. Knee jerk reactions help no one.
