Politicians now typically respond to major tragedies with an outpouring of \u2026 opportunistic agenda-pushing. This disgusting penchant for capitalizing on the public\u2019s grief and fear \u2014 evidenced in the nefarious USA PATRIOT Act following the attacks of 9\/11 \u2014 has, of course, surfaced on multiple fronts after the massacre in Orlando.<\/p>\n
While the nation mourned and attempted to parse how, exactly, a shooter had pulled off the slaughter of 49 people<\/a> while pledging allegiance to the so-called Islamic State \u2014 despite national domestic surveillance measures<\/a>, previous FBI scrutiny of shooter Omar Mateen<\/a>, and a gun store owner\/DHS poster child<\/a> who \u2018saw something and said something\u2019 \u2014 politicians plotted to see just how many of your rights they could disappear<\/a>.<\/p>\n In fact, their varied assaults on your liberties share an undeniably laughable common thread: each proposal would rob you of yet more freedom while doing nothing at all to prevent another attack.<\/p>\n But that doesn\u2019t mean politicians and government agencies won\u2019t employ the logically fallacious appeal to emotion, as in fears roused by Orlando<\/a>, as a weapon to get what they want \u2014 indeed, they count on all of us to succumb to such scaremongering so we\u2019ll willingly sign over the precious few rights we have left.<\/p>\n Proposing gun control legislation might not be shocking in itself following a slaughter in a public place, but guns only constitute the guise for these pernicious policies with distressingly Orwellian consequences. As the public erupted in ire on either side of the classically American issue of firearms, a number of Congress members constructed several pieces of legislation that would unite the opposing sides \u2014 were they not exploitative of people\u2019s worst fears.<\/p>\n