> voters who accept policies being put in place based on something going wrong one time without accepting that things go wrong and we have to tolerate problems to some extent
I think this is almost the correct diagnosis, but the real problem is adjacent to that: it’s very easy for opponents to capitalize on political decisions that accept risk. It’s not that people love “do something, anything” policy making—rather, it’s that when the appropriate policy action is either to do nothing or to do something that accepts the probability that bad things may still happen, people are extremely sympathetic to opposing claims like “oh, so you mean you want people to die in <thing> events in the future”.
Policymaking is such asymmetric information warfare that many times the ideal policy solution isn’t even mentioned because it’s understood to be suicidally unmarketable. Leverage and empathy favor the reactionary advocates who drag (for example) the people bereaved by drowning deaths into the spotlight over the people saying “maybe we shouldn’t ban all swimming”.
...except for guns. That topic is off-limits at all levels of government. The problem is never guns, it is mental health, or drugs, or poverty, and the only solution is more police and more people in prisons.
> and the only solution is more police and more people in prisons.
The solution is more guns, or so I'm told. If only more people were "packing heat" then surely criminals wouldn't dare to commit crimes.
Just disregard the circular firing squads that too often occur when these would-be heroes start overreacting to everything, including each other.
..and democracy. The problem is never democracy itself, it's the autocrats, or extremists, or social media, and solution is more regulations on private life and more mentions of the paradox of intolerance.
Clearly the whole gun thing is working, though. Regular citizens can all feel safe in public areas and schools, while the potential of a fascist government greed-fueled rise is kept well-at-bay by the fact that the general populace has the right to bear arms.
Nice sarcasm