During my mother’s final years, she was wracked with constant pain.  One of her many ailments was acute arthritis.  Every movement of her body caused pain.  Naturally, we took her to a pain-management doctor.  Unfortunately, the process of getting her into a wheel chair to be lifted into a van to be pushed into the doctor’s office was extremely painful for her.  I can remember vividly the tears in her eyes.  He prescribed pain pills for her, which did help somewhat but made her sleepy.  When her 30-day prescription was exhausted, we asked for a refill but were informed she had to return to the doctor’s office for another examination.  Thinking it was a money issue, I offered to pay the doctor for an office visit without the pain of actually transporting her to the office.  I learned that it was necessary to cause pain in order to get pain relief.  The first objective of pain-management doctors is to comply with drug laws.  If they happen to also lessen pain, that is nice but secondary to compliance with drug laws.  Unfortunately, my mother never received any more pain medicine and died a miserable death.

In last week’s Wall Street Journal, there was an article about new rules to prevent abuse of Vicodin by making it more difficult to get.  The article went on to note “most people who abuse prescription drugs illicitly obtain them from friends or relatives with legitimate prescriptions.”  So, we prevent abuse of this drug by inconveniencing or punishing the legitimate user, like my mother, and not the illegitimate user?

Last week, Bank of America joined the parade of banks paying hundreds of billions of dollars (yes, hundreds of billions in total) as fines for the Great Recession.  The global financial crisis began with the big banks, so they must be punished, right?  But, did anybody go to jail?  Many crooked bond salesmen, who made millions every year leading up to the crash, are now sitting on beaches, sipping fruit drinks with umbrellas.  Again, we punish the many shareholders who did nothing without punishing those bankers who knowingly sold trash-bonds.  It is much easier to punish the many than the few.

Although I don’t understand why 320 million Americans need 450 million guns, our attempt to reduce gun violence is aimed at inconveniencing the many lawful gun owners and not promptly executing those who use a firearm in the commission of a crime . . . any crime.  Again,the aim of reducing gun violence is laudable, but our laws target lawful gun owners, not the bad guys.

To a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.  In a nation ruled by lawyers, every problem looks like we just need more laws . . . instead of simply more executions.