Waiting period for laws, not guns: Column

Glenn Harlan Reynolds | USATODAY

After New York state hastily passed its post-Newtown gun law, it quickly became obvious we need a waiting period for laws more than for guns. After all, the idea behind waiting periods for guns is that people intent on doing something rash would "cool off" if they had to wait a few days before getting their hands on one. Laws are dangerous, too, and legislators seem prone to the same fits of hysteria as the gun owners those lawmakers want to regulate.

Now New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a tireless champion of gun restrictions, has noticed the problem, too. The ban on selling magazines larger than 7-rounds, a major feature of the New York law, turns out to be unworkable. For starters, nobody makes 7-round magazines, and the law doesn't exempt police from the rule. Starting April 15, when the law goes into effect, it would turn the state's police into criminals for carrying their usual Glocks with the standard 10- and 15-round magazines.

Bloomberg observed: "We've just got to start to thinking a little bit more about the implications of things before we rush to legislate."

Well, yes. Of course, it's a bit rich to hear this from Bloomberg, who had a public relations organization on call waiting for a mass shooting (which turned out to be Newtown) so he could rush gun control through at just the time emotions were most likely to cloud people's thinking.

3-day waiting period

The problem, of course, is that emotions also cloud politicians' thinking, and efforts to push sweeping legislation through while emotions are high also mean that the proposed law doesn't get the kind of scrutiny it needs. The result, typically, is bad: Not only legislation that does things the public wouldn't necessarily support if there were time for reflection, but also legislation that doesn't even do what it's supposed to do.

Had New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo not waived the three-day waiting period already in place for new laws, the problems with his gun control legislation might have been discovered before legislators were forced to write embarassing new legislation allowing 10-round magazines to be used as long as there are only seven bullets in them.

Were I a member of the New York legislature, I'd be doing what I could to make the process of fixing these problems painful for the law's supporters in hope that it would encourage more deliberation in the future.

But it's not as if New York is the only offender.

Not just guns

The Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare, was also rushed through. As then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously remarked, Congress had to "pass the bill so you can find out what's in it, away from the fog of controversy."

Well, people have found out what's in it, and ObamaCare is still highly unpopular. It would have been better if the public had found out what was in it before it passed.

Except then it probably wouldn't have passed. Politicians rush bills through and keep voters guessing at the details because they want to avoid scrutiny. It's a scam, disguised as leadership.

But given that even Mayor Bloomberg thinks that New York might have taken things a bit more deliberately, maybe the next time politicians want to rush a bill through without sufficient thought, others will have the fortitude to slow things down.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a University of Tennessee law professor who blogs atInstaPundit.com.

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors.

This column has been updated to reflect the print version of March 27 edition.