Some people don’t seem to think.

As a parent, I’m constantly amazed at how my children seem to lack the ability to utilize their brain function at various times. Recollecting my youth, though, I remember my parents were amazed at the same thing as me. Eventually, kids grow out of it. They don’t always make great decisions, even as adults, but you start recognizing that there’s at least some cognitive function going on.

Unless, of course, you become mayor of Pittsburgh, in which case you get stuff like this:

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto on Sunday rejected President Trump’s suggestion that armed guards would have changed the outcome of the deadly attack on a synagogue that left 11 worshipers dead. “I don’t think that the answer to this problem is solved by having our synagogues, mosques and churches filled with armed guards or our schools filled with armed guards,” Peduto told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I think we’re dealing with an irrational person who acted irrationally. And trying to create laws around that is not the way that we should govern.” Instead, he said gun control laws should be toughened. “I think the approach we need to be looking at is how we take the guns – which is the common denominator in every mass shooting in America – out of the hands of those that are looking to express hatred through murder,” Peduto said during news conference updating Saturday’s shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill.

You know, the first part of that statement gave me such hope. I mean, I agree with it. It was an irrational person acting irrationally. Creating laws around what irrational people might do aren’t the way we should govern.

But then he went and started talking about laws that would be created around the acts of an irrational person.

Did he even listen to himself?

I mean, don’t get me wrong here, I’m not comfortable with guns in the hands of would-be monsters either. The problem is that to some people, anyone who wants a gun is a mass-shooter-in-waiting. They’re convinced that we’re all just waiting to snap and start gunning down people left and right.

Then, to complicate matters, there are those who are hateful jackwagons who spew that hate day and night, but who aren’t going to start shooting people at any point in the future. How do you differentiate between them and people like the alleged Tree of Life Synagogue shooter? I ask because I’d be fascinated to know.

The problem is, you can’t.

What it sounds like is that Mayor Peduto is talking about disarming Americans because they espouse unpopular ideas. Now, I have no use for anti-semites, but I do recognize that the moment you start doing that you start down a slippery slope toward doing the same to others with unpopular ideas. You start with people who espouse anti-semitic hate but eventually, you get to people who believe in the Constitution as written.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Peduto thinks the way to disarm hateful jackwagons is to disarm everyone.

Either way, he’s got problems, and he’s got disappointment because it’s not going to happen.

Meanwhile, putting armed guards in churches and synagogues might accomplish a great deal. It would deter some, for one thing. It would also save a lot of lives. Armed guards do that. They do that all the time.

But Peduto is too wrapped up in his politics to even be willing to see that fact.