We absolutely must DO something

It doesn't matter if we do anything that will fix the problem, we just need to do something so people won't say we aren't doing anything or that we don't care about "the children."  Because it's always about the children, right? If we could save just one life . . . unless we're talking about abortion, in which case, nevermind. But I digress.

No, I'm talking about pressure cookers. Al-Quaeda has published instructions on how to make bombs using pressure cookers and they have been used often to make IEDs (improvised explosive devices) in Pakistan, among other places. Plus, domestic terrorist, college professor and Obama chum Bill Ayers, formerly of the Weather Underground and noted bomb-maker, is known to have preferred pressure-cooker based bombs.

Clearly, the only solution is to limit the size of pressure cookers. Wasn't that the answer for firearms magazines? Just make them smaller? OK, you don't need a 16-quart pressure cooker, do you? You could make do with a 4-quart model, right? Oh, but you want the bigger model? Tough shit -- you don't need it, and that's the defining issue, right? Not whether, for instance, there is a constitutionally protected right involved. Which, by the way, when it comes to pressure cookers, there isn't. So not only should we limit the size of available pressure cookers, we should have background checks of pressure cooker purchasers, and we should make them register their pressure cookers, and we should flat-out ban assault pressure cookers, which will be defined as whatever the hell I say they are, because "assault pressure cookers" is a meaningless term. I will choose a couple arbitrary features, and any pressure cooker with those features is -- Voila! -- an assault pressure cooker and is banned. So there.

Does any of this sound familiar yet? Does anyone think anything I just suggested about pressure cookers makes any sense? So why push the same arguments about firearms. Is there a difference? You're damn right there is -- you have a God-given, constitutionally protected right to a firearm. Not so for pressure cookers.