In which everyone decides I'm heartless and insensitive

Several of my progressive Facebook friends posted about Gabrielle Giffords’ testimony before Congress about gun legislation, editorializing that we/they should pay close attention because of her personal experience as a victim of violence. Now, I understand why some criminal courts allow victim-impact statements: before deciding what sort of punishment should be meted out, it’s relevant to see how the crime has had an impact on the victim. But Congress isn’t in the business of punishing particular offenders – its function is to create legislation for the good of the country. (Yes, I’m rolling my eyes too, but let’s stipulate this arguendo.) So the relevance of victim-impact statements in this context is…what? This strikes me as legislating the ad misericordiam fallacy, using raw emotion as a substitute for rational analysis. But what’s especially irritating is that the last big example of this was when the other party was in power, and the party in power always has a predictably selective memory. After 9/11, emotions were pretty raw. A lot more pain and suffering that day than after any of the recent mass shootings. What was the result? A decade-long war in Afghanistan. Rampant abuse of executive power. Indefinite detention without trial. Lost privacy rights. The TSA. Kill lists. Mass shootings are to the left what terrorist attacks are to the right: emotional outcry by the public leading to grandstanding by whichever party is in power, and increased erosion of liberty. This is what happens when you legislate based on raw emotions, and disregard both the Constitution and the very idea of rational analysis. Let’s not keep making the same mistake.