You can't legislate morality, only punish those that don't fit yours.
That's taking things much more deeply, and presumes an authority for what is or isn't moral. I leave that to the (self-appointed) experts and theologians, neither of which are down at
my level.
What I was saying is that passing a law doesn't keep something from happening, but passing a law
can be used to punish something that has happened. Whether we agree or disagree with the law is irrelevant, as I was speaking
purely from the perspective of effectiveness.
If one is writing a law to create something from happening, I believe it should be scrapped (at the idea stage).
Only if that law is punitive (in nature and intent) should the argument of whether it should or shouldn't be passed even take place. In other words, we (society) shouldn't even
get to the "morality" stage if a preventive law is being proposed. In fact, in my scenario, no such laws would ever make it to a floor.
Utopian and unrealistic, admittedly, but I'm allowed to fantasize.
The best real world scenario I can relate this to would be something from the Democratic debates last week. Cory Booker presented that he was "hopefully the only candidate" who had seven (six?) gun related crimes in his neighborhood in a past week. Based on the gun-laws in New Jersey, that
should have been impossible,
if "preventive" laws were effective.
I'm not intending to open a debate on gun laws here. That too is irrelevant to my original statement.