Is that why we USED to be told that the courts are "Blind"?
We have lots of laws that have been passed during a fit of insanity/emotion....look at NY's recent gun ban as an excellent example.
But despite that the enforcement of those laws and application of penalities by the courts are based purely upon facts......not feelings.
Our laws and penalties are written to be quantifiable.......emotions are by their very nature not quantifiable.
Had the reaction been "pragmatic" we wouldn't have seen 5+ thousand LEO's dressed up as .mil.
There was nothing pragmatic about the response at all......it was "shock and awe" rather than an efficient and COST EFFECTIVE application of resources.
We had a bleeding kid on foot.......a couple of dogs trained to track and the kid would have been caught in an hour...enforce a perimeter if you're really concerned the bleeding kid might actually find wheels.
The door to door search was far and above the LEAST pragmatic, least effective and most dangerous (to citizens and officers).
Take any example you want.
Accidents are truly a rare occurrence.
They are nearly always caused by willful acts by drivers/other actors,
We choose to text, drink coffee, take prescription drugs, drink alcohol and a raft of other things that we KNOW will cause accidents............these are willful acts and it matters not that some think they can beat the odds....they willingly choose to do it anyway.
We try to explain these events away as "accidents" but the fact of the matter is that they are willful acts with known consequences.
Do you think anyone is more/less outraged/hurt if their husband/wife/son/daughter is killed by a terrorist versus a mugger or a drunk driver?
Nope......
The point at the end of the day is that most people have swallowed the hook thrown out by politicians and they falsely believe that somehow being killed/hurt by a terrorist is somehow scarier/worse/more of a threat than a drunk driver or common criminal and that our response must also somehow be more severe with little or no consideration of the consequences or the crimes committed.
So many people are so outraged about the 4(?) people killed and 200 injured to varying degrees but where's the outrage over the 210 people who were murdered, the 1745 that were raped or the 21,000 that were assaulted by criminals in 2010 for example
FBI ? Table 5
Based on the stats its pretty clear that there is an immanent threat but we don't see the police playing .mil and going door to door searching for these criminals do we?
Of course not.
Fact of the matter is that so long as politicians react like they did and we allow it the terrorists have won.