Do We Need More Laws?

When Black Panthers marched into the California assembly in 1967, the spectacle accomplished little for them but it handed legislators the excuse they needed to pass the Mulford Act, a gun-control law supposedly aimed only at preventing such incidents. Yet the first man arrested under it was no radical but a decent citizen, a former legislative candidate who carried an unloaded gun for protection while driving through dangerous neighborhoods at 4 a.m. Like all gun-control measures, the law punished the righteous while doing nothing to restrain the lawless. And even as innocent men were charged, politicians pushed for still stricter laws proving that America’s problem is not a lack of legislation but a lack of Christian character. Laws cannot grow food, end poverty, or make a man righteous, but unjust laws can destroy peace, punish the godly, and burden the nation like the plagues of Egypt. What we need is not more laws, but more righteousness, more freedom, and more godly men.