Feeling sorry for someone who lost their child doesn't mean that I am going to give up on the Constitution or surrender my natural rights.
When many hundreds died due to a false story about desecration of the Quran at Gitmo - would trotting out the families of those who died be a convincing argument that the press shouldn't be able to publish the stories (even false stories) that they want?
Somehow I am unconvinced that the ‘argument’ (i.e a naked emotional appeal, as you pointed out) goes both ways for them.
You have that right. We can count in literally millions if not billions of pages the bad laws that have been birthed by the victimization insanity and for what? Homicide rates still go up and down with they only thing that really seems to impact them being law enforcement and keeping violent offenders in prison. What worked 100 years still works today and all the gun control laws and bureaucracy that has accumulated since has just been noise in the machine meant to not control criminals as much as to produce power structures so that politicians can control citizens who have did nothing wrong.