Good Sense and Gun Control

[Geee]

National Review:

In the early 1980s, transit officials in Washington couldn’t figure out why traffic on the Beltway would grind to a near halt every day around the exact same time. The usual explanations didn’t fit.

Then it was discovered that a single driver was to blame. Every day on his drive to work, this commuter would plant himself in the left lane and set his cruise control to 55 mph, the posted speed limit, forcing those behind him to merge right, and you can imagine the effects.

To his credit, this driver came forward in a letter to the editor of the Washington Post. The man’s name was John O. Nestor. He explained that the left lane was great: less traffic, less merging — why not ride it into work every day? Besides, he wrote, “Why should I inconvenience myself for someone who wants to speed?”

He achieved immortality by being transformed into a Dickensian-sounding verb: “Nestoring,” defined as an absolute adherence to the rules, regardless of the larger consequences.

Fittingly, Nestor was a regulator at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Virtually no drug was worth the risk, according to Nestor. The FDA transferred him out of the cardio-renal-pulmonary unit to some bureaucratic backwater because he “had approved no new chemical entities . . . from 1968 to 1972, an experience that contrasted with the experience of every other medical [sic] modern nation and with the experience of other divisions of the FDA.”

Of course, that made him a hero to activists like Ralph Nader, whose organization praised Nestor’s “unassailable record of protecting the public from harmful drugs.” (The Naderites helped Nestor in his lawsuit to get reinstated.)