That vertigo you’re feeling may have been caused by dizziness from watching politicians distancing themselves from common sense. Residency laws that limit how close convicted sex offenders whose victims are younger than 18 can live to schools, day-care cebters and other public facilities play to our emotions, but do little to protect children.

It’s not that we don’t understand what’s driving politicians at the state, city and county levels to make it all but impossible for convicted sex offenders to live in their jurisdictions and still be law-abiding. They’re merely paying lip service to the problem, shouting from city halls and boards of supervisor chambers that Iowans have no truck with sex offenders.

Unfortunately, such posturing does little to protect Iowa children. Politicians surely know that, but are so afraid of appearing to coddle perpetrators of these monstrous crimes against children that they blindly follow the pack. That’s what we mean when we say that though the residency restrictions are born of good intentions, they have little to do with common sense.

In the meantime, Iowa’s children are no safer than they were before this frenzy began. The residency restrictions do nothing to stop offenders from traveling to areas where children congregate – a point painfully made in Des Moines recently when a homeless sex offender abducted a toddler in the Public Library of Des Moines. In fact, as Iowa legislators are studying the effects of the state’s 3-year-old residency law last week heard, the restrictions may push some offenders out of their homes and into their vehicles, making them they’re more mobile and arguably a greater risk to children. And the laws ignore statistics that show about 90 percent of sex offenses against children occur in the home and are committed by family members or family acquaintances.

If Iowa legislators are serious about protecting children from sex offenders, they’ll resist temptations to further tinker with the residency law and start talking about solutions that make sense. For one thing, tough penalties for sex offenses against minors should be implemented, especially for those who molest children a second time. The “good-time” law, which allows for early release from prison, should not be applied in cases where sexual offenders victimized a child. Life without parole should be considered in the most heinous cases.

Iowa values its children, and the state’s laws should reflect that.