They did have a point. You believe that your idea of more laws, because of your anecdotal evidence, is a good idea.
They will catch some terrorists by pure accident and coincidence, probably more than your mulgeek or whatever his name was.
My thinking is that instead of mass surveillance and spending large fortunes on data, they should focus on actual leads, like they had on mateen. Stopping him would have been good.
Even when he posted his intentions on facebook, with all the explicit and clear as day language that should have set off their trigger points, it accomplished absolutely nothing.