Gerik Parmele photo Novelty lighters, like these that Columbia fire Battalion Chief Steve Sapp uses to educate parents, can be a temptation for children. A state lawmaker is proposing that they be banned in Missouri.
Gerik Parmele photo Novelty lighters, like these that Columbia fire Battalion Chief Steve Sapp uses to educate parents, can be a temptation for children. A state lawmaker is proposing that they be banned in Missouri.
The solution is to ban all toys. Then children can play with matches.
Want to child-proof a lighter?
Keep it in your d@mned pocket!
I used to have a really cool butane lighter shaped like Godzilla.
We used it to cut bottles into pieces, just for fun.
I wonder if Columbia, MO still has it’s “can ban”. When I lived there in ‘82 you couldn’t sell any beverage in a can. It had to be in returnable bottles. I thought it was a stupid law at the time.
If you ban lighters, only children will have lighters.
When I was a kid, I used to play with ordinary lighters obsessively. They’re fun.
Just introduce a bill that all houses have to be built of stone like Bedrock.
Actually this hits pretty close to being hostile to the founding fathers’ stated right to “pursue happiness”.
IMHO this is what conservativism can be rebuilt upon.
The GOP rather than bailing out bankers — should define that right to pursue happiness as so fundamental to what America is about, that it becomes a platform of the Republican Party in some concrete form; perhaps a constitutional amendment which specifies that any legal “ban” at the state, local or federal level automatically sunsets after 5 years unless re-authorized, and all “bans” must be passed by a 75% super-majority at any level to remain in place.
Seriously, this is exactly how we’re losing our freedoms.
Busibody dopes like the lighter-banner.
And the issue really does resonate at a very fundamental level, with Americans.
“It’s a free country, stupid”.