Does anyone else find it a little odd that I'm allowed to purchase all the firearms I want, but nobody's allowed to buy a set of lawn darts? Apparently, the shadowy Consumer Product Safety Commission has banned the sale of lawn darts since Dec. 19th, 1988. Further, the CPSC "urges parents to discard or destroy all lawn darts immediately."
In addition, the CPSC has taken steps to discourage the growth of an illegal black market in lawn darts: "[c]onsumers who find lawn darts still being sold, should contact the Consumer Product Safety Commission on the toll free hotline: 1-800-638-CPSC (2772)."
The underlying reasons for this stringent ban? Lawn darts have been responsible for the deaths of four children. Call me a skeptic, but do four accidental deaths really justify the eradication of an entire lawn sport, given the amount of risk people are willing to assume in other areas of sport?
To recap:
I can buy this:
But I can't buy this:
First they came for the lawn darters, and I said nothing, because I did not play lawn darts.*
*Also I was about seven years old.**
**But still politically active, so I have no real excuse.
4 comments:
I always wanted to take something like this, which I built quite a few of, including homemade ones that burned three engines at once, and fill the top with black powder. If the Russians ever came, I'd throw in some nails, too. This stuff is all legal.
Kind of makes you wonder, what company competed with lawn darts, and what congressman did they know? Bocce manufacturers? Was Duke Cunningham peddling his influence to sellers of croquet sets?
Why blame the legislative branch when you can blame a hypersensitive bureaucracy? I recently saw a British complaint that the Royal Mail had suspended service to several cottages in Wales because they deemed the paths too steep and a potentially lethal hazard for postal workers, despite the fact that no one had ever died from a slip 'n' fall on those paths in living memory.
Once again, my brilliant self-parody goes unappreciated.
But for the record, I'm happy to blame a hypersensitive bureaucracy. I'd be even happier to blame a hypersensitive British bureaucracy. Wankers.
In my defense, you already are a kind of caricature of yourself, so it's hard for me to tell.
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