Ban Everything

Should you have a particular pet-peeve, some habit or hallmark of our society and its participants, and you wish to enact legislation to correct this behavior, you have only one thing to do: declare its necessity in saving innocent lives.  A political tactic peculiar to no party or platform, it is exploited by all parties and ideological proponents.  

In order to save lives we should: end abortions, ban all personal handguns, ban happy meals, ban salt, ban cigarettes, ban coffee, put breathalysers in every vehicle, grope people at the airport, make it illegal to bicycle without a helmet, hold up traffic for miles because apparently American children cannot look both ways before crossing the street, arrest people for selling unpasteurized milk and cheese, arrest unlicensed barbers, stop children from selling lemonade and cookies in their neighborhoods, ban alcohol, ban unlicensed flower arranging, ban cellphones in your car, the list is already absurd and it goes on almost indefinitely. 

My own biases are probably apparent but I guarantee that everyone who reads that list (however few readers that might be, and thank ya’ll for that, by the way) will find at least one thing that they will disagree with and a couple that you think I made up.  I wish.  Still, I know that a few people will stop and say, “Wait, flower arranging?”  Look it up, I did and still can’t understand how Louisiana is safer with its flower-arranging licensing law.  Everything mentioned above has been done or at least openly debated in some governing body somewhere, be it a city, county, state, federal agency or the Congress.   

Let me play the part which I will inevitably be labeled as anyway, the unfeeling bastard.  I do not care if your loved one was killed with a legally-purchased handgun.  I do not care if someone driving and speaking on their cell crashed into your relative.  I do not care if your kid got a serious head injury from bicycling without a helmet.  I don’t care if you have diabetes, are allergic to peanuts, scared of flying, are addicted to smack, have a drinking problem, have high blood pressure, or got sick from eating the cookies the kids in the neighborhood are selling.  I DO NOT CARE.

Know why?  The simple fact is that I did not do any of those things to you.  I do in fact feel bad when tragedy falls on a family.  It is senseless and possibly avoidable.  But, and this is the important part, the rights we have in this society are more important than your life, or your children’s lives.  Period.  It is immoral and selfish for society to revolve around you.  Should the idiot who ran the red light while talking on his cellphone be punished?  Absolutely.  You do not have the moral right, however, to convict me of something I might do.  Yes, I talk on the phone while I’m driving sometimes.  So do the vast majority of people who own cell phones.  The number of accidents among that population of phone-drivers yields an unbelievably low percentage.  To tell me that I can’t do something which is statistically unlikely to result in an accident, like drive and talk on the phone, is at best arrogance, and at worst dangerous megalomania.  

Let’s take the bicycle helmet example.  Many communities around the country are considering mandating the use of a helmet while riding a bike.  According to the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute around seven hundred people a year die in bicycle accidents.  Seven hundred.  Out of an estimated twenty million bicycle riders.  Seven hundred from just ten million is .00007 percent.  This is not a problem and there is no need for legislation.  

When you make it illegal for me to ride a bicycle without a helmet, you are taking away my choice and turning me into a criminal.  When non-crimes are made into crimes, the result is more criminals.  If I want to endanger my own life by not wearing a bike helmet, not wearing a safety belt in my car, smoking, eating fatty foods, drinking unpasteurized milk, drinking whiskey by the gallon, or any number of other activities, it my right to do so.  The difficult task of any free society is to strike a balance between guarding lives and guarding liberties. We as a nation are failing at this task and doing little more than turning ordinary people into criminals by passing unnecessary and immoral legislation.