Ban the Buses, Ban the Boats

by Robert Ellis
[email protected]

Special to TLE

           What do we want? NO MORE BOATS! What do we want? NO MORE BOATS! You would think the protestors would be holding hands and circling the lake chanting that mantra loudly enough for an outraged nation to hear their lament. After all, thirteen people were killed when their floating tourist trap sank in Hot Springs, Arkansas last Spring. Except for the two deranged killers themselves, that is the same number of people who died at Columbine high school, in Littleton, Colorado last April. Sue the boat manufacturer! Sue the Coast Cuard that had certified it as seaworthy! Sue the technicians who had just finished working on it two days before it sank. Sue the salesman who provided it to the operator! Sue the operator if all else fails. Sue the owner of the lake. There must be someone to blame. BAN THE BOAT! Isn't this the reaction when a firearm is instrumental in someone's death?
           And what about the KILLER BUS? Seven innocent girls on a church field trip killed in New Mexico, when the driver lost control after the bus was struck by a runaway camper trailer which had been attached with a fifth-wheel device to an oversized pick-up truck. Pick-up trucks themselves are inherently dangerous. Sue the manufacturer of the truck! Sue the maker of the fifth-wheel attachment. Sue the maker of the bus! And the church! And the people responsible for luring these children into such a dangerous situation.
           And while you're at it punish the parents for failure to recognize the danger potentail, and then for willingly putting their children at risk. A few years in jail and placement of their other children in safe foster homes should cure them of ever doing that again. Sue the highway engineers. You would think that as we have been witness to the carnage on our nation's highways for the last eighty years, that buses, trucks, especially trucks pulling campers which everyone knows are likely to break away from the towing vehicles are inherently dangerous, would have been banned in the interests of public safety decades ago.
           Yes, I know, people use campers and boats for recreation. Trucks, too. We can't take all those things away from so many people just because a few innocent people got killed. The notion of banning campers, trucks and boats is really no less absurd than the notion of banning firearms. Think about that for a while, and try to follow the logic the next time some senator or president tells you it's time to get rid of the guns.

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