Come on, Baby...

Maine bans sales of novelty lighters
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/national/northeast/view.bg?articleid=1082583

AUGUSTA, Maine - While in a small southern Maine grocery store with his mother last June 12 to buy sandwiches, Shane St. Pierre picked up a miniature baseball bat and flicked the switch to see what would happen.

A flame shot out, singeing the 6-year-old’s eyebrow and burning part of his face. His parents called the state fire marshal’s office and were surprised to learn that Maine had no law banning so-called novelty lighters.

That’s no longer the case.

Thank God! It’s nice to know that the Maine legislature is protecting the children of inattentive parents who call the fire marshal instead of a fucking doctor.

[Gov. John] Baldacci said…more than 5,000 household fires are caused each year by children under 5, and "anything we can do to prevent children from playing with lighters will serve to save lives and homes."

The list I found from the National Fire Prevention Association listed 8,200 annual house fires caused by “Playing with heat source.” That’s #9 on a list of the top ten causes, by the way. Forget lighters, let’s ban cooking (#1) and heating our homes (#2). That’s 180,000 fires we could prevent annually, saving $902,000,000 worth of property.

Novelty lighters without child-resistant devices are banned in European Union countries, and several American states have considered similar bans. They include Arkansas, where two children died in a fire last year blamed on a lighter shaped like a tiny motorcycle.

Really? Blamed on the lighter? Not any “responsible” adults? I did some digging on this story. Here are a couple of relevant quotes:

Though the smoke alarm had been disconnected, the toddlers' mother and four-year-old brother, Preston, were able to escape the fire, which started in a back bedroom.

If we’re going to blame inanimate objects for this, let’s blame the disconnected smoke alarm.

Friend and neighbor Amber Counts says she alerted officials Tuesday night, when four-year-old Preston told her he had been playing with a “toy motorcycle.” "I said, 'Oh, what motorcycle was it?' And he said, the one that had fire come out the end.

So either she didn’t tell the boys’ mother that her kids were playing with the lighter, or she did, and the mother did nothing. How, exactly, is this the lighter’s fault?

The Lighter Association, a national trade group, supports laws to ban novelty lighters. But a California-based distributor of the lighters, John Gibson, said in many cases the novelty lighters are safer than regular ones and that complaints stem from "overzealous fire marshals."

Well, I seriously doubt that’s the case here in Livermore, Maine, John.

When Shane St. Pierre was burned in Livermore, Maine, he mistook the baseball-bat lighter for a flashlight, said his father, Norm St. Pierre, fire chief in West Paris.

Or maybe it is. So this kid’s dad – the fire chief - never explained the dangers of playing with fire to his own son? Thanks a lot, Norm. Thanks for depriving collectors of their hobby, and manufacturers and retailers of the income, all because you, your wife, or your son is an idiot. Thanks for running to the Governor instead of admitting that maybe you shouldn’t be a parent. Is anyone surprised that the Governor is a Democrat? Ironically, he describes himself as “pro-choice”, unless you choose to sell novelty lighters, that is.

Let’s just stop this slow erosion of personal responsibility, huh? Let’s go for broke and just outlaw the whole fucking concept. Let’s not just absolve people of it, let’s criminalize it! That way, the Socialists in our Government will have every self-justification they need to completely control our lives. I imagine that the right Minister of Propaganda could put the perfect spin on it.

“Don’t think for yourself. Follow the crowd.”
“Relax! We’ll handle it. Just give us your money.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“It’s for your own good.”
“Think of the children.”

Any of this sounding familiar?