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From: donn@sdchema.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.auto,net.flame
Subject: Penis Substitutes
Message-ID: <594@sdchema.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 12-Jun-83 04:56:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdchema.594
Posted: Sun Jun 12 04:56:42 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 12-Jun-83 17:58:57 EDT
Lines: 113

Reference: tekid.1258

>From the LA Times Business Section (6/10/83, Pt. IV, p. 1):

FIRM ROCKED BY THE DEATH OF ITS PRESIDENT

by Ellen Farley, Times Staff Writer

     Eagle Computer Inc., a fast-rising maker of small desk-top computers,
began picking up the pieces Thursday following the death of company
president Dennis Barnhart on Wednesday -- only hours after Eagle, based in
Los Gatos, made its first public stock offering.

     Hours after Barnhart, 40, had become a multimillionaire from the stock
sale, he was killed when his red Ferrari sports car crashed through 20 feet
of guardrail and landed at the bottom of a ravine, just blocks away from
Eagle's headquarters.  A passenger, Sheldon Caughey, president of a San
Rafael yacht company, was seriously injured and was in stable condition
late Thursday.

     A fire district spokesman quoted witnesses as saying that the car had
been traveling at high speed...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

To admit my biases up front, I hate speeders.  A speeder in a Volkswagen
bus couldn't stop in time and as a result my youngest brother had to have
an operation to remove a spike of bone from his skull that was driven into
his brain when he got run over.  I was there; I still vividly remember the
screech of tires, the careening skid, the impact, the little body bouncing
off the bumper, bouncing off the asphalt, coming to rest in a blood-
spattered heap.  It would be ridiculous for me to maintain that this hasn't
affected my outlook on cars and driving and speed laws.  All I can say is,
if it happened to everyone else's little brother then perhaps we would all
be less reckless drivers.

The problem is, cars are not just a form of transportation.  Cars are also
lethal weapons; they kill more people every year than guns do.  Unfor-
tunately the gun nuts have made this statistic sound silly: "Cars kill more
people than guns do; should we then ban cars to save people's lives?"

The reason why this is not silly is that cars have exactly the same prob-
lems that guns do.  I'm sure that the majority of people who have been
writing in that own radar detectors and drive at 85 when the cops are nap-
ping are responsible, even careful drivers; many of them sound rational and
educated and adult about their driving behavior.  The same can be said for
the shooting behavior of many NRA members, those articulate, educated,
wealthy people for whom guns are essential to recreation and defense of the
home and are trained experts in using them.

Alas, these fine people are not in the driving or shooting majority.  This
is not to imply that the remaining people are all violating the law with
malicious enthusiasm.  Most gun deaths are not due to habitual criminals,
just as most car accidents are not due to chronic, flagrant speeders.  In
fact criminals and flagrant speeders tend to be in the 'responsible' class
for the simple reason that they have to learn to be good with guns and cars
because of the way they use them.

The problem is that many otherwise respectable citizens do not have an
appreciation for the skill that is necessary to handle dangerous
instruments like cars and guns.  Worse, they often don't realize when their
own responsibility is diminished, by passion in the case of guns and by
alcohol or sleepiness in the case of cars.  (Although passion no doubt
plays a role with cars, too: if you have a brand new Ferrari and you feel
like a million dollars, by George nothing is going to stop you from going
out on the road and taking it through its paces.  The fact that you are not
a race car professional is not going to stop you if have the money to buy a
Ferrari.)

Such negligence is 'understandable', but I don't think that makes it excus-
able.  I don't find murder and manslaughter excusable, do you?

The obvious thing for me to do here is to say that cars and guns should be
restricted to those people who can responsibly use them.  Unfortunately
this argument is not well accepted, for what I consider to be both good and
bad reasons.  The bad reason is one that is used by gun nuts: laws that
restrict gun ownership are never perfect and one way or another they must
deprive some responsible people of their rights to own guns.  The implica-
tion is that these rights must override those of the people who are blown
away by irresponsible people who get guns when the laws are too liberal.  I
just don't agree with this.  My lack of sympathy stems from those situa-
tions you read about in the newspaper, where an avid hunting father has a
gun in his dresser drawer to protect against burglars, but the gun is not
protected against his child, who uses it on a friend not realizing that it
is not a toy like the ones on TV.  This same man may be very careful out in
the hills hunting for duck or rabbits or squirrels, and will be a steady
voter against gun control laws that might protect him from himself.  Simi-
larly a man with a fancy sports car might be very careful with it on the
road even when breaking the speed laws, but when his teen-age son and three
friends take it for a joy-ride and run off a curve in a flaming wreck that
kills all of them, whose responsibility is it?  (This in fact is how four
classmates of another brother of mine met their unnatural end shortly
before they were due to graduate from high school.) The problem as I see it
is that laws restricting the use of cars and guns to "experts" won't work
because they will always let some irresponsible people through.

In this case I think responsible people will just have to suffer with laws
that assume that EVERYONE is potentially irresponsible, especially with
cars and guns, which are so easy to misuse.  Yes, this means letting some
people spoil it for everyone, but who said life was simple?  Yes, this
means that there will be irresponsible people who break the law, but isn't
this what the law is for, to have a way to catch irresponsible people?

I will continue to drive 55 and vote for 55.  As for the people behind you
who honk when you stop at a stop sign instead of giving it the old Califor-
nia rolling stop, or those who honk when you leave more than one car length
in front of you in heavy traffic at 55 on the Santa Monica Freeway, or
those who honk when you don't enter an intersection as the light turns yel-
low, let them honk; don't change the laws for them.

Flame, flame, flame...

Donn Seeley  UCSD Chemistry Dept. RRCF  ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn