The claim is Massachusetts law effectively banned carry of firearms. Boston adopted a fire safety ordinance that prohibited storing loaded cannon in your home, barns, outbuildings or carrying loaded firearms into buildings. Fire would set off a musket, kill a firefighter obviously. Pretty clearly there were enough people carrying loaded firearms to make this necessary. I need a modern analogy less silly than, "Do not leave the plutonium pit in your fission bomb in town."
Don't leave your loaded service issued 9mm in the public men's room of the Capitol's Visiting Center!
ReplyDeleteNot very trite, but compare it to "no smoking" signs at gas stations. There was a time when smoking was very common and the idea that gas fumes might be ignited by a cigarette in a smoker's mouth. Or:
ReplyDelete"Carbon monoxide danger: do not use charcoal grill indoors."
No gasoline, propane tanks, or fireworks allowed indoors?
ReplyDeleteArguably a gallon of gasoline or cylinder of propane is much more hazardous than most firearms because they send to ‘go off’ in all directions and the fumes can find their own way to an ignition source.
Modern firearms are certainly safer to handle than fireworks thanks to mechanical reliability and the stability of modern cartridges. Might be a tossup if you were talking about most black powder muzzle stuffers.
Do not leave a bath tub in your home. Babies drown in them.
ReplyDeleteToo silly?
Or maybe the many other things related to the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide.
At many stores that deal in propane cylinders, there are prominent signs stating "do not bring empty propane cyclinders into the store".
ReplyDeleteStore employees are typically happy to do a sale of a filled propane cylinder, and accept an empty cylinder for partial credit. But all handling of full and empty cylinders happens outside the store.
These signs are not attempts to ban any handling of propane cylinders on the premises.
The signs are part of a set of rules intended to keep people from bringing potentially-non-empty, potentially-leaky propane cylinders inside a building.