Tuesday, November 11, 2008

The Art of Driving

What if I proposed that we hand three sticks of dynamite and a detonator to anyone who asked for them. All an applicant would need is money to pay for the explosives. You’d have to be an idiot to agree with my plan—at least based on the assumptions you picked up in school about human nature and human competence.

And yet gasoline, a spectacularly mischievous explosive, dangerously unstable and with the intriguing characteristic as an assault weapon that it can flow under locked doors and saturate bulletproof clothing, is available to anyone with a container. Five gallons of gasoline have the destructive power of a stick of dynamite.

I've long maintained anyone who can't be trusted with a gun can't be trusted without a custodian, and used a similar rationale.

This explores such concepts more thoroughly, and is really quite good.

[Via Mama Liberty]

2 comments:

Kent McManigal said...

I can see some politician getting an idea from this.

Anonymous said...

Actually, an 8 fluid ounce cup of gasoline, if mixed with the right amount of air, is roughly equivalent to the explosive power of a standard stick of dynamite. Since explosive power increases as a function of the square of the mass (I think it's the square), 5 gallons of gasoline would be 6400 times as powerful as a single stick of dynamite, under the right conditions. And anyone can buy gas. Jeepers, there ought to be a law.