Only a limp wristed nanny state would keep mini steel javelins from being sold as a kids toy

Like a bag o' glass the kids just love it!

The fact that they were sold as kids' toys is equally stupid, stupidity is an unlimited resource.

I was over at a park the other day and saw kids practicing javelin in the same park as a little league practice, and everybody seemed just fine. And these spears were going directly towards the baseball diamond. I feel like I was the only person who was the least bit alarmed at this. Anyway I never knew any kids who hurt their friends with Jarts or blew off their fingers with fireworks, just stories of kids that did. That doesn't mean they're fuckups or idiots, but you can make Rainbow Dash into a shank if you want and the Optimus Prime toy I had could be used as a weapon too.. Jarts got a bad rap is all. As for fireworks, ban 'em all, or let everybody buy them. Setting restrictions is dumb and kids who want to play with fire will just find some other things around the house that will go boom like air fresheners. Or let's ban those too. Let's just ban kids.

IZ, are you old?

you're sounding like a republican trying to defend guns..."ban cars first!" etc, etc

Not really, I was on the younger end of average for PoE Red.

I'd support a blanket ban on marketing over a ban on lawn darts.

Also, even though I tend to lean pretty left, blanket characterizations of Republicans is as stupid as blanket characterizations of any demographic.

Hey EH, could you write a few pages on which Pony would make the best shank?

I'm kinda old, 33 to be exact. So the banning of Jarts affected my summer. But the parents came around like the gestapo and rounded up all the Jarts because of one kid in California. It's the same with Fireworks: I don't like 'em myself because I've got animals but they banned the sales of all fireworks in Milwaukee County because one kid went and blew off his hand. I'm not pro gun, I'm just pro fun!

When I was a kid we:
- rode in the back of station wagons and pickup trucks unbelted
- lit off fireworks unhindered
- played Jarts until we lost one in the woods or were too lazy to go shag it
- had rock fights (just as it sounds, throwing rocks at each other, we did finally start wearing baseball catcher equipment)
- used BB guns to shoot at anything that moved (including each other)
- climbed to the tops of trees to down them
- lit fires in "controlled environments"

I grew up in a family that respected my ability to not blow myself up or anything, if I'd lived in New Hampshire I'd have probably been a serious fireworks-making hobbyist by high school but as it was I could only really get away with using wooden match heads, ground up sparklers and whatever I could salvage from the unused stuff drunk people lost on the beach every 4th of July for me to find on the 5th.

Point is, I was playing with matches and sometimes black powder from maybe 8 to 11 years old without supervision (once they new they could trust my judgement) and I never once got so much as a burn PRECISELY BECAUSE I was raised to have common sense and trusted to act responsibly about it.

Companies shouldn't be allowed to market lawn darts directly to kids but kids also shouldn't be so sheltered from risk that they grow up to be irresponsible adults, and worse yet, are the sort of teenagers who do stupid shit that endangers others to rebel against their parents. If you appropriately respect a kid's autonomy and intelligence without being some kind of neglectful "kids are just little adults and can do whatever they want maaaan" hippie - then being an idiot isn't a very rebellious move anymore.

Anyhow, I partially recant since I checked the actual wording of the law and it only bans them from sale not possession, which means it is only a half stupid law (it should have banned them from being sold or marketed TO MINORS - there's no sane reason why an adult can legally buy an air rifle or a crossbow pistol but not lawn darts).

Look at this, a store that has an entire section specifically for YOUTH crossbow pistols:
http://www.thecrossbowstore.com/Youth-Pistol-Hunting-Crossbows -s/70.htm

I did things in my childhood that are so ridiculously dangerous you wouldn't believe me.

None of it as dangerous as diabetes.

Wolves are still better parents.

blah, blah, blah, I was responsible, blah, blah, blah, ill be a good parent.

and then the irresponsible little satanic spawn of some idiots throws a lawn dart through your responsible kids skull.


Like the comedian said, we all have to be restrained by the standards of the stupidest people in our society.

A) I wouldn't be a good parent because I'm too self absorbed.

B) We don't REALLY have to be restrained by the standards of the stupidest people in our society. That, much like privacy, is a pretty recent experiment and the jury is still out on whether it's going to work or not.

Anyhow, the kids who never did stuff like this as kids grew up to be like the doofuses in a band I was in a while back who did shit like getting drunk and shooting each other with high powered air rifles at short range to "see how it felt.*" Sure they had PhD's but they didn't know any better than to not shoot guns at each other, or a their refrigerator (which was always fun and something I participated in happily since it was somebody else's house).



*Having seen the aftermath, I assume it felt like having a copper clad lead BB penetrate over a quarter inch into the tissue above your shoulder blade because that's what happened. The summer that half my band got free air rifles was a pretty great summer.

I enjoyed lawn darts because it was something the adults played and I was always looking for things that would grant me access to early adulthood. Little did I know that the adults played it because it was inoffensive and required no athletic ability whatsoever.

We just switched to horseshoes.

Horseshoes were illegal before lawn darts but I think that was just a state law.

Look at his recent videos.

You kids were hardcore, we mostly played wallball with those rubber balls that are like a tennis ball but solid all the way through. Plenty to leave a welt but not enough to do permanent damage, except maybe to the nards.

Yea, that's pretty raw takewithfood. For the record, I'm old enough to have played with lawn darts, and they are damn dangerous.

I should clarify that I never played with those kids.

I used to shoot sharp range arrows out of my weak but not THAT week fiberglass bow and arrow as a kid, nobody ever got hurt. Then I got in to 1st grade and the teacher wouldn't even let me keep the broken half-arrows I found in the woods next to the playground during recess. My first inkling of what adulthood was like: people dumber than you are in charge and treat you as if you were dumber than them.

I never had jarts or horseshoes as a kid because my parents thought they were too dangerous, and they were right.

Fireworks were OK though, when we could get them.

When he was a kid my father and uncles would make homemade pistols out of pipes that you would load with a firecracker and a marble and shoot at each other. It's a miracle he lived to high school.

Fourth of July used to be that great time we'd have roman candle fights and then go surfing on the tops of moving cars. Assholes liked to drive me right into the tree branches.

I have been thrown from the beds of a few trucks.