(1) If hundreds of children every year were killed by falling out of windows, could we all agree that wanting to make windows safer had nothing to do with being anti-window or wanting to take people’s windows away?
(2) If the greatest threat to children’s safety in school were the possibility of angry rhinoceroses stampeding through the hallways, would we think to solve the problem by stationing an angry rhinoceros in every classroom?
(3) If 30,000 people a year were killed by snake bites, would it make sense to forbid public health organizations from studying snakes as a public health issue?
(4) If we knew that normal laundry detergent could be turned into a hand grenade by the addition of chemical called “killdust,” whose only known purpose was to turn detergent into hand grenades, would we make it illegal to manufacture and sell killdust?
(5) Would the Constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom give a Church the right to require young children to handle dangerous snakes to prove their worthiness to be baptized?
(6) If a country with more pomegranates than all other countries in the world combined also had an exponentially higher rate of death by choking on pomegranate seeds, would we see a connection?
(7) If somebody stole a tank from a National Guard unit and leveled their high school with tank-gun fire, would we say that anyone who wants to level their high school will find a way to do it, so there is really no point in locking up tanks?
(8) If thousands of people a year were killed by forklift drivers who didn’t know how to operate a forklift would we institute regulation requiring training and licensing to drive a forklift?
(9) If we regularly experienced mass murders by people who bought large amounts of play-dough and dumped it on schools, smothering everybody inside, would it make sense to limit play-dough purchases and track anyone who bought large amounts?
(10) If children who had survived a smallpox epidemic in their town came forward to argue for smallpox vaccinations, would politicians and journalists criticize them as “paid actors,” “naïve children,” or“pawns of the vaccination movement”?
