Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 14:54:24 -0500
To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
Subject: "You'll shoot your eye out!"
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< http://opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=95001535 >

Wall Street Journal Opinion
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
You'll Shoot Your Eye Out!
A federal agency takes aim at BB guns.
Friday, November 30, 2001 12:01 a.m.
"You'll shoot your eye out!"

As anyone who has ever watched "A Christmas Story" knows, that's the 
rebuke little Ralphie Parker meets at every turn when he asks for 
what every red-blooded American boy wants under his Christmas tree: a 
genuine Red Ryder Carbine Action Two-Hundred Shot Lightning Loader 
Range Model Air Rifle. Even the department-store Santa tells him that.

In the movie, of course, Ralphie eventually gets his gun. But in real 
life stories don't always have such happy endings. Especially if the 
Grinches at the Consumer Product Safety Commission have their way.

Recently the commission filed a lawsuit against Daisy Manufacturing 
Co. (the maker of the Red Ryder) that seeks to force Daisy to recall 
two of its popular BB-gun models, for no other reason than that they 
are . . . BB guns.

Even Santa must be scratching his head. Daisy has been selling one of 
the models for nearly 30 years and the other since 1984; in total 7.5 
million would be up for recall. Daisy, moreover, has already passed 
six CPSC reviews since 1981. Strangest yet, the "defect" the 
commission now claims to have found in the Daisy rifles is actually 
common to the entire air-gun industry.

Ah yes, but this isn't about safety; it's about politics. Former 
Commission Chairman Ann Brown needed one last hurrah before she 
resigned this month, and what better target than air-guns? They've 
been on the "naughty" list of zero-tolerance types for 
years--gender-neutral, antiviolence folks don't want little boys 
playing with toy soldiers, much less real hardware. And a victory 
over Daisy (which, along with other BB-gun makers, has a spotless 
record of self-regulation) would mean control over the whole market, 
100 million BB guns strong. Even if the lawsuit fails, the commission 
might be able to scare retailers into dropping the products for fear 
of liability.

BB guns, as everyone who has used one knows, are operated by dumping 
BBs into a gravity-feed magazine. Ms. Brown and her fellow Scrooges 
are claiming that BBs might get stuck in the Daisy, causing kids to 
think their gun was unloaded and thus to handle it unsafely.

That's a pretty big "might." Commissioner Mary Sheila Gall, the one 
voice of dissent in the suit, revealed that the commission hadn't 
even been able to replicate the "defect" in any of its (many) 
attempts. She noted that the gravity-feed mechanism has been around 
for 100 years and is common to most BB guns. More to the point, the 
"might" also ignores the most important safety device of all: parents 
who make sure that their kids know never to point a gun at another 
person, whether they think it is loaded or not. No amount of 
commission recalls or lawsuits will ever replace good old-fashioned 
common sense.

And so we have a suggestion for Santa. This Christmas Eve, as he 
delivers Daisy BB guns to expectant children all across America, he 
might bring along an extra load of coal. And he might just drop it 
down a certain Washington chimney--observing all the proper safety 
procedures, of course.

Copyright © 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.


Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
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