There has been a bit of traffic on the net about banning gas stoves. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the bans until I retired, came home, and started a bunch of retirement careers. As I started on building a new house, I encountered the bans. My toilets are all 1.6 gallon flushers – but that’s an old change. My showers are low water use. The dishwasher – a poor, fragile beast, is designed to run for long periods and minimize water use. My gas cans have been modified to spill more as they protect the environment from evaporating fuel. Some states and provinces are setting deadlines for the last internal combustion engines in automobiles.
I don’t mind having safe products. I don’t particularly mind being protected. I do mind it when half-wits are making my decisions for me. Unfortunately, there are a lot of half-wits who want to limit what other people can do.
Let’s talk about groundwater – Dickey Lake’s water surface is shown at 3,111 feet above sea level. I’m living at about 3,180 feet, a little over a mile away. Amazingly enough, the water level in our drilled wells is somewhere around 70 feet deep when they aren’t being pumped. I’ve taken a couple of courses in hydrology – and that doesn’t make me an expert. Still, I think my evaluation of the water supply, depth and my needs is probably better than the political decisions of urban dwelling bureaucrats and politicians. Perhaps it’s just an ego thing.
I have neighbors who live off-grid. That propane stove qualifies as a near-necessity to them. I suspect that none of the gas stove banners live off-grid. Propane stoves, water heaters and clothes dryers are part of bringing life off-grid close to living on the grid.
The fifth circuit overturned the ban on bumpstocks – so they’re not legal in my neighborhood, but they’re legal again in Texas. Even if they get back to being legal in my neighborhood, they’re not a problem to me as long as I’m not buying the ammunition. I watch the pistol brace laws with fascination – what the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (sounds like a C-store in a tough neighborhood, no?) declared as a pistol brace in 2012 is now a stock for a short-barreled rifle. I anticipate the Supreme Court will get rid of a bit more ambiguity.
“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
Robert Heinlein
Trego's Mountain Ear 