Clayton Cramer points to what is no doubt a very old western statute in the Idaho Code.
BURGLARY WITH EXPLOSIVES. Any person who with intent to commit crime breaks and enters any building whether inhabited or not, and opens or attempts to open any vault, safe, or other secure place within said building by use of nitroglycerin, dynamite, gunpowder or any other explosive, shall be deemed guilty of burglary with explosives.
Of course, that made me immediately made me think of this:
So if I blow half a housed but my intention was not to break in but I was just being stupid….
It’s been a while since I looked up the laws on explosives in Idaho but that last time I did I concluded the laws could all be distilled down to, “Don’t blow up anyone else or their property.” Which I thought was quite reasonable.
The alternatives to guns, and the implication that alternatives will be used more often when guns are not available, doesn’t come up enough in the gun rights debate. In China, for example, disgruntled a-holes (common to all cultures, sadly) have a habit of blowing up entire apartment buildings in order to kill the people they’re stalking, mad with, etc. In other countries, murder by arson is the cultural norm. Easy access to guns, even by psychotics, is in some ways beneficial since there will always be people willing to murder innocents for bizarre reasons or even no reason at all. And of course, removing guns from the equation, only makes victims more helpless.
Actually, Sebastian, it reminded me of the one Sylvester cartoon where he dies eight times and then hides away in a safe–only to go to Hell when some incompetent bank robbers blow themselves and him up. This says alarming things about both my taste and my maturity level. :)