Newsgroups: alt.flame

Criminals! Murderers!

The California Attorney General should look into this!

A recent edition of the San Francisco Chronicle carried an AP 
wire story about a London man who died after being struck by a turnip
in a drive-by vegetable throwing.  A gang in the East End drives about
hurling vegetables at random passers-by.  The victim suffered a broken rib
and ruptured spleen in the attack. Another man sustained stomach injuries
when he was struck by a cabbage.

I was saddened at first, then outraged.  These incidents illustrate
exactly the kind of tragedy that can happen in the absence of effective
vegetable control laws.  Arguments that, "Vegetables don't kill, people do",
simply won't wash anymore. Anyone with children will tell you that kids
know, instinctivley, that vegetables are DEATH. The innocence of the child
is truly Wisdom of the Adult...or something like that... 


Clearly, it is past time to get these deadly weapons out of the
hands, mouths and salad bowls of the general public.  In this task, we
may draw from the pholosophy of the gun-control movement; several of
their most strident objections to gun ownership, adapted to the vegetable   
control movement, are as follows:


1. Turnips have no sporting purpose. Using the same statistical 
methodology used to justify restrictions on "assault rifle" ownership
(distortion, unsubstantiated assertions, outright lies), we see 
that turnips have become the favorite weapon of street gangs and other
criminals.  Turnips are twenty-five times more likely to be used for 
criminal purposes than for any claimed "sporting" purpose.  You don't
hunt ducks with a turnip!

2. Anyone who has ever eaten a turnip knows they have but one
purpose: TO KILL PEOPLE.  Turnips are six times more likely to kill
a friend or a loved one, than they are to be used in self-defense.

3. There is no individual, Constitutional right to own a turnip.
The courts have never struck down a law limiting possession of 
certain vegetables to the police and the military.


These assault vegetables should immediately be BANNED, for the 
good of society. Law enforcement officers throughout the country
report that their traditional coffe and doughnuts are not match 
for such highly sophisticated comestibles.

Realizing that Congress may lack the intestinal fortitude to deal
with the powerful growers' lobby and the fanatical NRA (National
Rutabaga Association), it may not be possible to pass an outright
ban.  Still, certain reasonable restrictions can be implemented
in the interim:

1. Registration of all currently owned assault vegetables. What, 
exactly, this will accomplish is uncertain; we want it anyway.
A mandatory one-year jail term for possesion of an unregistered
assault vegetable.

2. A 15-day waiting period and background check on all potential
purchasers. Currently, anyone with cash in hand may purchase one
or more of these vegetables, with no questions asked.

3. A limitation on magazine capacity.  Currently, commercially           
available magazines (called "crates" or "bushel baskets") holding
twenty or more of these instruments of death and destruction may be
purchased by the general public.  Law-abiding citizens do not need 
more than five turnips at one time.


Our position is not an extreme one, and we are willing to compromise.
Those who lack the intellectual capacity to hate and fear an inanimate
object would still be allowed to posses less lethal vegatables (mashed
potatoes, pureed asparagus) but only at the approved restaurant.

President Bush had promised us a "softer, blander America".
Banning the importation of assault vegetables, and supporting 
Federal legistlation banning their domestic manufacture and sale,
would be an important first step toward keeping that promise.