The Silent Killer

You can't smell it. It builds up in your home and in the surrounding environment over a period of time, and you scarcely know its there until it's devastating effects are manifest. I think everyone should be required to have an RG detector in their homes. Much more deadly than carbon monoxide, Reckless Government gets into every facet of our lives until it's nearly impossible to get rid of.

Certain laws certainly make a lot of people feel good. But think about what it takes to enforce them?

Legislators go to Salt Lake or Washington with the premise that the more legislation they pass, they better they are as legislators. We have so many laws that it is impossible to know whether we are breaking most of them, and nearly as impossible to enforce them. I think we would be better off hiring legislators who tried to take more laws off they books than they passed.

Even city government gets into the law-enactment frenzy. By requiring every home to have a carbon monoxide detector, Ogden, Utah is the latest to overreact by passing another law. Its fire chief lists as a good reason to pass such a law the fact that the Jones's back east have such laws, so let's keep up with them!

Fire Chief Mike Mathieu said the ordinance is the first of its kind in the state. Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts require the detectors, but the mandate is new in the West, he said.

I don't mean to make light of a recent death in Ogden due to Carbon Monoxide poisoning, nor of the several near-deaths that occurred as police went to investigate.

But there are better ways to solve this problem, rather than giving government the authority to go into every home and make sure the home has a working CO detector. They're pretty expensive, but portable carbon monoxide detectors would do just the trick. For about $400 a police unit could have an much easier and less invasive way to detect the problem that kills over 500 Americans per year.

Am I in favor of CO detectors? Yes. We have one in our home. I think everyone would be wise to have one, and to have it checked regularly to see that it functions correctly. I just don't think that government, no matter how passionate we are about protecting life, should require that every home have one.

Carbon monoxide has been labeled "the silent killer". But the bigger killer is reckless government. It might take longer, but reckless government is much more difficult to detect
in the air. I think we should pass a law to require everyone to have a Reckless Government (RG) detector in their homes.

I don't really think we should force people to have an RG detector in their homes, either, even though they philosophically exist. But I have one of those in my home, as well.