The venerable New Republic recently published an anti-gun diatribe by Phoebe Maltz Bovy, a young writer living in Toronto. Her essay is provocatively titled “It’s time to ban guns. Yes, all of them.” Not satisfied with just banning guns, we decided to rewrite the opening paragraph of her essay, substituting “airplanes” for guns, “Germanwings Flight 9525” for San Bernardino, and “pilots” for population. Here is our revised paragraph:

Ban airplanes. All airplanes. Get rid of airplanes in airports, and in the air, and, as much as possible, in the air force. Not just because of Germanwings Flight 9525, or whichever air disaster may occur next, but also not not because of those. Don’t sort pilots into those who might do something evil or foolish or self-destructive with an airplane and those who surely will not. As if this could be known—as if it could be assessed without massively violating civil liberties and stigmatizing the mentally ill. Ban airplanes! Not just aviation disasters. Not just certain airplanes. Not just already-technically-illegal drones. All of them.

The logic of our parallel version of Maltz Bovy’s argument  is just as impeccable as hers; our conclusion, however, is just as stupid! (P.S.: This is our 1000th blog post since we started blogging in July 2013.)