There was also a quickly deleted response accusing me of ”pathological empathy that would abandon any principled position if it offered an immediate salve” to my “emotional panic”.
I believe this reveals more about the character and expectations of the commenter than anything else. To their credit, they deleted it.
Rational discourse about touchy subjects appears to be largely impossible. I expected better from HN. It doesn‘t follow that because you apparently hold an absolutist stance regarding what you consider freedom to be, that I am on the opposite end of this absolutism.
Society should not bear the cost or responsibility for parenting other people’s children and preventing all possible accidents, much less willful self-harm.
The possibility of bad things happening is the cost of having a healthy, responsible, capable society of well-adjusted adults.
Next you’ll be advocating for age checks on kitchen knife purchases out of an irrational fear of “knife crime”: https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives
Don’t worry, though, Scotland is a little more relaxed: “In Scotland, you’re allowed to sell 16 and 17 year olds cutlery and kitchen knives.”
I moved out at sixteen and bought my first kitchen knife set. That’d be illegal now in the UK.
That’s where your emotionally-driven policies lead. No thanks.