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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, February 17, 1992                   TAG: 9202170229
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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OUTLAW AIRPLANES BECAUSE OF CRASHES?

AN AIRPLANE has committed another mass murder! First, children are killed in their schoolyard by falling airplanes, and now this (Feb. 6 crash in Evansville, Ind.)!

It is clear that all planes should be outlawed. They are inherently dangerous machines of death and destruction.

Besides, many airplanes are used in criminal activities such as drug smuggling, and the vast majority of Americans in a recent poll favor a ban on airplanes. Only a small, undesirable class of people own and use airplanes anyway.

Sounds entirely foolish, doesn't it? Yet this is the exact argument that the anti-gun crowd would spout if a gun had been used in these tragedies. They twist facts and outright lie to blame a machine with no intelligence of its own for all sorts of things.

I have absolutely no use for airplanes, just as some people have no use for firearms. Yet I don't try to force legislation that would affect fliers' rights. Aircraft have the potential to kill hundreds of innocent people at a time. The claim that our founding fathers never foresaw "assault weapons" when writing the Constitution must surely also apply to airplanes.

Let us all pray for the families of those lost. REGAN C. UNDERWOOD PILOT

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