Governments don’t take away your freedom all at once, they do it bit by bit. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:
The government requires that all kids – almost teenagers – be tied down like furniture every time they are transported in a car. This wasn’t always the case.
Why has it become the case?
Answering that question requires asking the question: What business is it of the government – of other people with various titles – to decree such things? Do these other people own your children? Do they own you? They are implicitly asserting at least partial parental oversight authority.
Where did they get this authority?
Did you, the parent, give it to them? If you did not, how is it that these other people have come to wield it over you?
It is said – by some – that it is “unsafe” for kids to be in cars without being in saaaaaaafety seats. And yet hundreds of millions of them – almost everyone who achieved adulthood before the early 1990s, before the government mandated child (almost teenager) ssssssssaaaaaaaafety seats for all – grew up not being strapped into them without suffering any injury at all.
Some did, of course. Some also tripped and fell. Others fell harder. Some drowned. A few also died from various things, some of them possibly avoidable.
So there is a degree of risk. As with everything in life. We all face risk every day, to varying degrees. That is not at issue. What is at issue is who gets to decide which risks – and to what degree – are acceptable.
