Preventive Destruction of Leafblowers: The Moral Imperative, the Practical Implications

With respect, I believe your reference to a dilemma regarding the destruction of neighorhood leafblowers is more nuanced than perhaps you concluded in your most recent post. Skipping over all of the ethical issues inherent in the necessity for leafblower destruction (Can the leafblowers be brought to a negotiating table? Can they be silenced through sanctions? Are they clearly identifiable as leafblowers, or might they be disguised as other lawn maintenance implements, perhaps weed whackers? Should we target hard-to-capture leafblowers with signature strikes, and if we do how do we address the accidental targeting of say, small industrial-strength fans?) and assume that yes, the leafblower presence does indeed pose a threat to neighborhood peace and security (that Godawful whine! The indiscriminate diaspora of debris!) and must be, as they say in the business, neutralized.

What is ill-defined in your initial query, of course, is the scope of the term 'effective.' Surely one would presume that plastic explosives are more effective at destruction in any case, rather than ball-peen hammers - They're high-yield, highly controllable, generally very precise for explosives. But there is a significant investment in time and expertise in the use of high explosives of any kind, not to mention a technically advanced form like detonator-fired C-4. The explosives must be set properly, and they must be handled by an EOD or some such explosives professional. Perhaps garages around the neighborhood need to be targeted, which has a high probability of leading to collatoral damage to other more civil (one might say civilian) lawn implements, which would in turn certainly damage local public tolerance of our incursion.

Consider instead the use of a ball-peen hammer. A single infiltrant can seek out the offending leafblowers, and with enough knowledge of their anatomy can render them permanently incapacitated, perhaps leaving them in the open for a covert airlift of the bodies out of the affected space. Gas leafblowers, for example, many times have exposed engines and spark plugs that can be efficiently destroyed, quickly and at minimal cost (hammers are a dollar at the hardware store, after all). I believe any safety concerns with placing a pair of hammer-wielding boots on the ground (metonymy? synecdoche?) are minimal, as it is quite impossible for the inanimate leafblowers to defend themselves or organize a resistance or insurgency. Plastic explosives, on the other hand, of course have an inherent danger to life and limb regardless of the level of resistance - another inefficiency.

It cannot be ruled out, however, that complete destruction of the leafblower insurgency is required on-site. In this case, of course, a simple ball-peen hammer would present a significant time investment, as it's pretty hard to pulverize even a hard plastic leafblower casing with just a hammer. Not that I've tried. So, while generally I would choose the hammer route, I grant that there are circumstances that would render it ineffective.