To the editor:

Monday’s Journal-World “Capitol Report” carried comments by state Sens. Chris Steineger of Kansas City and Mark Buhler of Lawrence that had logical errors. At issue were the restrictive covenants on wood shingles. Sen. Steineger favors a bill allowing homeowners to break these covenants because wood roofs are a fire hazard. Sen. Buhler asked Sen. Steineger if he would favor prohibiting cars because they are unsafe and make everyone ride a bicycle. Sen. Steineger responded that this sounded to him “like some idea that would come out of the city of Lawrence.”

To compare unsafe roofs to safe roofs and unsafe cars to bicycles is the fallacy of faulty analogy. I would suggest to Sen. Buhler that his argument would be correct if he compared unsafe cars to safe cars. He made his argument ridiculous by suggesting something not relevant to that argument.

To suggest that the one of the representatives of the city of Lawrence represents all ideas in Lawrence, as does Sen. Steineger, is the fallacy of stereotyping. It does not follow that one illogical idea from one representative makes Lawrence residents guilty of reasoning errors.

Your constituents deserve better of you than this.

Stewart Nowlin,

Lawrence