About 9 children die every year , strangled by mini blinds. 3500 children are killed by guns every year.

Why did we only fix the most unlikely one?

This seemed like such an arbitrary law that I went looking for it and apparently it's a small committee (4 persons*) rule that was poorly substantiated. The rule itself has been shot down by an appeals court in 2023, but the industry obviously had already set plans in motion to change their product line ups.

"On September 13, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals vacated the CPSC’s rule on custom window coverings. The court agreed with WCMA that CPSC failed to provide an opportunity to comment on the underlying incident data, conducted a flawed cost-benefit analysis that ignored the enormous harm that the rule would have caused the multibillion-dollar custom window coverings industry, and selected an arbitrary effective date for the rule. The CPSC acknowledges that the industry will need at least 2 years to develop completely new products. So the six-month effective date would make it impossible for the window covering industry to create proven safe replacement products."

https://suncoastblinds.com/understanding-the-cpsc-rule-on-window-coverings-and-the-appeal/

• I'm not from the USA, so to me it seems very weird that this is how decisions with far reaching consequences are taken. In the eu legislation like this gets putten through the wringer in the eu Commission, probably also voted on by the eu Parliament, and then still given years preparation time and back and forth between industry/lobby groups/government. But instead this was: 4 non elected people take a vote and those 4 see no issue with a 6 month deadline. Wth, what a rugpull this would have been for the industry.

Edit to add: that rule that lost in appeal in 2023, was from November 2022, so maybe it does go in effect in november 2024, since it seems like that timetable was the biggest issue for the industry. Just speculating though, can't look it up atm.

I didn't even realize they were called "mini"blinds until I moved in to my current place and there was some kind of rule that mentioned them. I'd only heard them referred to as "blinds" my entire life up to that point. This implies the existence of larger blinds ~~which I've yet to see~~.

Edit: I've definitely seen them. Apparently my brain is underclocked today.

Also, if you have mini blinds made in the 70s, they're full of lead

Ah yes, miniblinds are the real threat... not school shootings

I don't have kids so can I have other stuff that might be bad for them around my house?

Well to be fair, they are annoying as hell to operate.

I used to think it was "only" toddlers. Tragic stories of 12 year olds dying from the pull cords. Fucking horrible.

Witness the horror replacing it

Natural selection is dead.

I've never understood why they had more than 1 string for a set of blinds, it's not like anybody wants to raise only one corner of it?

My experience has been that stringless blinds are the Landlord Special of window covering, they suck ass and barely raise up if you don't get the individual "blades" perfectly horizontal.

If they're illegal to sell, then Amazon hasn't gotten the memo yet.

I thought it was a myth that kids got tangled up in the cord until my kid did it. Thank God I was standing near by.

That is the only kind I know of. How does the other kind work?

Edit: should have been more specific; the string ones are the ones I know of.

When my cat was a baby she got tangled by the neck in a blinds cord, thankfully I was right there, but it scared the shit out of me. I rent, and still (and everywhere else I've lived) have corded blinds, but the cords are now rolled up and tied to the top so they're out of the way. This kind of regulation is a good thing.