Mayor Bloomberg's NYC smoking ban has already claimed a life. The NY Post reports that:

A bouncer was stabbed to death yesterday in a melee at an East Village nightclub after he asked a patron to put out his cigarette - and his relatives blamed the city's tough new no-smoking law.

While pundits like myself will always claim that 'Cigarettes don't kill people, people kill people', anti-smoking nazis will undoubtedly call for a citywide ban. <sarcasm>Cigarettes, like guns, are just not safe in the hands of law abiding citizens.</sarcasm>

While I never condone violence, and this smoker was clearly in the wrong, the dangers of Bloomberg's anti-smoking law are clear. The law is written so that property owners are the one's punished for their customer's unlawful behavior. That puts property owners and bar managers in the precarious position of enforcing the law. When a policeman enforces a city statute, he has a badge, a gun, and the support of the city's citizens backing him up. When a private citizen is put in the position of having to enforce the law (as is the case in the smoking ban), they just may be putting their life on the line.