I love the speed and heat of gas but I will never have such an
appliance in my house, except the gas furnace. An open flame is too
risky in a frame built house. The possibility of a gas leak is also
dangerous - a house destroying explosion or gas poisoning.

I know what you mean. Every night I come home and there's another
neighbor of mine whose house blew up.


I know I
may be unecessarily alarmist. But on two occassions I did leave my
2000 watt range element at max for the hours when I was not at home.
A similar mistake like that with a gas range would have left me with
no home to come home to.

Why not? There would be an open flame, no hotter than your electric
range.

When I was in an apt, I had an electric range that I had a tea kettle
on. The damn whistle on the kettle didn't work, and I completely
forgot about it. About 20 minutes later I smelled something burning.
The electric range MELTED a hole in the bottom of the kettle. It was
pretty thick aluminum.

No way the gas range could have melted the aluminum.