How many of you carry a gun as part of your cycling equipment?

Hazmat

as the kids say, word

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Can I put a turbo on my bike?

portrider

THANK YOU!

cheapie

hahaha...i'm a pacifist non-gun-owning christian and i'm defending the right to bear arms.

SpearSlinger1

Wrong. The anti-gun crowd in the U.S. has proven time and time again that legal restrictions on firearms do nothing to reduce crime. If a criminal cared about obeying the law, it wouldn't be a criminal. The assault weapons ban that recently expired and the President wouldn't renew, for good reason, did nothing to reduce crime. Why didn't it work? Because it was simply another assinine measure to hamper those of us who want to stay legal. The weapons that the restrictions targeted are very rarely used by the criminal element of our society.

I plan on retiring next year and having traveled a lot of the industrialized world, and some that isn't, I can settle just about anywhere I want, but plan on returning to the U.S. Why? Because of the freedom and quality of life that can be found nowhere else on this planet.

jitteringjr

You are missing Joe’s point.

As long as we are imagining things... Yes, I can imagine it being different. They could have used fertilizer and fuel oil and blown the entire school up instead of just killing a few people. Remember a guy named Timothy McVeigh? OK city bombing? 168 dead? Seems to me that a bomb using regular old stuff is much more effective as a killing mechanism than any gun. Why don't we outlaw fertilizer and fuel oil instead of guns?

The point here is that even if any gun control law were to be 100% effective, it would not eliminate the criminal behavior. Furthermore, we know from past and present situations, (i.e. Prohibition and our current illegal drug control situation) that these restrictions do not prevent the targeted activity and thus do not work.

I wish all of the liberals would shut up about gun control and actually learn from history instead of trying to blindly repeat it from every possible angle.

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malcomm

Don't you ever stop and wonder why other countires seem to have avoided the problems you live with?

Fat Hack

I'd still rather the whackos trying to make bombs with fertilizer than running around with automatic assault riffles, or whatever you call them. The whackos have less chance of constructing a fully functioning weapon of serious destruction if they are trying to put a bomb together. I'm sure plenty of them would blow themselves up along the way. The McVeigh incident is not a regularly occuring scenario, is it? With a gun, you're buying the "bomb" ready to go. And please don't give me the "most wacko mass murderers have a 220 IQ" -- it's a generalization.

Look, I'm not in the USA, so there goes half the weight of anything I have to say on this topic, I hear you say.

I'm not an intellectual, I don't have great debating skills, and I'm not a "full book" on this issue, so I'm not equiped to have a long running argument, I was just very surprised to here anyone still trying the "people kill people, not guns" argument -- I thought that this was dead and buried. People do kill people, but if these people can only get hold of a boxcutter, they will not be able to do as much damage. Like I said in an earlier post, if it's the man and not the weapon, why don't we still fight wars with bows and arrows? These weapons continue to progress because they are MUCH, MUCH, MUCH, MUCH more effective at killing.

Frankly, I think it's too late for the USA; there's just too many guns, so any talk of gun control is pretty much pointless. So, there's no hope.
How the hell can anyone expect to control the movment of 80 million guns?

portrider

"The whackos have less chance of constructing a fully functioning weapon of serious destruction if they are trying to put a bomb together." ??? ---A bomb isn't a weapon of serious destruction???

"The McVeigh incident is not a regularly occuring scenario, is it?" The bombing, which you refer to so lightly as "The McVeigh incident" KILLED how many inocent people?

"I'm not an intellectual, I don't have great debating skills, and I'm not a "full book" on this issue" neither am I.

jitteringjr

I beg to differ. There are plenty of people murdered by bombs around the world almost every day. (Gaza, West Bank, Iraq) They may be smaller than the Mcveigh bomb but are bombs nevertheless.



I wouldn't compare war to criminal action. To me its a whole different thing. Besides war is Jets, missiles, tanks, explosives and not just small arms weapons.

I don't know if you’re from Australia but this is a good example. Using a gun may be the most convenient method however, didn't Australia implement a gun control law back in 1996? Looking at the Australian Institute of Criminology at http://www.aic.gov.au/ The number of murders from guns have the same murder trends as murders done by other weapons. Simply put, if the law was effective there would be a noticeable change in trends, but there is none.

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The Late 03 Jamis Comet. May she rest in peace.

jitteringjr

I'm not sure which problems you are referring to. Do you consider having guns the problem or do you consider crime the problem?

If you live in sparsely populated areas in the U.S. There is virtually no crime. Now Australia has only 1/4 of the population density of the U.S. so I would hope they had less crime. Facts are that the more crowded an area, the higher the crime rate. So comparing the U.S. and AU. and compensating for population density, crime rates seem pretty equal. ( I referenced http://www.aic.gov.au/ for this too)

Yes, we have a problem with crime in the U.S. but so do other places.

__________________
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The Late 03 Jamis Comet. May she rest in peace.

ritcho

They must have a horrific murder rate in Hong Kong then!

Fat Hack

You've misunderstood me. I've clearly intimated that a bomb is a "weapon of serious destruction." Read it again.


Have you actually read my post? The Oklahoma bombing was obviously a horrible incident, but as I clearly said -- and this was my point -- it's fortunately not a regular occurrence. We don't have Tim McVeighs blowing people up a 162 people every second day, do we? However, how often is someone shot dead in the USA? in 2001, 81 people were killed with a gun every day! Granted, half of those were suicides.
"Homes with guns are 5 times more likely to experience the suicide of a household member than homes without guns." Arthur Kellerman, New England Journal of Medicine, 1993, and Peter Cummings, American Journal of Public Health, 1997)

Like I said; there's just too many guns -- it's too late.


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Fat Hack

Well, I'm not sure about the availability of explosive materials in those countries -- none of us would obviously want such a proliferation to materialize in the U.S.


Yeah I suppose so, but my point was, why were these weapons and machines desigined in the first place? Because they are VERY effective and powerful at destroying stuff. For people to suggest that it's the man that's dangerous and not the power of the weapon, is to say that it doesn't matter at all if we all have access to very powerful weapons. I'll say it again: if a criminal or some whacko wants to hurt me, I'd much rather he have a pair of boxcutters than a gun, or a machine gun, or a fully armed jet-fighter



That gun control law was a reaction to the Port Aurthur massacre where one guy killed 35 people. As far as I know, the people were like: "oh my god, we're gunna end like America". This is supposed to reduce proliferation of guns amongst the general community, which I think it will because Australia still has a good chance of doing so, but as you say, the criminals still seem to have guns, in fact, there's been a slight increase criminal deaths recently in Melbourne because there is a gang war going on!!

artemidorus

This argument is spurious. Australia is the most urbanised country in the world. Just look at a map. The vast majority of people live in a thin coastal strip from Brisbane to Adelaide around the south eastern coast, with a few more jammed into Perth and small hinterland. The rest is sparsely populated rural land and desert.



Please, those who can be bothered, view http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/vda/vda-sec04.html
and look at figures 2, 3 and 6.

You sure do have a problem in the US. It's worse than I'd have guessed.

Still, I think it has more to do with deficient education, social support and legal/ correctional systems than with high gun availability and plenty of people, as we have read here, ready to use them, although these last points are not minor.