Tell that to this guy:

http://www.legalreader.com/archives/...liagesture.jpg

I see it's time to post these again...

Yes, that's my bike.

No, I don't carry it often. Extremely rarely, in fact.

Fox Labs pepper spray.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3177/...84be9b.jpg?v=0

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3157/...411536.jpg?v=0

Got tired of reading all the tool bag responses.... Just a few thoughts not expressed at anyone in particular..

Guns don't magically discharge.

Robberies and attacks happen in good neighborhoods also.

I would love to see a clip of someone shooting a firearm while riding a bike.

I got the pepper spray for late nights as a non-lethal method of defense for walking from the theater/restaraunt/etc. to my car in the dark. I keep in my hand in 'iffy' places, unitl I get in my car. I only take it with me when I'm out late at night. I use it instead of a gun because if I shoot and kill someone, I undoubtedly will have a lot of paperwork to fill out and questions to answer. I hope with this, I can just temporarily debilitate them and run for it.

Do a YouTube search on 'pepper spray' or 'Fox Labs' for some food for thought.

I consider myself well-armed..I have two of them.

Sorry for the late reply, I've been working to pay for the tax bailout. In the United States, Suicide is illegal. Doctor assisted Suicide is legal in only two states and this occured only within the past two months. check your facts first.

I can't believe this thread. I'm so happy that I live in Finland where I can feel safe without a gun. And don't get me wrong, there are a LOT of firearms in Finland, you just don't see them. Most of them are rifles used for hunting, not carrying around during the commute...

1. USA 90 firearms/100 citizens
2. Yemen 61/100
3. Finland 56/100

Third place...and still you can feel safe. There is no way I'm ever going to buy a firearm, never...

[QUOTE=maha;8314935]I can't believe this thread. I'm so happy that I live in Finland where I can feel safe without a gun. And don't get me wrong, there are a LOT of firearms in Finland, you just don't see them. Most of them are rifles used for hunting, not carrying around during the commute...

1. USA 90 firearms/100 citizens
2. Yemen 61/100
3. Finland 56/100
QUOTE]

I'm glad to be in the USA where I can feel safe with a gun. When I was visiting family in England last summer for a couple of weeks, there were two teenagers killed and another critically injured . . . they used knives.

Hold on a sec' . . . lemme think. Oh dang, looks like I have about 39.9 too many guns. Way more than my "fair share". And here I was thinking I needed just one more.

BTW, how many bicycles is it "normal" to have?

bumper

Some places in the US people get killed almost daily with guns. What's your point again...?

There are places in America where there are lots of guns and virtually NO violent crime whatsoever. Wyoming, Montana, Utah, basically rural America. When Finland has the same population makeup as America come talk to me. England has strict gun control but plenty of knife crime, and gun crime there has been increasing for years. It's not about the guns. It's about the people.

People don't get killed by guns. They get killed by PEOPLE.

As with any group, the extremists are loudest and the rest don't actually care that much.

Really? If that were the case, how can you defend the idea of guns as needed for self-protection?

Really? How do you explain Columbine, Va. Tech? Do you think as many kids would have been killed by any other means?

In order for the assertion that handguns are needed for bicycle commuting its proponents would simply have to show significant statistical evidence of actual cases where: a handgun was used to legally and effectively in the defense of one's life, while riding a bicycle, during a commute. So far, I've not seen this evidence. In addition, whereas they can offer a million scenarios (in theory) where someone may have wished they had a gun, it's far more statistically revealling to show actual, supportable cases. In the absence of this, this seems to me to be nothing more gun propaganda and fearmongoring.

Why does nobody ever go on a shooting rampage in a gun store or a police station?

To answer your other question, why not Google "Happy Land Social Club"? Wait, let me save you the trouble.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Land_fire

The Happy Land Fire was an arson fire which killed 87 people trapped in an unlicensed social club called "Happy Land" in New York City, on March 25, 1990. Most of the victims were ethnic Hondurans celebrating Carnival.[1] Unemployed Cuban refugee Julio González, whose former girlfriend was employed at the club, was arrested shortly after and ultimately convicted of arson and murder.

So, 87 people killed with a gallon of gasoline. Yes, it's possible to kill a lot of people with means other than guns. People always bring up Columbine and Va. Tech, but they never bring up Pearl, Missisippi. Oh yes, the Luke Woodem shooting. How was Luke apprehended? The assistant principal, a military reservist, retrieved his .45 from his car and held Woodem at gunpoint until the police arrived. Shame that brave, well-trained man wasn't able to have his firearm handy. He could have saved lives.

After reading all the idiocy in this and other threads like it, I gotta say that your posts in this thread have raised the idiocy level to new heights. Bravo.

FYI, I could kill & maim more people in less time with my truck than the vast majority of these mooks manage with a firearm.

That said, back to the OP: situational awareness and the brain the good lord gave you are your best weapons, son. Master those, and you'll rarely, if ever, need any other weapon.

It's true. Chipcom's driving really, really sucks.

Chipcom-you're comparing apples and oranges (inherently dangerous weapons v. transportation devices), for the sake of this discussion the two are not comparable. In addition, it is widely aknowledged that guns are being designed with increasing lethality, they also allow a shooter to attack someone they might not otherwise attack with an "up close and personal" type weapon (knife, bat, fists, etc). Guns are a unique tool, designed specifically as a killing instrument, they were only later adapted to other, sporting uses. They are, in other words, inherently dangerous. Cars, on the other hand, were designed as a mode of transportation. So, inasmuch as we're talking about vastley disparate objects, a useful comparison of the two, in this discussion, is impossible to make and only serves as a meaningless distraction. To bolster your arguemnt, you may as well count: rocket ships that have exploded, roofs that have collapsed, Twinkies that clogged arteries, heart attacks as a result of yelling "boo!", etc. Speaking of idiocy, I didn't think that I'd have to explain that to you...

There many not be lots of crime (which is a bit of a misperception....meth had really changed some of parts of montana in the crime area) , but there are lots of gun deaths (crime, accident, suicide) See Montana

And guns facilitate killing people.....especially those who attempt suicide who are 90% successful with a gun and 2% succesfull with ODing

(note: I am not for banning guns and ownership, but am reasonable contrrols on purchase, type, background checks, safetyy, education, carrying)



here are some stats from http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2008/...5011209186884/

The five states with the highest per capita gun death rates -- Louisiana, Alaska, Montana, Tennessee and Alabama -- had a per capita gun death rate far exceeding the national per capita gun death rate of 10.32 per 100,000.

Louisiana had the highest rate of gun death, 19.04 per 100,000 and has household gun ownership of 45.6 percent. Alaska had a gun death rate 17.49 per 100,000 and household gun ownership of 60.6 percent. Montana had a gun death rate of 17.22 per 100,000 and 61.4 percent gun ownership.

Conversely, states with the lowest levels of gun ownership had the lowest levels of gun death rates.

Hawaii has a household gun ownership of 9.7 percent and a gun death rate of 2.20 per 100,000. Massachusetts has 12.8 percent rate of gun ownership and a gun death rate of 3.48 per 100,000. Rhode Island has a household gun ownership of 13.3 percent and a gun death rate of 3.63 per 100,000, the researchers said.

and here are stats related to suicide

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...58863648_x.htm

Suicides accounted for 55 percent of the nation's nearly 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

More than 90 percent of suicide attempts using guns are successful, while the success rate for jumping from high places was 34 percent. The success rate for drug overdose was 2 percent, the brief said, citing studies.

Schwinnrider, this is what immediately came to mind but, I guess this never happened....

Officer Fatally Shot Outside Police Station
Slaying Is 1st in Line of Duty in Fairfax; Gunman, 18, Is Killed After Opening Fire

By Tom Jackman and Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 9, 2006; Page A01

A Fairfax County police detective was killed and two officers were wounded yesterday afternoon after a gunman opened fire with high-powered weapons in the parking lot of a police station during a shift change, law enforcement officials said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...050800968.html

Wrong...thus elevating the idiocy even higher. How about you go and find the death and injury stats for both motor vehicles and firearms in the US, then come back and tell us how a motor vehicle isn't a dangerous weapon...for the sake of any discussion. :rolleyes:

Better yet...riddle me this, which would you prefer to face if your feet were glued the the pavement...a truck 50 yards away doing 50mph...coming right at you...or some mook with a pistol trying to shoot you from 50 yards away? Please be prepared to back your choice up by being glued to the pavement with me behind either the wheel or the trigger. :eek:

Indeed, my point stands...by using my motor vehicle as a weapon, I could do far more damage than your average mook could do with a firearm. Just because that fact is inconvenient to your idiocy practice, does not make it less of a fact.

f'ing duh. You got any other earth shattering tidbits you'd like to share? :roflmao2:

But vehicles are hardly ever used intentionally as weapons. Guns are designed to kill people (and possibly other living things). Motor vehicles are much more useful in other capacities besides killing people than guns are. Surely you see this.

I imagine if you had a hundred million or so people shooting their guns in close proximity to each other every day you'd see a dramatic rise in gun deaths. Just because cars kill more people than guns that doesn't mean they're more dangerous.

Another over-charged, super-macho, tough-talking, gun-knucklehead. Can't have a rational discussion with one, if you disagree, they resort to the tough guy rhetoric. Always. Usually means they suffer from: shortness of stature, mental instability, or other issues that exacerbate their insecurities. Your insecurities seem to be illistrustrated in your profile pic. The funny thing is, even though I support many of the anti-gun arguements as they pertain, specifically, to the false notion of self protection, I'm not entirely anti-gun, however, people like you would read it that way.

I guess I'm not as rabid a lover of guns, nor do I rely on the macho imagry to bolster my ego as I'm: 6' 2", 260 pounds, an ex wrestler/football player/boxer, with a 400+ pound bench, 1800+ pound leg press, and am, likely, in the best shape of my life at 38. So, chipcom, your logic and threats are laughable...

And finally the idiocy reaches levels that will never be equaled. The fact that you can't distinguish between humor and 'threats' is funny enough, but that you take a simple comparison of the lethality of a firearm versus a motor vehicle to be 'Another over-charged, super-macho, tough-talking, gun-knucklehead' is freakin hilarious.

Of course, now you're gonna start typing again and prove that the level of idiocy can be raised even more, ain't ya? :lol:

It's a simple point...for anyone who isn't a political hack with some agenda: a normal person with a motor vehicle can kill and maim more people faster than a normal person with a firearm. It don't matter what the car or the gun was 'intended' for, or what it is normally used for, or any other smoke and BS.

I'll ask it again, since the smart fellers can't seem to bring themselves to answer...

which would you prefer to face if your feet were glued the the pavement...a truck 50 yards away doing 50mph...coming right at you...or some mook with a pistol trying to shoot you from 50 yards away?

I've actually faced people shooting at me...and I'd choose the mook with a pistol every time. So let's hear it from all you 'scholars' who have never seen a shot fired in anger.