Live blog: Cyclists urged to boycott brands including Bell and Giro owned by US gun maker, road police say cycle lanes “not fit for purpose,” amazing numbers from Viviani and lots more
Crap cycle lanes, fantastic cycle lanes, fat tyres, interesting car parks, nicked bikes and lots more
Thu, Feb 22, 2018 14:41
Help us to bring you the best cycling content
If you’ve enjoyed this article, then please consider subscribing to road.cc from as little as £1.99. Our mission is to bring you all the news that’s relevant to you as a cyclist, independent reviews, impartial buying advice and more. Your subscription will help us to do more.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
93 Comments
Read more...
Read more...
Read more...
Latest Comments
Gm_Crop 6 hours ago
I'll counter that by saying the Bryton 750se I have drives me nuts at times. Inconsistantly picks up on routes created on Komoot and the app re-syncs every few seconds when trying to set up the device and sends me back to the home screen. The most infuriating one is that I turned live track on. Once. It now won't turn off and repeatedly flags up the live track is starting, and then disconnecting every few seconds whilst riding. I haven't timed it but it wouldn't suprise me if 10-20% of the time the the screen is covered with an error message. That's been about 6 weeks now. Other than that it's great :/
IanGlasgow 7 hours ago
RE: Police launch road safety operation... by clamping down on cyclists using footbridge Meanwhile in Glasgow, Police Scotland are riding their motorbikes over the pedestrian and cyclists only bridge. https://x.com/FietserGlasgow/status/2065106152917012523?s=20
Rendel Harris 8 hours ago
@Paul J Van Schip certainly seems a bit of a dick, but he's a European and multiple World Champion on the track, pretty sure you don't get there without having some talent in your legs.
Bill H 8 hours ago
Poor Vincent cannot get over the simple fact that given the choice people prefer dedicated cycling spaces, rather than pretending to be cars like vehicular cyclists.
pbunyon 8 hours ago
What is the point of the fancy air sensor if it can't account for changing weather conditions?? If all you care about is a delayed approximation of aerodynamic watts in steady conditions, you don't need any special sensors for that. Just your speed on a decently flat course is enough to approximate rolling resistance and drivetrain losses. And the rest must be aero. If you assume a less aero body position at the same watts, your speed will drop while rolling resistance also drops, which means approximated aero watts goes up. And that's enough to demonstrate what you've shown in your testing protocol ("I sat upright and the number went up a little while later").
chrisonabike 9 hours ago
Your correction is accurate - it's almost always been "the (lack of) thought that (doesn't) count". "Massive" - less than a billion a year spent on active travel (trying to catch up / building a network across the entire country) Not massive - 6 billion every year (2026-2030) spent on road *maintenance* of existing "already built, goes everywhere, very convenient" road network for inactive travel Ultimately the reason "cycle infra" is *needed* is those unbelievably colossal amounts spent every year (and for more than a century now) on making mass motoring not just viable but apparently the "best choice" for most journeys. As the Dutch and others have shown, the majority of people *are* prepared to cycle and even mix with very light, slow local motor traffic *if* cycling is also made safe and convenient for the whole of their journey (including secure parking at both ends). (The history of the financial drivers of the current situation are a complex topic but note that while people complain about "crumbling roads" and underfunded motor infra - with some reason - by us continuing the fuel duty escalator freeze (for example) we're actually helping motorists pay *even less* for that activity / subsidising more of the cost of driving than ever.)
belugabob 9 hours ago
yes, but people will still object - which was my point.
Astralstroll 11 hours ago
So ' Priority of Road Users' and 1.5 metre clearance at 30mph has been been reduced to 'sharing'? NCN route 2 here in South Hams is an absolute scream with white vans, tractors and total idiots who refuse,or are totally incapable,to reverse on high Devon banked lanes ...means you have to get off and pedal back to a passing place....could be at that all day...so I don't bother...
Mr Anderson 12 hours ago
@MaxiMinimalist Agreed. The big problem I see now is today's parents grew up being driven to their schools, and therefore, see private motor vehicles as the only viable form of transport. The vast majority of UK infant and primary schools have a catchment area that is within easy walking distance from home to school. Yet, the traffic caused by pupils being driven to/from school is astonishing. Banishing the "School Run" should be a priority for all schools.
MaxiMinimalist 13 hours ago
When I was a kid (that was during the previous millenium when phones were connected to a plug in the wall), I rode my bicycle to school, music academy, sport grounds, parties even during the winter. The government didn't have to spend, correct that, didn't have to think of spending massive amounts of money to build cycling specific infrastructures. Over the past 3 or 4 decades, cars have grown bigger, taller, safer (for their drivers) and faster. Meanwhile, motorists have become abusive, aggressive, hypersensitive to people moving on two wheels, aka cyclists. Spending billions upon billions on new infrastructure won't address the crux of the matter. Sadly.
93 thoughts on “Live blog: Cyclists urged to boycott brands including Bell and Giro owned by US gun maker, road police say cycle lanes “not fit for purpose,” amazing numbers from Viviani and lots more”
I’d love to be able to do
I’d love to be able to do that with my 5 and 8 year olds, luckily we live near the prom to enjoy a decent ride together. No way could I risk them on the roads around here, too many impatient speeding drivers.
Car are not built with the
!
The only thing more
The only thing more ubiquitous than a helmet thread – a gun-control thread!
Obviously Disfunctional_threshold (why the mis-spelling?) is wrong in their arguments, but have to say I doubt that such ‘boycots’ are going to achieve anything at all. Things will change when American voters decide they want them to. Americans value guns because of the whole nature of their political culture (and economic system). An individualist, survivalist, dog-eat-dog mentality is part of their culture. It probably has something to do with the country’s history of racial conflict and being partially-founded on genocide as well.
I’m unsure about the NRA donations issue. It’s true that the NRA gets the majority of its funding from such corporations, not from ordinary members. And it uses those funds to lobby politicians. But there’s not much evidence, apparently, that such lobbying is really an important factor in avoiding gun-control measures. Attempts to counter it with equal spending by pro-gun-control side haven’t had any effect.
I don’t see that boycotting some other products that come under the same corporate banner is going to make any difference to anything. Given the size of multinational corporations I suspect you could find corporate links between almost any product and something one doesn’t approve of.
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
I pretty much agree with both of those points.
But…
There are obvious links between the Bell and Giro brands and NRA contributions.
There are obvious links between the NRA and Trump (IIRC the NRA contributed bigly to Trump’s campaign, and Trump spoke at the NRA leadership conference).
I know that the second amendment runs through this debate, and is a sticking point, with or without the NRA.
And I’m under no illusion that me not buying any more Giro shoes is going to make the blindest bit of difference, but buying Sidi will make me feel a bit less dirty (until someone finds that they’re ultimately owned by a holding that harvests kids’ irises in Laos, or something).
What really grinds my gears
What really grinds my gears is that the US Constitution allows guns as a way of keeping the government in check, but they seem to be more interested in shooting each other than storming the White House.
hawkinspeter wrote:
That’s my post of the week decided
.
why would cyclist be against
why would cyclist be against guns? they could be quite handy on the road
jlebrech wrote:
I am waiting for the helmet with integrated firearm…
Exactly ClubSmed, I’m not
Exactly ClubSmed, I’m not actually particularly anti-gun but all this rhetoric quoted from the late 1700’s is disingenuous. The people who tend to hide behind it fail to take into account the society of the time and how little resemblance it bears to our society. In the late 1700’s there wasn’t much in the way of government or state law enforcement eg No FBI, no ATF, no real centralised local or state policing etc so it probably WAS an extremely good idea to have firearms to protect your family from criminals/robbers/pirates/bandits etc. These days, that argument is a lot, LOT weaker.
StraelGuy wrote:
I think the whole ‘right to bear arms’ thing was designed as a defence against the state itself rather than rogues and varmints.
Much of the US Constitution is similarly designed to limit the power of the state over the individual.
That ideology runs strongly throughout much of the US and explains the vehement opposition to gun control.
Rich_cb wrote:
That’s my impression too. I’m quite conflicted about the U.S. and their relationship with guns. On the one hand I think it’s quite a wise addition to their Constitution and should act as powerful check against over zealous politicians. On the other hand, it’s plainly not working as designed.
hawkinspeter wrote:
What’s strange is that their are other countries (Switzerland and Norway for example) with gun ownership rates similar to that in the US but they have nowhere near the rate of mass shootings.
The problem isn’t the guns per se it’s the culture that surrounds them.
Rich_cb wrote:
I think it’s the double-whammy of both.
I had it in my head too at one point that other countries had higher gun ownership (I was thinking Canada and Switzerland) – not so, according to wiki https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
That has Germany, NZ, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, France and others with 30 guns for each 100 citizens. Seems high to a UK citizen… Then you see the US with more guns than people.
But their use… I wonder how much of that can be explained by the second amendment.
davel wrote:
I think it’s been mentioned earlier in the thread but the US stats are skewed by the fact that a relatively small number of people own a hell of a lot of guns each.
So the number of gun owners is probably a lot closer to the other countries mentioned.
Why a far higher number of those American Gun owners go postal is anybody’s guess.
Rich_cb wrote:
That’s my impression too. I’m quite conflicted about the U.S. and their relationship with guns. On the one hand I think it’s quite a wise addition to their Constitution and should act as powerful check against over zealous politicians. On the other hand, it’s plainly not working as designed.
— Rich_cb What’s strange is that their are other countries (Switzerland and Norway for example) with gun ownership rates similar to that in the US but they have nowhere near the rate of mass shootings. The problem isn’t the guns per se it’s the culture that surrounds them.— hawkinspeter
Switzerland is hardly comparible – their guns are issued to people by the state as part of their status as reservists in a militia (the ‘well regulated militia’ bit of the 2A probably fits Switzerland better than the US). They get training and have to keep the guns locked up at home. Even so one went postal with theirs and shot a load of people, leading to further restrictions on the rules around those weapons.
Norway actually has pretty high figures for gun deaths recently, though that’s down to Brevik single-handedly. Per capita their recent figures for mass killing sprees actually come out worse than the US’s, thanks to that one incident.
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
Switzerland allows private individuals to own guns other than those you mention. There laws are actually very relaxed relative to the UK.
With Norway it depends on the timeline you take, obviously with a small population one incident will affect the stats for decades.
It was probably a bad example but the point I was trying to make was that high rates of gun ownership don’t necessarily translate into high numbers of mass shootings.
Rich_cb wrote:
That’s my impression too. I’m quite conflicted about the U.S. and their relationship with guns. On the one hand I think it’s quite a wise addition to their Constitution and should act as powerful check against over zealous politicians. On the other hand, it’s plainly not working as designed.
— Rich_cb What’s strange is that their are other countries (Switzerland and Norway for example) with gun ownership rates similar to that in the US but they have nowhere near the rate of mass shootings. The problem isn’t the guns per se it’s the culture that surrounds them.— hawkinspeter
How many actual ‘mass shootings’ per million population though, the mass shootings are a bit of a red herring tbh.
People are quoting Australia as a success and using them as the beacon for introducing gun control but totally fail to understand that firstly there was a buy back scheme, second, gun crime has gone up in Australia since the change in the law because the law is shit in Australia.
A better option is the way Germany have done things, this includes mental health checks on potential gun owners for larger bore, raising the age for ownership, restricting how you can use a gun for self defence and so on.
Germany has the 4th highest gun ownership in the world and had 57 gun homocides for 2014 (UK 23 for same year) which has dropped massively in 20 years from c.800. The rate of ownership is only three times less than that in the US (estimated on lawful and unlawful civilian ownership), in fact per population head it’s extremely similar between Germany and the UK for gun homocides per head of pop.
This tells you a lot about gun laws, gun owership as well as how society as a whole has a huge impact on homocide rates. it’s not just about banning guns but the control of them.
the US however is too far gone and is so totally fucked up the only real way to deal with it would be to disarm everybody. Use the army to move across the country, through every city, every hick town in a moving wall. Removing guns from all but a specialist armed police like in the UK would help to sway some but no-one in power could get away with ordering such a thing because too many votes are bought and lots of local ‘militia’ types would rather have a shootout with government forces than give up their weapons for the bettermenet of society.
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
The idea that an unarmed populace and an armed state represents an improvement in society is anathema to many Americans.
A quick glance at the atrocities committed by states against their own citizens suggests they might not be completely wrong.
Rich_cb wrote:
That’s what they _say_ but it doesn’t seem a hugely convincing argument. Some handguns and semi-auto rifles against a modern military? How is that likely to go? Besides, when fascist regimes come to power its usually with the support of numerous and powerful parts of the populace, the very people who will be bearing these arms.
And US cops seem far more prone to kill innocent citizens than do those of countries with an ‘unarmed’ populace, so the strategy doesn’t seem to be working terribly well.
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
That’s what they _say_ but it doesn’t seem a hugely convincing argument. Some handguns and semi-auto rifles against a modern military? How is that likely to go? Besides, when fascist regimes come to power its usually with the support of numerous and powerful parts of the populace, the very people who will be bearing these arms.
And US cops seem far more prone to kill innocent citizens than do those of countries with an ‘unarmed’ populace, so the strategy doesn’t seem to be working terribly well.— Rich_cb
But what if the British try to take over again?
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
A quick glance at the US military’s recent adventures should persuade you that a crudely armed but determined populace can defy a far superior force.
The fact remains that state violence against their own citizens accounted for over 100 million deaths in the 20th century. Given that, a fear of state violence seems like quite a rational position.
In a country founded on the basis of protecting individual freedoms from the state (admittedly something they have not unequivocally succeeded at over the years) the right to bear arms is seen by many as the lodestone of their entire worldview.
Rich_cb wrote:
I suspect it may be more accurate to say that the modern country is founded on the resentment and bitterness that followed the Civil War, and the gun nuts who bang on about individual freedom are probably the last gasp of those whose concept of gun rights and individual freedom didn’t and perhaps still doesn’t extend as far as black people. I’d be quite interested to see a demographic and geographic breakdown of peoples’ views and history of gun ownership. I suspect it is predominantly white, Southern, middle-aged+ and male.
The founding fathers, who included slave owners, were the heirs of the European philosophers who framed the concepts of freedom and individual rights. These rights are always, in the classical liberal tradition, limited only when they may harm other peoples’ enjoyment of their own, equal rights, to paraphrase the French delaration of the rights of Man and the citizen, which is heir to the same tradition.
It seems to me that the extreme gun lobby in the US, exemplified by the NRA, deliberately ignores the part of the equation which balances citizens’ rights against the harm they might do to others, to the point where it seems to be ‘my right to do whatever I want is unlimited’. They make a spurious appeal to the classical liberal tradition in order to cover their naked and aggressive selfishness, and believe their contingent political right to own a gun outweighs other peoples’ absolute natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
There is no natural right to have a gun, or indeed any weapon. The nearest we have is a natural right to self-defence, and that has to be proportionate to the threat – it would be disproportionate to stab someone in the throat because they might step on your toe. The gun lobby appears to have lost, or perhaps discarded, any sense of proportion they ever had.
ConcordeCX wrote:
So everything that, in the wrong hands, can harm other people should be made illegal?
That’s going to be a pretty long list.
As has already been mentioned in this thread gun ownership does not necessarily mean gun crime.
Rich_cb wrote:
I suspect it may be more accurate to say that the modern country is founded on the resentment and bitterness that followed the Civil War, and the gun nuts who bang on about individual freedom are probably the last gasp of those whose concept of gun rights and individual freedom didn’t and perhaps still doesn’t extend as far as black people. I’d be quite interested to see a demographic and geographic breakdown of peoples’ views and history of gun ownership. I suspect it is predominantly white, Southern, middle-aged+ and male.
The founding fathers, who included slave owners, were the heirs of the European philosophers who framed the concepts of freedom and individual rights. These rights are always, in the classical liberal tradition, limited only when they may harm other peoples’ enjoyment of their own, equal rights, to paraphrase the French delaration of the rights of Man and the citizen, which is heir to the same tradition.
It seems to me that the extreme gun lobby in the US, exemplified by the NRA, deliberately ignores the part of the equation which balances citizens’ rights against the harm they might do to others, to the point where it seems to be ‘my right to do whatever I want is unlimited’. They make a spurious appeal to the classical liberal tradition in order to cover their naked and aggressive selfishness, and believe their contingent political right to own a gun outweighs other peoples’ absolute natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
There is no natural right to have a gun, or indeed any weapon. The nearest we have is a natural right to self-defence, and that has to be proportionate to the threat – it would be disproportionate to stab someone in the throat because they might step on your toe. The gun lobby appears to have lost, or perhaps discarded, any sense of proportion they ever had.
— Rich_cb So everything that, in the wrong hands, can harm other people should be made illegal? That’s going to be a pretty long list. As has already been mentioned in this thread gun ownership does not necessarily mean gun crime.— ConcordeCX
that’s not what I wrote, and I don’t know how you infer it from what I wrote.
I ended by writing about getting a sense of proportion – I guess you missed that.
ConcordeCX wrote:
I think the inference was pretty clear.
Rich_cb wrote:
I think the inference was pretty clear.— ConcordeCX
No inference needed – just read the words. They refer to guns. Not ‘everything that can cause harm’, which is the odd conclusion you jumped to and the rabbit hole that Disfunctional Threshold disappeared down.
And the ‘sense of proportion’ is key: one Dunblane and we place the rights of the kids to live over the rights of weirdos to shoot schools up.
Many Dunblanes later, and the POTUS is claiming that armed officers might still be the answer…. Or maybe armed teachers…
One of these countries continues to have Dunblanes, and a leader that just claimed that, unarmed, he would have run into the school (I shit you not – he said that yesterday). That’s possibly another factor: is your country likely to elect a leader who thinks he’s in the A Team?
But the single biggest contributor? Malfunctioning douchebags being able to get their hands on killing machines that allow them to kill 17 people in 6 minutes and escape. There’s only one type of machine that fits that bill.
davel wrote:
The inference is crystal clear. If ownership of X impinges an ‘absolute natural right’ then we should restrict the ownership of X.
By applying that rule to other items that also impinge ‘absolute natural rights’ you take yourself down the rabbit hole.
There are plenty of items that can be used to kill innocent people, the Boston Marathon bombs were homemade, the Nice terrorist attack used a truck to kill many more than any mass shooter in the US has managed.
Banning guns won’t solve the problem, the genie is out of the bottle as far as the US is concerned, changing the culture around guns is the only way to improve things IMHO.
Rich_cb wrote:
A complete gun ban seems unlikely for the U.S., but they could easily ban assault rifles as there doesn’t seem to be a legitimate use for them except for going on killing sprees.
There are plenty of items
Homemade bombs come with the not-very-nice risk of blowing yourself up. And malfunctioning.
A truck is big and clunky… it can’t spray death at hundreds of metres per second in any direction. Yeah the Nice attack was massive but look at the others. The Cardiff EDL nutjob was being beaten to death before an imam intervened – after killing one person who was already stricken when he hit him. The ones who want to then escape arm themselves with an actual weapon, and even then get caught.
No, this argument fails on two major points:
1: assault rifles are quick and easy to use. You need zero training to mow many people down, quickly and efficiently, with little risk to yourself.
2: cars, trucks, and the stuff that homemade bombs are made out of, kind of have other uses. You don’t fertilise your garden or drive to work via an assault rifle.
There is no comparable device.
Edited to sort quote tags.
davel wrote:
Did the Nice attacker have any specialist truck driving training?
Does every mass shooting attempt succeed?
The vast majority of mass shooters are either captured or killed during the attack or very shortly afterwards so the argument that Assault Rifles allow escape is a non starter.
The original point was that if an object can harm someone else it should be banned/restricted.
A large SUV causes far more harm than a small hatchback so why don’t we ban SUVs?
The vast majority of SUV owners have no legitimate need for it just like the vast majority of powerful semi-automatic rifle owners.
Rich_cb wrote:
This is deliberately obtuse: ConcordeCX used the word ‘gun’ and disputed your interpretation himself. Bang on about truck attacks all you like.
It is not about the right to use things whose primary purpose is not to kill and maim. It’s about banging on about the right to own a gun when 11,000 people, who, presumably, had a right to life, are murdered with them each year.
davel wrote:
Not at all.
You can’t call for a ban on X without some justification. If your justification is that X harms people then I think it’s reasonable to ask if you’ll apply the same criteria to other harmful things.
A semi automatic rifle owned and used legally will not harm a single person.
An SUV owned and used legally will.
Very few people require either.
Rich_cb wrote:
Not at all.
You can’t call for a ban on X without some justification. If your justification is that X harms people then I think it’s reasonable to ask if you’ll apply the same criteria to other harmful things.
A semi automatic rifle owned and used legally will not harm a single person.
An SUV owned and used legally will.
Very few people require either.— davel
Oh behave. Accidental deaths via guns don’t happen?
Consider this. If you want to kill yourself, and have access to a gun, that’s a very definite way of doing it. I mean, 11,000 people are murdered with guns in the USA, but, staggeringly, about twice that number kill themselves via gunfire. An amazing 6.3 people per thousand die from suicide by gun.
In the UK, it’s 0.15 per thousand.
In the US, the accidental gun death rate is 0.18 people per thousand.
Yes, the accidental shooting death rate in the US is higher than the suicide by shooting rate in the UK; you are 3 TIMES as likely to die of an unintentional gun injury in the USA than you are by a gun murder in the UK. Just an acceptable price to pay for all those guns lying around, I suppose! What can you do!
There’s a link here, purely associated with one device, that would have you creaming your pants if you could apply it to helmets. But there are none so blind as those who will not see.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
davel wrote:
Neat way of avoiding the point I was making.
I’ll rephrase it to accommodate your point on accidents, the crux remains completely unchanged.
A semi automatic rifle owned legally and used carefully will not harm a single person.
An SUV owned legally and used carefully will harm many.
Why are you so eager to ban the former but not the latter?
Rich_cb wrote:
I think that I struggle to get my head around the fact that there are people willing to waste their time trying to defend the american position of gun ownership. It’s shameful and quite embarrassing that someone who attempts to be intelligent can follow this line. It’s not even up for debate.
don simon wrote:
I find it hard to comprehend how people can be so certain that their position is right but can’t abide being challenged to actually justify it.
Rich_cb wrote:
I think that I struggle to get my head around the fact that there are people willing to waste their time trying to defend the american position of gun ownership. It’s shameful and quite embarrassing that someone who attempts to be intelligent can follow this line. It’s not even up for debate.
— Rich_cb I find it hard to comprehend how people can be so certain that their position is right but can’t abide being challenged to actually justify it.— don simon
There is no justification for the majority of (hand)gun ownership apart from defending themselves form other thick cunts that have (hand)guns. If you agree with the US position and can’t justify it, you haven’t, you have to accept that you have blood on your hands too.
Why should any private citizen have a lethal weapon, specifically a gun) in their posession?
I have a 4×4, now go and whistle!
EDIT: Isn’t it a bit arrogant to assume that you are the first person to have introduced an opposing view? Isn’t it equally arrogant to assume that my viewpoint hasn’t not been subject to thought and consideration before arriving at its current position. Equally I don’t have to justify my position to you.
don simon wrote:
Nowhere did I say I was the first person to introduce an opposing view. I simply said that certain people can’t abide justifying their views. You appear to have confirmed that you are one of them.
I have absolutely no blood on my hands regarding the gun debate, you however have definitely harmed your fellow citizens through the use of your 4×4. I’d ask you to justify that but…
Rich_cb wrote:
There is no justification for the majority of (hand)gun ownership apart from defending themselves form other thick cunts that have (hand)guns. If you agree with the US position and can’t justify it, you haven’t, you have to accept that you have blood on your hands too.
Why should any private citizen have a lethal weapon, specifically a gun) in their posession?
I have a 4×4, now go and whistle!
EDIT: Isn’t it a bit arrogant to assume that you are the first person to have introduced an opposing view? Isn’t it equally arrogant to assume that my viewpoint hasn’t not been subject to thought and consideration before arriving at its current position. Equally I don’t have to justify my position to you.
— Rich_cb Nowhere did I say I was the first person to introduce an opposing view. I simply said that certain people can’t abide justifying their views. You appear to have confirmed that you are one of them. I have absolutely no blood on my hands regarding the gun debate, you however have definitely harmed your fellow citizens through the use of your 4×4. I’d ask you to justify that but…— don simon
Yet here you are banging the same gun argument without any justification of your position with a mildly amusing and wholly misguided comparison.
Much like you bang on with the same shit in any debate.
Why should the man in the street have a gun in their possession?
It’s got fuck all to do with whether I have a 4×4, which does much less harm in my possession than you have the ability to understand.
I told you, I don’t have to justify my views to you, or my choices. You’ve demonstrated that you don’t have the ability to understand and there’s no debate.
Chao!
don simon wrote:
Try not to drive past any asthmatics, there’s a good boy.
Rich_cb wrote:
Much like you bang on with the same shit in any debate.
Why should the man in the street have a gun in their possession?
It’s got fuck all to do with whether I have a 4×4, which does much less harm in my possession than you have the ability to understand.
I told you, I don’t have to justify my views to you, or my choices. You’ve demonstrated that you don’t have the ability to understand and there’s no debate.
Chao!
— Rich_cb Try not to drive past any asthmatics, there’s a good boy.— don simon
Is that it?
You really do need to broaden your thinking, don’t you?
don simon wrote:
You harm people every time you drive your 4×4.
That’s a fact.
Rich_cb wrote:
Is that it?
You really do need to broaden your thinking, don’t you?
— Rich_cb You harm people every time you drive your 4×4. That’s a fact.— don simon
Good job there’s nothing to offset then, isn’t there? Probably doing less damage to asthmatics as a person than you using the computer does.
Think about it.
don simon wrote:
You offset the particulate matter that goes directly into people’s lungs as you drive past?
Impressive.
Rich_cb wrote:
Good job there’s nothing to offset then, isn’t there? Probably doing less damage to asthmatics as a person than you using the computer does.
Think about it.
— Rich_cb You offset the particulate matter that goes directly into people’s lungs as you drive past? Impressive.— don simon
Is that a serious comment? Your life must be pretty perfect to not have any negative effects on anyone, yet feel yuou can look down on others.
And yes, I do feel that I have a significant positive effect on the quality of air for the general public along side a minimal negative effect. And probably a significantly less effect on your precious asthmatics than you do in your day to day life.
By the way, what fuel am I burning in the 4×4?
don simon wrote:
Particulate matter is one of the biggest causes of pollution related ill health.
Bigger cars produce much more of it regardless of what fuel they use.
A smaller car would do less harm.
Rich_cb wrote:
I’ll ignore the bit where you’re wrong and focus on trying to educate.
While my car may introduce particulates, you’re not seeing the bigger picture. I assume you don’t live in a cave, so I suggest you look at your own contribution to pollution. Carpet in the house? Kitchen cabinets glued together? Any concrete?
Then look at the buildings that I help provide clean(er), fresh air to.
You want me to stop doing my job because you haven’t thought through your argument.
I will go as far as to say that unless you can demonstrate that you are as much of the solution as I am, then wind your neck in.
The world has moved forward and will continue to do so, removing vehicles isn’t going to solve your immediate problems.
Sometimes a little bit of nasty has to happen in order for greater benefits. You want to remove a smaller problem, in my case, and fuck it up for many.
As mentioned earlier, broaden your thinking and get building that handmade kitchen. Nails are easy to make, just don’t use coal on the forge!
don simon wrote:
A larger car produces more particulate pollution than a smaller car.
That is a fact.
Particulate pollution is very damaging to public health.
That is also a fact.
Maybe you are one of the tiny minority of 4×4 owners who actually require such a vehicle but nothing you’ve written so far justifies your ownership of a 4×4.
Rich_cb wrote:
You keep banging the same drum and ignoring everything else. And I’ll just ignore you and your desire for people to engage, while you don’t.
Getting back to the topic and your introduction of vehicles, you cannot compare a car to a gun. I can do, and do do, many things to offset pollution. As yet I am unable to raise the dead.
How’s your toxic Kitchen, carpet, painted walls? Have you thought about your astmatic friends and decided to get rid of these while pontificating?
Just to be sure, you’re still having a pop at my 4×4 without knowing what fuel I use and without demonstrating that a larger petrol motor produces more particulates than a smaller diesel.
Widen your thinking little boy….
don simon wrote:
Still haven’t justified your ownership have you…
Your fuel is irrelevant as for any given fuel/engine a larger car will produce more particulate pollution than a smaller car.
Fuel combustion is also not the only way that vehicles produce particulate pollution.
You can and do multiple things to ensure your gun never harms anybody, it is impossible to do that with your car (assuming you actually drive it).
Rich_cb wrote:
Getting back to the topic and your introduction of vehicles, you cannot compare a car to a gun. I can do, and do do, many things to offset pollution. As yet I am unable to raise the dead.
How’s your toxic Kitchen, carpet, painted walls? Have you thought about your astmatic friends and decided to get rid of these while pontificating?
Just to be sure, you’re still having a pop at my 4×4 without knowing what fuel I use and without demonstrating that a larger petrol motor produces more particulates than a smaller diesel.
Widen your thinking little boy….— Rich_cb Still haven’t justified your ownership have you… Your fuel is irrelevant as for any given fuel/engine a larger car will produce more particulate pollution than a smaller car. Fuel combustion is also not the only way that vehicles produce particulate pollution. You can and do multiple things to ensure your gun never harms anybody, it is impossible to do that with your car (assuming you actually drive it).— don simon
You beggar belief, and at best are mildly amusing. I’ll repeat I have no need to justify anything to you, especially as you have such a narrow mind and can’t engage in discussions even when facts are presented.
don simon wrote:
So you don’t need your 4×4. I think that’s a reasonable conclusion to draw give your constant avoidance of the question.
You just choose to harm your fellow citizens because you like to drive a big car.
Nice one.
Rich_cb wrote:
You beggar belief, and at best are mildly amusing. I’ll repeat I have no need to justify anything to you, especially as you have such a narrow mind and can’t engage in discussions even when facts are presented.
— Rich_cb So you don’t need your 4×4. I think that’s a reasonable conclusion to draw give your constant avoidance of the question. You just choose to harm your fellow citizens because you like to drive a big car. Nice one.— don simon
And you with your toxic kitchen and furniture, damaging carpet and paints.
Nice one.
What are you doing to counter it?
Again you’re concluding without evidence, nice but stupid.
don simon wrote:
Those questions are just a desperate diversion tactic.
You jumped into the 4×4 debate and are now trying to get out.
Do you dispute that a large car produces more particulate pollution than an equivalent small car?
As for the assumption about your 4×4 It’s simply a balance of probabilities. The vast majority of 4×4 owners have no actual need for one, without evidence to the contrary the odds are that you have no need of yours.
You also seem keen to wax lyrical about your offsetting and fuel choice but are oddly reticent about why you need a 4×4.
Rich_cb wrote:
And you with your toxic kitchen, damaging carpet and paints.
Nice one.
What are you doing to counter it?
Again you’ve concluding without evidence, nice but stupid.
— Rich_cb Those questions are just a desperate diversion tactic. You jumped into the 4×4 debate and are now trying to get out. Do you dispute that a large car produces more particulate pollution than an equivalent small car? As for the assumption about your 4×4 It’s simply a balance of probabilities. The vast majority of 4×4 owners have no actual need for one, without evidence to the contrary the odds are that you have no need of yours. You also seem keen to wax lyrical about your offsetting and fuel choice but are oddly reticent about why you need a 4×4.— don simon
Now it’s an equivalent small car, is it? Why are you changing your argument? It was a FACT earlier that a large car produces more particulates than a small car. You mentioned this ad nauseum until it was demonstrated as not being a fact at all.
Without evidence to the contrary, it’s foolish to assume. So to assume you know why I have a 4×4 is foolish.
Again, you’re ignoring the fact that I owe you no explanation about why I have a 4×4 and equally you choose to ignore other elements. Why the fuck should I justify to you, you’re no one?
Dismissing a response because it fucks up your argument is also foolish, offsetting is perfectly valid as one has to look at the broader picture, as indeed is the VOCs in and around your home which you choose to ignore.
You’re a winner, your constant banging on without evidence can convinced me that you’re 100% right.
Enjoy your prize and messages of adoration that you’ll be getting over the next few days.
don simon wrote:
When you have incomplete information you have to rely on the balance of probabilities.
The balance of probabilities suggests you have absolutely no need for your 4×4.
Offsetting might work for CO2 (although there is a fair bit of debate about that) but it most definitely doesn’t work for particulates.
don simon wrote:
*
don simon wrote:
*
Rich_cb wrote:
Getting back to the topic and your introduction of vehicles, you cannot compare a car to a gun. I can do, and do do, many things to offset pollution. As yet I am unable to raise the dead.
How’s your toxic Kitchen, carpet, painted walls? Have you thought about your astmatic friends and decided to get rid of these while pontificating?
Just to be sure, you’re still having a pop at my 4×4 without knowing what fuel I use and without demonstrating that a larger petrol motor produces more particulates than a smaller diesel.
Widen your thinking little boy….— Rich_cb Still haven’t justified your ownership have you… Your fuel is irrelevant as for any given fuel/engine a larger car will produce more particulate pollution than a smaller car. Fuel combustion is also not the only way that vehicles produce particulate pollution. You can and do multiple things to ensure your gun never harms anybody, it is impossible to do that with your car (assuming you actually drive it).— don simon
The problem here is that I’m unconvinced you truly care about unecessary driving (it’s more the driving than the car, i.e. the most polluting car parked in a garage does less damage than a small efficient one that’s constantly on the road on unncessary journeys).
Because this just seems like archetypal whataboutery. Someone’s 4×4 might be a problem, but it has nothing to do with mad American attitudes to guns.
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
I wouldn’t say it’s whataboutery, it’s simply testing the ethical basis for a proposed course of action.
Concorde seems to take a consistent approach to needless objects that can harm society whereas Don Simon only wants to ban harmful things that he doesn’t actually own.
I’ve mainly just been playing Devil’s Advocate.
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
*
don simon wrote:
*
don simon wrote:
*
Rich_cb wrote:
you’re slipping between words like ‘restrict’ and ‘ban’, which are not at all the same thing. I haven’t suggested a ban on guns, I’ve said that there is a conflict of rights, and that the right to life is more important than the right to own a gun. I am using the harm principle to justify a restriction on guns.
It is indeed a rabbit hole – ethics is difficult – but without principles to guide your thinking you will never solve any ethical problems. There are restrictions on all sorts of other items like trucks, bombs, cigarettes and so on, and events like the Nice truck bomb have led to considerable restrictions on all sorts of activities in France, while here in the UK we have put up with restrictions on everyday things because of terrorism for 50 years, so much that you probably don’t notice them if you weren’t alive before then, and in the USA large numbers of restrictions have been imposed since 9/11. I see no reason why guns should be exempt.
http://www.ethics.org.au/on-ethics/blog/october-2016/ethics-explainer-the-harm-principle
ConcordeCX wrote:
Restrict and ban are just two sides of the same coin. The use of either term doesn’t affect the central argument.
Your use of the harm principle is what I was challenging, if you have decided that the harm from guns is sufficient to warrant a ban/restriction then why are you not simultaneously calling for a ban/restriction on, for example, SUVs?
They clearly cause great harm to the population, they are very rarely actually required.
If you apply an ethical principle arbitrarily then it loses its credibility.
At a purely individual level it is easier to ethically justify owning a gun than an SUV when thinking in terms of public harm.
Rich_cb wrote:
you’re slipping between words like ‘restrict’ and ‘ban’, which are not at all the same thing. I haven’t suggested a ban on guns, I’ve said that there is a conflict of rights, and that the right to life is more important than the right to own a gun. I am using the harm principle to justify a restriction on guns.
It is indeed a rabbit hole – ethics is difficult – but without principles to guide your thinking you will never solve any ethical problems. There are restrictions on all sorts of other items like trucks, bombs, cigarettes and so on, and events like the Nice truck bomb have led to considerable restrictions on all sorts of activities in France, while here in the UK we have put up with restrictions on everyday things because of terrorism for 50 years, so much that you probably don’t notice them if you weren’t alive before then, and in the USA large numbers of restrictions have been imposed since 9/11. I see no reason why guns should be exempt.
http://www.ethics.org.au/on-ethics/blog/october-2016/ethics-explainer-the-harm-principle
— Rich_cb Restrict and ban are just two sides of the same coin. The use of either term doesn’t affect the central argument. Your use of the harm principle is what I was challenging, if you have decided that the harm from guns is sufficient to warrant a ban/restriction then why are you not simultaneously calling for a ban/restriction on, for example, SUVs? They clearly cause great harm to the population, they are very rarely actually required. If you apply an ethical principle arbitrarily then it loses its credibility. At a purely individual level it is easier to ethically justify owning a gun than an SUV when thinking in terms of public harm.— ConcordeCX
“why are you not simultaneously calling for a ban/restriction on, for example, SUVs?”
I am.
ConcordeCX wrote:
Excellent.
Consistency at last.
Although I wouldn’t mention it to Don Simon if I was you…
Rich_cb wrote:
But the Afghans and Iraqis/ISIS were hardly ‘crudely armed’. The Iraqis had much of Saddam’s old arsenal (and ISIS had a lot of Syrian equipment). The Taliban were the former rulers of the country. They were also fighting a foreign occupation force, unfamiliar with the country and not exactly fully-commited to total war, with their own survival at stake.
I just don’t buy that ‘blood of patriots…tree of liberty’ self-flattering stuff.
I think it has more to do with the US’s history regarding race and colonialism. It’s not ‘the gubmint’ they fear, its their fellow citizens, particularly those of different races.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077552
After accounting for all explanatory variables, logistic regressions found that for each 1 point increase in symbolic racism there was a 50% increase in the odds of having a gun at home. After also accounting for having a gun in the home, there was still a 28% increase in support for permits to carry concealed handguns, for each one point increase in symbolic racism.
I have sympathy for the guard
I have sympathy for the guard who ‘failed’. Imagine, you’re some middle-aged bloke whose job obliges you to have a gun strapped to your waist but you’ve had 8 peaceful years. Suddenly there’s a psychotic teen with an assault rifle somewhere in the school … and you’re meant to go in and confront him, with no preparation and no backup? Frankly, you wouldn’t fancy your chances. What a position to be put in.
The US has a juvenile addiction to firearms. Sorry US readers, your country is all fkced up on this issue and no amount of BS about ‘freedom’ can conceal that.
Miller wrote:
On the other hand, he had literally one job to do.
If you’re not prepared to confront an armed maniac who’s shooting children and teachers, then maybe being an armed security guard shouldn’t be your career choice. (Personally, I wouldn’t be confident that I would react well to being shot at which is why I’m not an armed guard).
hawkinspeter wrote:
From the job description on BBC News …
[i]Employed by the local police or sheriff’s office, they document incidents and can make arrests, as well as working on areas such as mentoring and education.[/i]
I don’t see engaging with active shooters as part of the job description. I would suggest that engaging in close quarter building combat is very difficult & stressful and therefore requiring a high level of training. Sending in a glorified admin to ‘waste’ the shooter is more Hollywood/Call of Duty
kitkat wrote:
I stand corrected.
However, why did he have a gun? Also, why has he now resigned and everyone is disparaging him (including me)?
I would have thought a glorified admin could do the job just as well with a notebook and pen.
hawkinspeter wrote:
I would suggest he had a gun as he was recruited through the police, i doubt there is anyone related ‘law enforcement’ in America that doesn’t carry a gun. I would imagine if he refused to carry a gun he would be out of the job!
Lets say it’s symptomatic of the whole situation we’re discussing and lets not forget the argument to arm teachers is gaining momentum
Regarding resignation, he probably knows the people who were murdered. The feeling of failure & remorse on his shoulders must be immense, he doesn’t need to be ground into earth over it. Of course if he comes out cock-sure & arrogant after this then I am happy to adjust my view but for now he has my sympathy
kitkat wrote:
I’d like to feel sympathetic for him, but I’ve run out of sympathy for Americans hiding behind guns.
There is no reason to openly carry a gun if you’re not trained/prepared to use it. With the number of school shootings they have, the deputy must have realised that one day he might be forced to choose between safety and duty.
I’m not criticising his lack of courage (no-one knows how you’re going to behave under stress), but his taking the job in the first place.
Also from the BBC article:
I don’t think it’s as purely admin as you’re making out.
hawkinspeter wrote:
And i think that’s the problem [hiding behind guns]. Guns are lethal and carry that message but what if you don’t have the steely resolve to enter into a situation and be prepared to kill or be killed BUT your job requires that you do. For the military, armed response, even regular police – yes. But for a police/school liaison officer?
If you say, “ah – he shouldn’t have had a gun then!” the answer to that is the American culture of everyone carrying guns, especially in law enforcement. This man is at the murky line of who is armed and who is not. As mentioned before, next is school teachers and then what next? Trusted pupils?
I said he was ‘glorified’ 🙂 As far as i can see it’s his job to be the police/school liaison officer and unless he had specific, regular training in that type of situation I think it’s a fantasy to believe he would be able to ‘neutralise the target’
kitkat wrote:
Alledgedly, three other Broward County Sheriff’s deputies were also outside the school and had not entered: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/23/politics/parkland-school-shooting-broward-deputies/index.html
hawkinspeter wrote:
Poor sod has being stitched up like a kipper and that orange piece of shit has slung him under the bus big time and turned the country against him, sickening. Would a cop (on their own) have gone in blind not knowing who or what he was confronting, or even where in the school it was happening, no chance, they aren’t even supposed to as touched upon up thread, even three up they’d have stayed outside and not gone into the building.
For people to think these things happen like they do in a hollywood film/tv series are in fucking dreamworld, go ask someone who might have gone house to house in NI to find an armed IRA member/weapons and how sphincter tightening that is. And that’s for guys who are training for that, proper professionals, this guy is a security officer with a gun strapped to him to frighten people off. He is NOT an armed response unit, he’s not a police officer and should never ever be expected to confront people in the situation he was in.
For trump to say that teachers could ‘shoot the hell out of them’ or whatever it was, was utterly stark raving mental, I’ve heard some fantastical shite from politicians but that is up there as the worst/most dangerous in history.
He must have been promised a lot of greenbacks to say what his puppetmasters are telling him to say!
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
well said. This poor sod is a distraction from the fact that the NRA is happy for children and other innocent people to continue to die as a direct result of their selfish, misguided obsession and venal greed.
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
Really? Picture the scene: Middle aged, 5ft2″, lady maths teacher, fired her gun on the range a couple of times 8 years ago when she bought it, just to find out how it worked. Her Beretta is in her handbag tucked away behind her desk. A 6ft4″ 17 year old bursts in carrying an AR15, capable of firing 800 rounds per minute. You really don’t think she’s going to be able to get to her handbag, get her gun from among her lipstick, purse and tissues, and take the guy down? What’s unreasonable about that?
Griff500 wrote:
Plenty of research (and examples) shows that your lady teacher is more likely to injure or self or her students, and even more likely to freeze in fear. Being on the other end of a gun in an enclosed space is literally terrifying. My brotehr in law is on the swat team, and they see it time and again, trained police officers when faced in training with gunfire and fight in tight quarters literally freezing on the spot. However, I believe that you’re referring to a particular instance where this was successful, and there’s another from a couple of years ago where the deputy principal chased a guy into the carpark and stopped him. However, for each one of those there are literally hundreds and hundreds of cases where it hasn’t worked.
Here’s a question. Have you ever seen someone on the street harassing someone else and gone and intervened? Why not? You’re probably armed in the same way as they are…
madcarew wrote:
Dudes (all round). What’s with the ‘lady’ shit?
Interestingly, it appears
Interestingly, it appears that US law enforcement officers do not have a duty to protect people:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html
Will Rapha discontinue their
Will Rapha discontinue their relationship with Giro?
@Rich_cb – I suspect that
@Rich_cb – I suspect that other countries have better facilities for dealing with mental health issues and it appears that the U.S. has a very toxic high school culture. They seem to divide themselves up (e.g. jocks, popular kids, nerds etc) to a greater extent than in other countries, but I don’t really know anything other than what I see in U.S. TV shows. Also, as you mention, they have a strange cultural attitude towards guns.
hawkinspeter wrote:
I remember being in a school in Wisconsin in the 70s, the story of the day was the kid who was expelled for taking a knife into school.
They seem to have progressed somewhat.
@Davel – I think you’re
@Davel – I think you’re forgetting about all the vampires killed by steaks over the years. There used to be a documentary about a wild, self-styled killer of vampires in the states and every week she’d be wantonly killing lots of vamps.
Rich_cb wrote:
I suspect it may be more accurate to say that the modern country is founded on the resentment and bitterness that followed the Civil War, and the gun nuts who bang on about individual freedom are probably the last gasp of those whose concept of gun rights and individual freedom didn’t and perhaps still doesn’t extend as far as black people. I’d be quite interested to see a demographic and geographic breakdown of peoples’ views and history of gun ownership. I suspect it is predominantly white, Southern, middle-aged+ and male.
The founding fathers, who included slave owners, were the heirs of the European philosophers who framed the concepts of freedom and individual rights. These rights are always, in the classical liberal tradition, limited only when they may harm other peoples’ enjoyment of their own, equal rights, to paraphrase the French delaration of the rights of Man and the citizen, which is heir to the same tradition.
It seems to me that the extreme gun lobby in the US, exemplified by the NRA, deliberately ignores the part of the equation which balances citizens’ rights against the harm they might do to others, to the point where it seems to be ‘my right to do whatever I want is unlimited’. They make a spurious appeal to the classical liberal tradition in order to cover their naked and aggressive selfishness, and believe their contingent political right to own a gun outweighs other peoples’ absolute natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
There is no natural right to have a gun, or indeed any weapon. The nearest we have is a natural right to self-defence, and that has to be proportionate to the threat – it would be disproportionate to stab someone in the throat because they might step on your toe. The gun lobby appears to have lost, or perhaps discarded, any sense of proportion they ever had.
— Rich_cb So everything that, in the wrong hands, can harm other people should be made illegal? That’s going to be a pretty long list. As has already been mentioned in this thread gun ownership does not necessarily mean gun crime.— ConcordeCX
Not sure if that’s a straw man or some other fallacy. But absolutely nobody says widespread legal gun ownership is the only cause of a higher incidence of gun crime, so you don’t need to argue against that one. But there is plenty of evidence that it’s a major contributory factor.
Many things that can harm other people are already illegal. Are you arguing that tactical nuclear weapons and heavy machine guns and biological warfare agents should all be legal and available to the public? If not, then you’ve already accepted the general principle of banning things that can, in the wrong hands, harm others…and hence abandoned your own argument in advance.
(And I tend to think ConcordeCX’s take on the roots of gun culture is a more accurate one than the ‘fear of oppressive goverment’ nonsense that you seem to have swallowed uncritically)
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
The point is that there is no clear connection between levels of gun ownership and levels of gun crime so you need to look at other factors. Gun culture is far more important than the guns themselves.
You’re welcome to your own opinion for the motivations behind gun ownership but the idea of armed citizens being a bulwark against tyranny is well established.
You might find this article on the topic interesting:
https://www.vox.com/2016/8/22/12559364/second-amendment-tyranny-militia-constitution-founders
Rich_cb wrote:
Not sure if that’s a straw man or some other fallacy. But absolutely nobody says widespread legal gun ownership is the only cause of a higher incidence of gun crime, so you don’t need to argue against that one. But there is plenty of evidence that it’s a major contributory factor.
Many things that can harm other people are already illegal. Are you arguing that tactical nuclear weapons and heavy machine guns and biological warfare agents should all be legal and available to the public? If not, then you’ve already accepted the general principle of banning things that can, in the wrong hands, harm others…and hence abandoned your own argument in advance.
(And I tend to think ConcordeCX’s take on the roots of gun culture is a more accurate one than the ‘fear of oppressive goverment’ nonsense that you seem to have swallowed uncritically)
— Rich_cb The point is that there is no clear connection between levels of gun ownership and levels of gun crime so you need to look at other factors. Gun culture is far more important than the guns themselves. You’re welcome to your own opinion for the motivations behind gun ownership but the idea of armed citizens being a bulwark against tyranny is well established. You might find this article on the topic interesting: https://www.vox.com/2016/8/22/12559364/second-amendment-tyranny-militia-constitution-founders— FluffyKittenofTindalos
I’m not a fan of the Cato institute, to say the least. Have been not a fan of them since at least the mid-90s, when encountering some of their Ayn Rand fan prospective employees. I don’t have much time for libertarianism, on the whole.
Also, I’m not a fan of the almost religious-like way Americans worship their founding fathers. as if they were the source of all truth, rather than just being a group of wealthy white slave-owners (eager to avoid having to pay the bills to the Brits for defeating their enemies for them) with a limited perspective on the world.
Hell, one of their grievences with the British was that the colonial masters stirred up the slaves to rebel against the Americans (that whinge even got into the national anthem and very nearly ended up in the declaration of independence).
But, as I say, I don’t care what Americans decide about their domestic gun laws, their country, their choice. Just as long as they don’t export their attitudes to the rest of the world. It’s less their gun laws that irk me than the weak arguments they use to justify them.
For such a young country they are weridly backward-looking.
I’d much rather encounter Don
I’d much rather encounter Don Simon driving a 4×4 than him rabidly waving a gun down the road.
hawkinspeter wrote:
Good job the Audi has gone.
.
.
The whole ownership of 4×4
The whole ownership of 4×4/SUV/MPV is a distraction from the initial topic, but I’ll take the bait and point out that the problem is not necessarily the vehicle but more how it is used.
I own a 7 seater MPV, it is always used with at least 3 people in it and did regularly get used with 7 people (now it’s mainly 5/6 + dog).
Does it use more fuel than a small car? I get at least 50mpg on average so probably not.
Does it produce more particulates than smaller cars? Probably when compared with one smaller car, but for the amount of people (or people + dogs) I regularly carry it would require multiple small cars which would probably be worse.
Weeks can go by without me using my car as I use my bicycle for practically every everyday travel need (shops/commute/school run/ errands etc.).
My (ex) Wife has a small and very economical small car. She uses it every day to travel the <1 mile to the train station as well as to drop of my daughter (when she has her) at school (again <1 mile) and for the trips to the shops (you guessed it, <1 mile)
I believe that in this comparison that my MPV is probably a lot better than the referenced smaller car.
So don’t make judgements on people just because of the type of car they own, it has just as much to do with how the vehicle is used as to what vehicle it is!