Attention: I’m entering dangerous water. Political rant on guns (But with a bike twist as that is what I do).
Many of you saw the video I posted yesterday of me crashing after a small drop into the halfpipe at fantasy Island. It was not a big jump, and it made me think of Napoloen Dynamite attempting a jump only to catch no air, hit a cinder block and rack himself. However, that has nothing to do with my point on guns, just an aside.
Here is the video if you care to see it. While there, Please like The Damion Alexander Team on Facebook. My moment of grace, followed by…
For nearly a decade I have put in about 500 hours a year in the saddle. I have been riding bikes since I was three. I’ve been jumping off things that most people considered nuts from about that age. At least half of that is on a MTB and even though I don’t have the best skills, I rarely crash. I learned a long time ago that bikes have a tendency, like always, to go in the direction I look. You don’t even need to try. It just happens. So, if you go off a jump and look at the boulder hiding in the grass and take your eyes off the landing, you tend to go towards the rock. Oh, by the way, hidden in that grass is a boulder that I used very successfully to stop my momentum as I slid towards it. I know that if I had turned my eyes back on the trail, I would not have gone down. My arms were a little stiffer than they should have been, but the landing was smooth and if I had done what I know to do, what I have trained myself to do in those thousands of hours, to look where I wanted to go, I would have less bruises and scabs at the moment. But I panicked. In a moment of stress I did not respond as I trained. Fortunately, the only one who was at risk of injury was me.
So what does this have to do with Guns? I have seen many posts, articles, meme’s about how someone is packing heat so that in the remote chances someone pulls a gun they are in a position to respond and not just be sheep ready for slaughter. As much as this concept makes sense, very few people are actually trained to respond in these situations. It is not just a matter of pulling out your gun and dropping the bad guy. The chances are there are other people who you will hit. Your mind is not going to function clearly and your aim is likely to be off. Now I fully expect someone to comment that they know their skills and how they will respond. They have been shooting their whole life. They go to the firing range on a regular basis. If there is a shooting, I hope that person is present. They might make a difference, but based on my experience, the chances are they will freeze up, miss the target and potentially injure and kill someone other than the active shooter. It’s just like what happened to me on the little jump.
I feel in the greater scope of the conversation on all things in life, not just bikes and guns, we do go in the direction we look and find what we are looking for. If we are focused on a violent solution to a dire situation, we will find it. If we look at diplomatic options we will find those as well. I’m fairly certain I don’t want to live in a world where everyone feels a necessity to carry guns. It’s hard to believe that anyone want’s that, but the course we are headed on makes it feel like the Soviet/US nuclear buildup of the cold war. Back to the bike analogy, we are looking that boulder straight on, we are going at it fast, it’s going to hurt if we hit it, but we are still have control and the ability to look at other options.
Personally, I have no issues with gun ownership. I do not want to see all guns abolished or the rights of the constitution limited. I just recognize that arming everyone I not likely to solve the issue.
So ends my political rant. Personally, I recommend selling all of your guns, buying Mountain Bikes, and going where the only shooters you might see are hunters.