The weapon can't be identified

 On the evening ride home from work on Friday of Memorial Day Weekend, I heard a vehicle horn start blaring well behind me. A slate-blue Chevy Silverado piloted by a skinny kid in his teens or early 20s swung around me with surprising clearance for his annoying continuous horn blast. His passenger was almost identical to him in every physical aspect: skinny, young, rednecky. I responded with the universal Big Shrug of WTF to indicate that I was confused but not intimidated. If they wanted to chat about it, I'd be right here.

The truck pulled into a convenience store on the left. I continued on my way, up the hill beyond that intersection, and down the other side. A couple of minutes later I heard the unmistakable sound of a vehicle being driven with hostile intent. An engine has a distinctive note when the driver is pacing an attack.

The blue truck swung around again, only slightly faster than I was riding, so that the passenger could throw a full beverage container at me. Or maybe it wasn't at me, but intended to hit in front of me and cause a crash or a flat tire. I can't be sure. All I know is that the can hit the pavement and burst, but did not explode, indicating that it was brand new, fresh, and probably nicely chilled from the convenience store cooler. Foam spurted out from multiple ruptures as the battered can skidded quickly off the road.

I responded with the Universal Gesture of Sarcastic Masturbation, in case they were inclined to stop and discuss exactly what their problem was. I mean, I can theorize about the diminutive size of their genitalia and general feelings of inadequacy that lead them to bully people who can't hit back, but I don't know. And how stupidly aggressive do you have to be to waste your money and a perfectly good beverage you just purchased?

I am very fortunate that such incidents are rare on my commute. But it only takes one to awaken the PTSD of more frequent and worse ones over the decades of putting up with motorists' shit. I always wonder about escalation, and what I might do to deter future aggression.

New Hampshire's permissive gun laws mean that I wouldn't have to think twice about tucking a handgun in the side straps of my pack, although they don't extend to plenary absolution if I use it. I've had this debate with myself many times before and always come to the same conclusion: the mere presence of a weapon might deter some people, but will give more calculating people plausible reason to say that they felt threatened. If they kill me, they get to make up the story to save themselves. Most of the time there are no witnesses except the participants. Even if there are other drivers around, they probably won't see anything in sufficient detail to refute the testimony of the survivors. Also, if I'm still up and in any condition to fire, the incident was not serious enough to justify the shot, no matter how much I might want in the heat of the moment to evaporate the back window of the vehicle as the cowards speed away.

The next day, I looked along the road to try to identify what the beverage had been. With all the foam on the rapidly moving can, I couldn't tell at the time. Unfortunately, nearly all of the litter along the highways consists of beverage containers. I will never know which one was used in the assault. Likewise, blue Silverados about 2014 vintage are extremely common, as are scrawny redneck boys who feel their manhood by bullying cyclists. When asked to identify the particular truck I could say, "It's the one with three or four small-caliber holes in the tailgate," but then I'll have to explain how I know those are there when I have already had to admit that they went by too fast for me to get the license number.

I have a mental list of things I'm glad no one has ever done to me. Some of them are so bad that I've never heard of them being done to anyone. I never publish the list, write it down at home, or even let myself think it, because I don't want those ideas reinforced in the universe. We're vulnerable out there. The people who are willing to relegate cycling to the status of a mere sport and hobby have a point there, as they give up vast swaths of territory that could be used for purposes both practical and fun.

Weapons I do know have been used include rocks, bricks, full beers, and a hammer. And of course there's the car or truck itself. Attacks with that might involve the whole vehicle or attempts to pop a door open at just the right time.

The next day, and on the days that have followed, traffic settled into routine indifference blended with reasonable caution. Most of us are completely willing to try to get along. Problems appear when numbers increase with summer residents and visitors who bring their attitudes from home. The percentage of hostile drivers might be barely higher, but a small percentage is still a larger number than we usually have.

Riders have been mowed down here in "the off season." There are certainly hostile local assholes. One of them allegedly said years ago that if he was diagnosed with a terminal disease and only had days to live, that he would put his plow on his pickup truck and go out hunting cyclists. But before the mountain bikers get too smug, bad actors will sometimes place wire snares on trails. It hasn't happened around here, but it's not out of the question.

Deadly traps would bring charges of premeditated murder if the victim died and the trapper could be identified. More likely someone just gets a nasty wound, and no one is punished for it. No matter where a collision or an attack occurs, the cyclist usually loses. Know that going in. It's still worth riding.

The advantage to road riding is that no one is likely to set a trap on an actual road. You can't dwell on the worst possibilities. Just ride sensibly. "Freedom isn't free" means more than just signing up for your country's wars.

Shoppers may safely graze

New Hampshire edges cautiously toward contact commerce. Our shop prepares for limited shopping of our store stock. Shields are up.

My weekly trip to the grocery store was uneventful. I wouldn't have worried much if I hadn't learned from local law enforcement last week that my adversary in the snack aisle incident is a local career criminal considered dangerous. I stepped up my precautions accordingly, as much as one can, short of digging a hole and refusing to come out. Given his CV, I can only hope that his attention span is short. But I do know how energizing a good grievance can be. I've arranged a daily check-in with the cat sitter to make sure that my dependents are cared for in case I don't make it home.

Occasionally I revisit the question of whether to pack some heat when I go out on the bike -- or any other time, for that matter. The answer keeps being the same: by the time you know it would be justified, it will be too late. And it would be useless against 90 percent, or more, of the perils that beset us as riders. As emotionally satisfying as it might be to face down a charging SUV with a barrage of lead, that has way more wrong than right with it. Besides, they seldom come straight at you like that. Those situations evolve rapidly and chaotically. As for career criminals with a history of assault, I readily admit that his skills are probably more honed than mine when it comes to a dust-up. If he were to appear with a gun, the most effective response would be a more dramatic weapon, like a flamethrower.

Other retailers have experienced violent assaults here and there around the country as self-styled freedom fighters literally fight back against the strong request to wear masks and respect distances as the coronavirus romps unchecked. I doubt if anyone who shops at our little outpost would make that much of a fuss. We'll probably just get some pitying looks and snarky remarks from the free and the brave among our clientele. Or they won't show up, knowing that we're wussies, and needing nothing from us anyway.

The people who do need us continue to bring in broken things. Last week it was a suspension rebuild on a full suspension mountain bike and brain surgery on an old Campy Ergopower shifter along with the usual degreasing and reanimation of the dead. This week? Who knows? I have to get in there and see. The queue probably has not shrunk much while I was out. I keep meaning to do a wrap-up of all the curve balls that make up yet another normal week, but the pile of supporting photos has become daunting. I'm at least two weeks behind already.

Guns and Bicycles

After years of mental drought and increasing depression, I suddenly received a request for some cartoons to be used in political advertising by a local group. They wanted clear, simple cartoons to illustrate various current political issues.

The first one was easy. It supports environmental science in governmental policy. I was able to spruce up a piece I'd sent them as a sample and submit it as the pay copy. But the second assignment supports gun control. I wrote about this dilemma on Brain Lynt today, so I won't repeat the whole essay here.

I researched hunting rifles so that I could try to present a nuanced situation as fairly as possible in a literally black and white graphic. The political group takes a firm position, but the case is far from simple. The two sides throw statistics and Constitutional interpretations at each other, and neither side is convinced. One single sentence in our constitution has made the country a great place to be a homicidal paranoid. The group that has hired me supports the "assault weapon" ban, and other measures to restrict firing rate and magazine capacity. Those seem sensible, so I wanted to see what the counter-arguments were.

Being a peace and love hippie type, I never got into guns and gun culture. I've shot guns, and had them pointed at me, but I wasn't turned on by the hardware or the activity. I have a couple at home for defensive purposes, but there again I'm more likely to grab something else when I hear a noise at night. Maybe I'll regret my life choices when civilization collapses next month and we're all suddenly living in the wild west again, but I do hear that it's easy to get a gun whenever you want one. That's one of the primary arguments against gun control. Apparently, you can go to just about any shopping center parking lot and find an arms dealer peddling Glocks out of his trunk. Maybe. Probably not.

As I read through various lists of "best deer rifles" I saw how the reviewers included something for everybody. Militarily-styled rifles were on every list, but they were never the first choice. The reviewers included them for people who were already inclined that way.

Outsiders come at the gun control debate viewing gun owners and users as a monolithic block, the way outsiders come at debates over cycling viewing all riders as a monolithic block. As soon as you look a little more closely you find gun owners who support various controls, based on their own point of view, just as you find riders who support specific types of riding. You can find regular users in either general category -- gun owners or bike owners -- who will support points of view held by outsiders who are partly or entirely unfamiliar with the details of either activity. Because ownership of either guns or bicycles encompasses such a huge cross-section of the population, there are few broad-brush proposals that don't severely inhibit the freedom of some users. When you're dealing with an activity protected in the Bill of Rights, you can't just brush it off unless you want to consider letting some other constitutionally-protected things get brushed off.

Not every gun user likes all guns. Not every gun user uses them for their lethal potential. All guns do basically the same thing, go bang and make a little projectile come flying out of the tube, but the power and destination of that little projectile can differ widely. Bicycles all appear to work basically the same way and do basically the same thing, until you look more closely at where they're ridden and how.

Guns still kill more people than bicycles do. Even if a gun owner doesn't use it for its lethal potential, guns weren't invented just for perforating paper or plinking cans. The desire to control their use is understandable. I support the concept. But the solution will not be something simple enough to depict in a single panel cartoon. As long as they're considered a legitimate part of daily life, and possession is enshrined as a right, any limitation on them risks impinging on what would be a justifiable use. Even militarily-styled weapons apparently have non-homicidal uses for lead-heads who want to deliver a lot of rounds in a hurry. If you're hunting something with no bag limit, that moves fast, you might want that quick-firing, shorter weapon. While I am not into killing for fun, and I wish no one else was either, that's a philosophical debate that can go on for several more centuries. In the meantime, it's legal in a lot of places.

Gunslinger Fantasy Land

A young man with a bushy chin beard, lots of body ink and a glittering galaxy of facial piercings was examining the display of tires that we offer. I recognized him as someone who had been a regular in the 1990s. Back then he had only started on his personal body decoration project. He was one of those people with pent-up energy that hinted at the possibility of fireworks. He didn't seem angry, but he did seem unhinged.

He must be somewhere either side of 40 now. The energy coming off of him as he stood at the tire display was somewhat cooler. Unfortunately, he is not much more coherent than he was back then.

I'd seen his truck outside. Among the splatter of window stickers was the inevitable Gadsden snake. He is apparently a fan of the young adult fiction of the Tea Party.

When he turned, I saw the handgun stuck in his belt. I thought at first that the gun was naked there, held in only by the webbing. Then I made out the tidy, minimalist holster.

Since New Hampshire did away with the requirement to have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, we've had to get used to the sight of armed men in places one would not normally have expected to see that level of combat readiness. As it was explained to me by a police officer, even an open holster constituted concealment, because the weapon could not be seen from every angle. A long gun over your shoulder would be A-OK. And now, with permitless carry, a handgun is a fashion accessory among those who love to be considered armed and dangerous.

At a public meeting in June, I noticed that the self-styled government watchdog who records many meetings on video and posts them on line also sports a handgun to demonstrate just how free he is. It's a thing now.

At its inception, the Second Amendment was symbolically important as a demonstration to authoritarian governments that, in this new Land of the Free, ordinary citizens would have the right to carry weapons and gather to bitch about whoever was in charge. Even so, I can imagine lobbyists from the National Musket Association jostling elbows at the Constitutional Convention and pestering incessantly to make sure that their interests featured prominently.

America was settled at gunpoint. But someone has to put down the weapon and pick up implements for farming and construction, or else you're all just chasing each other around the woods with guns. As a lifestyle, it could work. Sleep in a lean-to made of sticks. Shoot some animal for food. Shoot people with whom you disagree. But someone, somewhere, has to be a gunsmith, to keep all the trigger-pullers equipped.

America eventually relied less on hot lead and more on inventiveness, resource exploitation, and financial acumen. Into this more varied social environment the bicycle was born.

Growing up, I had the naive impression that we were trying to have a society in which people didn't look forward to shooting each other. I know people even now who don't even own guns, much less carry them everywhere. But my Second Amendment supporting friends assure me that I am living a dangerous fantasy and that a bloodbath could happen at any time. Don't you want to be able to return fire? Personally, I could, until my meagre supply of ammunition ran out, but I still don't think it's a good idea. And I never carry either the .25 caliber handgun that I got in the divorce or the shotgun when I go out. I was advised that the handgun is a better paper weight than a weapon. If the shooting starts, I guess I'll just have to elbow-crawl behind available cover and go in search of clean underwear.

Should I be admitting publicly that I'm not packin'? Now everyone will know that I'm no threat. But I could be lying, to fake y'all out.

If I was planning to make trouble, the first person I would take out would be the guy sporting the obvious gun. Do they think about that when they put on their costume in the morning?

Once I knew the gun was there, I could not forget about it. We looked at tires and wheels for a cheap old road bike he's fixing up, but half my mind was imagining circumstances in which one might whip out the gat and start blasting. Not that I expected him to do that right there and then, but that only fueled my swirl of speculation. If not here, where? If not now, when? I go for months at a time without wishing that I had a gun, and when I do, it's probably a good thing that I don't.

A gun is the very definition of dead weight. A hefty chunk to carry, it's only purpose is to kill. Wearily, its devotees remind us that humans are wild animals and not to be trusted. When they walk among us, armed, the point of view is more than theoretical. They've taken their fantasies out of their imaginations and forced the rest of us to take part. We're in their theme park now.