One pedestrian death caused by a bicyclist's negligence and DU explodes with anti bicycle venom..

[LadyHawkAZ]

68. OK...

I don't mind taking the bait, just this once, even though I've been trying to avoid the gun threads like plague.

Bicycles should be taxed and licensed and require training. They want to be recognized as legitimate vehicles with the right to be on the road- fine, I have no problem with that, so let's treat them like any other vehicle on the road. Courses could be offered in school for various grades, and people could learn some basic common sense like "Don't ride three abreast on narrow country roads so you can chat with your buddies, it hold up traffic" and "Yes, the stoplight applies to you, too" and "It's a much better idea to crack this here replaceable plastic helmet than your irreplaceable skull" and all the other little things that all riders should know but don't. I had to do training for my drivers license and motorcycle endorsement, it won't kill people to do it for bikes- quite the opposite. How this is "outrageous venom" I don't know.

Most of what I just said is also true of guns. Just insert some different rules.

It will not undermine the 2nd Amendment to require safety training and licensing, like we do for other dangerous items with potential for mass harm- like cars. Here's the problem though- people get killed all the time, every day, by idiots in cars who are drinking, yapping on their cell or just plain don't know how to drive. We've even had people deliberately drive into crowds before. More people die daily from drunk drivers than were killed in the Aurora shooting. But we don't have an angry mob calling for the banning of all cars every time there's a drunk driving death or someone falls asleep at the wheel, or calling all car owners bad names and making snide remarks about their penis size. It's just possible there's a lesson there, if you think about it.

There's an understandable tendency to overreact to any tragedy and start Monday-morning quarterbacking on how it could have been avoided- I've noticed people coming from one direction with "Shoulda shot back!" and others from the other direction with "Shoulda banned guns!". I would like to issue the gentle reminder that in any society that contains humans, there will never be a way to avoid all tragedies; advocating courses of action, in anger, that would ultimately make things worse is not a good way to move forward.

And that's my first and last word on the subject. I will now commence trashing the gun threads like everyone else.