What they aren't saying is that cars are next. Firearms kill around 1400 per year in the USA, including police shootings, accidents, and murders. The problem is that 1400 a year isn't really that many, not compared to those people killed by cars. Cars kill 32,000 in the USA alone, every year. Some years its MORE. We've had 57,000 dead from car crashes a few years ago. And since we've already set precedent that the Tool IS the Weapon, then Cars are Murder-machines, same as Guns, only WORSE. That means that anything car related should expect to be treated just as viciously as things gun related are. It is coming.
"Nobody NEEDS a high capacity murder machine." Just because you've got a lot of kids doesn't mean you deserve to own a weapon that's killed 32,000 people last year. Owning one is the same thing as killing all those people yourself. That's the sort of predjudice being applied to gun owners since the Connecticut nutjob killed those children. The media doesn't seem to want todiscuss how crazy he was, only that the GUN was guilty.
Apply that same logic to cars. There will be limits set on the number and diameter of wheels. Special licensing of horsepower above a certain amount per pound of vehicle weight. Legal restriction on seating arrangements, air bags, belt types, and locks that prevent a vehicle from operating if a passenger is unbelted while the vehicle is in motion, perhaps with fines and points against the drivers license. Eventually, manual driving will be banned because only specialized experts with very expensive training deserve to operate motor vehicles manually. Just like guns have limits placed on them now. Eventually we'll be looking at special permits to operate a car without an Autodrive robot to control it for you. Google Cars is just the beginning of the Autodrive. BMW and Mercedes are working on those too. In the end, it's going to mean banning cars from popular use, and the freeways will empty of all but the limousines and the few trucks carrying emergency supplies while the masses sit at home, helpless, or walk around, unable to get further than their own two feet can carry them. Perhaps by 2018 it will be illegal to drive, and by 2025 too expensive to do so. I really hope you like walking.
Government may do this directly, under popular outrage because cars killed 32,000 people in 2011, and probably an equal number in 2012. We raise a stink over gun deaths, but its 20 times more deaths caused by automobiles. When does the slaughter stop? Why can't we ban cars? After all, once the guns are gone, nobody can stop the tow trucks taking them away to be "recycled" for the important and deserving politicians doing "good works", handing over your tax dollars to the undeserving. That's how it works, right?
Only murderers NEED cars. I don't care how many kids you have to take to school. Bicycle or walk. Or have the common decency to move into town, you heathen murdering bastard! Having a drivers license is just a murder license. You're a terrorist, a killer on the loose. You're waiting for your chance to
I wonder how long before they ban cellphones? Texting while driving is dangerous. Take away the cars but texting while walking is dangerous too. Will they ban texting while walking near a street, because you MIGHT step in front of a Google autodrive car which might not have sufficient time to brake and may kill your stupid texting ass? Will there be cops and cameras to text you a fine using your phone and facial recognition software when it spots you walking with a phone in your hand, head down to read it? I'm sure Britain would do it first, but California would follow. After all, the software already exists. Britain is perfecting it as we speak. Will California start fining based on anything the computer witnesses you do while near one of those recognition cameras? Will you have to get rid of the cellphone just to jaywalk? After all, the phone can prove you were there because its got a signal and fake!GPS is running all the time to nail your position plus or minus 3 feet. That's enough to catch you in the street and prove it for a judge. How would you feel about being texted a fine right as you reach the middle of the street? How many unpaid fines before the police pick you up for behaving unlawfully? This IS the direction our nation is going with the guns and cars and food and phone laws. Is that the kind of America you want to live in?
I wonder how long before they ban fatty foods? "Do you have a license for that French Fry, Madam? Oho! Felony possession! You are under arrest for violation of the Transfat Ordinance of 2015." You'll be arrested, booked, and forced into re-education camps to overcome your filthy perverted eating habits, as you deserve. Fatty. Pervert! You'll have to register with the sex crimes division for eating transfats. Just as bad as a gun owner. Or a licensed car driver.
Yeah, its all fun and games till they take something YOU care about. How long before your Facebook posts get you fired? How long before refusing a call from a spouse is legal grounds for a divorce? I think we're becoming a Fascist nation, all thanks to the Nerfherders(tm) who want the world to be Safe so they can stop paying attention or being responsible for their own actions. Pathetic.
The biggest irony? Even if they don't have a "ban" on cars, they can still make licensing them really expensive. Throw in $15/gal gasoline (which is coming), self-driving cars, electric cars (which costs $60K), and eventually they'll be too expensive to operate unless you're actually Rich. At which point, it becomes unsafe to drive due to car jacking and violence, of the Palestinian Rock Throwing kind or the more serious IED kind. Hey, driving around with $7-20K in batteries in your car is a great motive for car jacking or kidnapping. We may end up with a world where cars are too unsafe to drive for security reasons.
The rest of us seem to be too obnoxiously proud to take scooters or bicycles seriously as commuter vehicles outside of goofy places like Davis or weird ones like San Francisco. As soon as you get into hills, bicycles become as much work as walking and once you're geared down to walking speed you may as well hop off and push it. I remain deeply annoyed at the legal refusal to enable scooters in California. They have to be cheaper than the gasoline they're replacing or it doesn't work. I just spent some time in Palo Alto and I have to say that's a great place for scooters... but I saw none on the road. Some bicycles, including after dark with no reflectors. Those are suicidal people hoping to die so they can stop suffering life any longer. Not a serious commuter vehicle. Real commuters need reflectors, blinking lights, bright clothing, the whole she-bang. A scooter would give them that, and at no real weight penalty since it's a powered vehicle, but they just weren't around. I saw sports motorcycles on El Camino Real (The Kings Road) but no scooters. I dealt with sports cars, passenger cars, vans, and trucks of many sizes, but no scooters. I really think this is one thing Vietnam is already doing better than we are. And how sad is that?
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