bronco78 wrote:Funny, some of the same comments and attitude seen here in this thread, come from Anti gun owners about them crazy people that have to have a gun. Or carry a LOADED one in public
![ToeTap :totap:](./images/smilies/toetap05.gif)
I don't think that's an apt analogy. Consider this:
I don't particularly care if someone wants to go 193 mph on a bike. I used to regularly attain about 160 mph on my race bikes on the back straightaways at Willow Springs and Riverside International Raceways. I never had that kind of horsepower to go 193, and nobody made a street bike back then that would go that fast on a roadrace course without about $250 large put into it. But.......that 160 was on a closed course racetrack—not the public highways. The likelihood of involving another bike if I went down was low enough ('cause I was usually near the back of the pack
![Embarassed :oops:](./images/smilies/icon_redface.gif)
), and besides, the other guys paid their money just like I did to be out there, and they assumed the risk of possibly crashing in order to have the chance to go as fast as they could possibly go—and it didn't put any pedestrians, soccer moms, or commuter buses at risk....only us. Conversely, driving 193 mph on public thoroughfares in
any kind of weather is kind of like firing your pistol into the air....or down the street....inside the city limits. You might
not hit anyone, but then again, you might. Without a pretty good reason, do you really have that right? On the other hand, if you trot yourself down to the local shooting range, you can blaze away all you want in relative safety. Either way, if you want to splatter yourself all over the pavement, that is certainly your right.....just as it is your right to go put a bullet in your own kneecap. But the only way you can do that without risk to anyone else is in a controlled environment, and you don't really have the moral authority to inflict those risks on other people without a very good reason.....such as shooting in self-defense, or driving at high speed in order to evade someone who is trying to kill you.
You have to remember that you're right to swing your fist ends at my nose. Ditto driving 193 mph in the rain on a public thoroughfare. Other people on the roads have rights too. And one of those rights is the right to not be taken out by a jackass driving without regard to the public safety, and the likelihood of that happening goes up exponentially as the speeds involved go from simple "speeding" to "just plain stupid." I don't care if his bike will go 500 mph, just like I don't care if you or someone else owns a Dillon M134 minigun. I just don't want anybody to use
either item in an irresponsible manner where it might negatively impact someone else's life.
I think
that is what most critics are responding to here—not that he had a bike that would go that fast. Does that make some kind of sense?
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, "Those Who Remain"
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