"They're Trying To Take Our Guns. Why Not Their Bikes?"

"Bicycle Accidents Kill More Children Than Guns, But You Don't See Calls To Ban Bikes."

That is the title of an editorial Dean Weingarten wrote for Ammoland.  According to statistics he cites from the Center for Disease Control's Database, there were 2467 "unintentional pedal cyclist deaths"--for a rate of 0.18 per 100,000-- of children aged 0 to 17 from 1999 to 2017.  During the same period, according to the CDC statistics Weingarten uses, there were 1994 "unintentional firearm deaths" of children in that same age group, for a rate of 0.14 per 1000,000. 

To be fair, Weingarten reports that both figures are dwarfed by the numbers of children who died unintentionally as occupants of motor vehicles, in "unknown situations, motor vehicles," or from suffocation, drowning or a half-dozen other causes.  Still, he uses the disparity between the unintentional deaths by bicycle and by firearm to try to make the case that guns are unfairly blamed for children's deaths.

He may be right about the burden of blame borne by firearms, in part because the numbers of children accidentally killed by firearms has been trending downward.  But he is using that fact, and the greater number of deaths by bicycle, to rail against proposals to require gun owners to keep their weapons locked and unloaded.  Such a requirement, he claims, keeps gun owners from using their weapons in self-defense.  

Whatever the validity of that argument, using bicycles as the "straw man," if you will, does nothing to support it.  For one thing, a child isn't going to hurt him or herself by finding a bicycle in the attic or garage, as he or she can by finding a loaded gun in daddy's desk.  

This image was included with Dean Weingarten's editorial.  

More to the point, though, is this:  Even though guns outnumber people in the US, an American kid is more far more likely, at any given moment, to ride a bike than to chance upon a gun.  When that kid is on a bike, he or she will spend more time riding than he or she would in the presence of the firearm.  And, finally, it's harder to control where and in what conditions a kid rides than it is to keep a child away from a gun, or to ensure that the gun can't be fired accidentally.  

So Weingarten's argument that bicycles are more dangerous than guns to children doesn't hold up.  Even so, he tries to use it to bolster an even flimsier--and blatantly sexist--argument that lawmakers (Democrats, mainly) claim that they want tighter gun regulations "for the children" to pander to non-gun owners, "most of whom are women," according to Weingarten.  On the other hand, he says (probably correctly) that most gun owners are men.  

He ends his article with an even clumsier attempt to appeal to emotion:  "But the real elephant in the room is why are we not calling for bans on bikes?" (sic) Of course, that piles yet another fallacy onto an argument full of fallacies:  How in the world can he, or anyone, compare banning bicycles to keeping guns locked and unloaded? 

Bikes And Guns

I've never been too keen on guns.  Now, I'm not one of those people who thinks that getting a gun can turn someone into a mass murderer or serial killer.  (It seems that about 95 percent of the people I've met in the academic world believe something like that.) Two of my uncles were hunters; I simply never had any desire to join them.  And, although I had firearms training in my youth, I have  never had any inclination to own or use a firearm.

Most of the cyclists I know aren't gun enthusiasts, either.  I've known one cyclist who shot for sport, but only at inanimate targets on designated shooting ranges.  Other than that former riding buddy (a woman, actually!), the worlds of bicycles and guns have never, in any way, intersected for me.

What I just wrote would astonish or confound a cyclist of the 1890's.  Then, not only was it common for cyclists to carry "pieces" with them; it was more or less de rigeur.  And, Sears and Roebuck as well as other retailers offered revolvers, pistols and rifles designed especially for cyclists!

What's more, a few companies, such as Iver-Johnson and, yes, Smith and Wesson (!) actually made both guns and bikes.  The cities in which most firearms were made, such as Worcester, Springfield and Fitchburg in Massachusetts; Hartford, CT and Paterson, NJ, were also centers of the bicycle industry.l  Similarly, Birmingham and St. Etienne  also were the capitals of bike- and gun- making in England and France, respectively.  (They were also the centers of their nations' steel industries.)

As best as I can tell, guns made for cyclists differed from others in that they had shorter barrels so that they could fit into jacket or vest pockets.  Also, firearms for cyclists had mechanisms that prevented them from firing accidentally.   It would be an especially important feature, I think, for those who mounted "penny farthings" or high-wheelers, as riders tended to fall off them more often than those who pedaled "safety" bicycles.

The connection between firearms and bicycles extends, not surprisingly, to bicycle components.   Machine guns first became part of warfare during World War I.  A French soldier would study their mechanisms and use them as the basis for what remains, to this date, one of the greatest innovations in cycling:  Le Cyclo derailleur, which Albert Raimond designed and began to manufacture in 1923.  It is said to be the first reliable and practical derailleur made, and was seen on tandems in England into the 1970's.  Raimond would move to England and, with Louis Camillis, founded the British Cyclo gear company.  Their freewheels and other parts (including the derailleur, which became the Cyclo Standard) owed much in their designs and manufacturing techniques to the armaments used during the so-called Great War.

Cyclo Standard derailleur, 1930's.  From Disraeligears.

Today, few people make any connection between bicycles and firearms or warfare.  But, for better or worse, the development of the bicycle and that of firearms were once inseparable.  I wonder how our bikes today would ride, shift and brake had they not been such a relationship between wheels and revolvers.  Would frames have brazed-on brackets for carrying short rifles?  Hmm...