Quote:
Originally Posted by
crgildart 
Where do they get them? Crooks can't "make" guns. Gun industry sells them legally to regular citizens. Crooks steal them from peoples' houses. Home owner goes and buys more guns, insurance even pays for the replacements. The more that this happens, the more guns crooks have, the more people are scared because so many crooks have guns and buy their own guns... which are eventually stolen by crooks. The gun industry LOVES this vicious cycle.
Not sure how this relates to what tools are good to take while skiing?
Thing about guns is, they are all tools. So are hatchets, as tromano noted, chainsaws, machetes, knives and for that matter canisters of kerosene or gas or propane. Dogs are both companions and, frankly, useful tools when they do what we want. All of these can be very useful in certain contexts in the outdoors. All of them can cause either serious accidents or be misused.
Go to England, where carrying a pocket knife can get you sent to jail, and if a burglar say, breaks in to your house, he's unlikely to have a gun, but you're no safer than here, you can't use deadly force to defend yourself, and odds are that he, as with many criminals, is more experienced with unarmed violence than you and, if he decides to beat you up and rape your wife, aw, stuff happens. As regards knives also being illegal in many cases over there, to quote Wiki, "Paradoxically, the acknowledged failure of previously-enacted anti-knife legislation in reducing the number of violent crimes involving a knife[43] has led to demands for even stricter measures.["
In short, liberals everywhere love to try to control what tools a man can use, where. What can be amusing is what happens when liberal economists look at guns, though. If they are intellectually honest, they tend to find that guns are very humane tools that make us safer.
In terms of skiing and riding, though, backpack space is at a premium. Practical economists, meaning people who do stuff in the outdoors, tend to pare down what they want to carry pretty quickly. I'm sure there's a member of some college faculty somewhere scheming on how to introduce "compulsory backpack laws" on the heels of mandatory helmet laws, just because it would be fun, but for the moment the people who use the outdoors are free within reason to do what they want. In Alaska, there's one answer dictated by choice and local conditions.
In Colorado, there's probably on average another. That's a good thing.
