Got shot at today during the commute home. Took a hit from a BB gun in the arse from a car demanding I juggle for them. The shooter escaped on foot. Police rolled up in eight squad cars with tracking dogs.
Lesson learned - when a car load of kids armed with BB guns ask me to unicycle and juggle for them don’t wait for the light to turn green! It’s a tough neighborhood. Perform on command or risk your bloody arse!
Straightarrow was fast enough to out run the bullets when he was shot at in Seattle! I’m a little slower than Kevin and this kid didn’t miss.
Dear oh dear, that’s very intimidating. I get youths hanging out of cars shouting abuse at me just because I am on the unicycle – but this is UK not USA so guns are not common as a form of expression!
That is really scary and sad…I don’t get it though, the kid was in a car, shot at you, and then jumped out of the car and ran away? Were you able to give the police a good description of the car?
The way things seem to be headed around this city, you may have been lucky it was only a bb gun! Where were you at?
Every time a carload of kids drives by I get a bit scared inside, wondering what they might do. Most of the time it’s fine and they are just looking, but I had one crew try and scare me by speeding up and swerving towards me like they were going to run me off the road.
I am sorry to hear about that incident. But frankly, I am not too surprised by something like that in a country where wearing a weapon is considered as a constitutional right and even toddlers have guns.
It’s way to piss off a unicyclist wife when he calls home and tells her he’s been shot. Stupid little PUKES!!
The police were called, the shooter, ran but they were waiting for him when he got home. Hopefully they convinced his parents to do the right thing.
BB Guns can be dangerous… there was a 2 yearold child killed here a few years ago with one … thats why Scotland is currently working on legislation to licence them
Stuff like that doesn’t happen in Montana. More guns than people here (yes, really), and not much gun violence. Around here there is a decent chance the punks will get shot back at and they know it, even from Unicyclists.
… I question the wisdom of placing myself standing infront of a car blocking the getaway of some dumb punks that had just shot me trusting they would not do something even more stupid during the standoff waiting for police backup.
I’m surprised the police didn’t have a “safety” lecture for me when it was all done and over.
But would any unicyclist ever be interested in some one else’s view on what is “safe”?
NOT! (uniShark still rides on ice (and I did today also))
The solution to the gun problem is not more guns, its less.
We had a school shooting here in Scotland in 1995 (the tennis player Andy Murray was actually in the class it happened to) where 14 children were killed as far as I can recall. After that hand guns were totally banned right across the UK. We have never had assault rifles and you can only get a shot gun or a hunting rifle after vigourous checks and an interview with the police.
Legislation has been tightened up since then so there is a now 5year prison sentence for posession of any ileagle fire arm and if you actually use one your more likely to have a 10 year sentece. They even imprisoned a special services soldier for having an illeagal firearm recently, although they did reduce it to a suspended sentence due to some mitigating circumstances.
Last year in the UK as a whole there was 8 gun related deaths and 0 in Scotland … if you do the math that would be the equivilant to 56 deaths if we had the same population as the US … quite a bit short of the nearly 30,000 gun related deaths in the US each year.
There is no talk of our leaders becoming dictators because we have no guns and we need to somehow keep our government in check as I constanly hear when I am in the US.
