Warthog and AndyT are right - from a US perspective, it's a reasonable question. Most of us know that guns are a normal part of everyday life, up and down the Americas. Many of us have friends, expats and citizens, who have guns in their homes, in their businesses, sometimes on their hips. Culturally, it can be a bit odd for us, but that's part of travel, no? And even this European castrati appeaser red gets a kick out of letting off a few rounds in a Nicaraguan backyard every now and then. Bangs are fun. Cordite smells exciting. Coconut shies are made for Colt Commanders.

But that wasn't what created the stir. The noisy reaction was to one poster talking gleefully about murdering another human, both here and in another thread, in a tale smudged with sniggering smilies and home-run high fives. He's either a childish fantasist, a genuine killer, or a divisive troll. Whatever the answer, he's not the kind of fella who's gonna be especially helpful round here. My angry, abusive words were admittedly fuelled by a dozen pints of Guinness, and I'm sorry about the mess that the mods must have found in the morning, but this really ain't the place for that kind of vigilante dick-swinging.

And back to the original question, just in case it was genuine. It's a really bad idea to cross borders, travel foreign countries with an unregistered, concealed weapon. If you get caught, you'll do hard time in a very unpleasant nick. If you don't get caught (which means the gun's stashed, inaccessible and consequently useless), you'll still be worrying about getting caught everytime you see a roadblock, and that will eat into the trip's smiles. And if you get in a situation where you have to use it - well, as has been said - you'll either use it decisively, and have to deal with the corpse and the clean-up, or you'll have it swiped and stuck up your ass. Which will be like being in that unpleasant nick, but without the tenderness...

Make the trip, forget the gun, move quickly through the seedier border towns that spawn the lurid headlines, dive into the Mexican interior and have the un-armed time of your life.

Suerte, Dan

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Que el cielo exista, aunque mi lugar sea el infierno...

Well spoken.

This is precisely my reasoning even though I consider the right to weaponry to be even more fundamental than the right to free speech.

Pepper spray while it has its limitations is a very reasonable compromise.

Pepper Spray can confer a substantial advantage even in the case of multiple adversaries or blunt or edged weapons. (carry a big can and be ready to spray and run)

Fox Labs makes the best hottest stuff available.

I think this is another wind up, but in case it is a practical though:

Pepper spray (and Tazer before anyone else suggests the things) is an offensive weapon in most of the world. You go to prison for owning it, you go to prison for assault if you use it, you go to prison for murder if you spray someone who's body can't handle it and they die. You also have the same issue you'd have with a small gun; injured/sprayed/fried people scream for their mates, call the police and go get their own weapons to look for the bloke who did it and stands out like a sore thumb even if he has made it thirty miles down the road.

Without getting into political debate (we'd no doubt disagree) which is for another site, the practicalities say no to any weapon, especially anything that has no other purpose.

If people really are that insecure, maybe do a self defense course or take up boxing or something? The men with guns can't confiscate your hands or head at the first border post.

Andy

In much of Central and South America (which is the forum we are in) pepper spray is legal.

I´ve had a bottle lashed to my vest for the last 35,000 km without problems.
Also have met half of dozen other riders doing the same thing.

Frankly, I can´t even begin to wrap my head around a society so feminized as to consider pepper spray an offensive weapon.



Psychobabble. The fact someone is armed gives you no insight into their mind.

I´ve done a good bit of Krav Maga and numerous oriental styles. I still prefer to have a can of pepper spray on hand to tip the scales in my favor.

In fact, many people who legally carry concealed weapons keep some pepper spray around so they have a less than lethal option on hand.

You can´t legally shoot an unarmed aggresive drunk but you can spray him.

This is actually viewed as a de-escalation of force in many States.

Feminized society? Are you kidding me? Pepper spray sitting on a shelf is innocent. Pepper spray sprayed into somebody's face is a weapon. Same logic applied to guns, and BitTorrent...its all how you choose to use.

Hell if you limit yourself to guns, pepper spray, etc. as your options to escape tense/hot situations; then you're equally guilty as those folks that think overland bikes must have a the GS suffix or knobby tires to make it around. You underestimate the cleverness of the human mind to the same extent you'll never understand the intention of someone brandishing a weapon: the possibilities are infiinite.

Bottom line: if you choose to carry a weapon you better be prepared to kill the person and deal with the consequences. Because if you don't, whatever may happen to you could be viewed as self defense/preservation

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edde
93 BMW K75s
www.motoedde.com

Now you´re getting nasty. ;-)

The best protection I regularly carry with me on the bike is probably a grin and a handshake. Easy to get out, disarming, weighs nothing and carries no legal liability. Has got me out of a lot of tricky situations and even turned what looked like trouble into a free meal a few times. Looking like shit probably helps too.

My goodness, did that make me laugh.....probably a wind up, but just in case...:

Probably translates as "Shoot first, ask questions later"?

So, does that mean you were obliged to type that with the barrel of a Magnum, otherwise it doesn't count?

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Adventure: it's an experience, not a style!
(so ride what you like, but ride it somewhere new!)

I´m entirely serious.

Governments are instituted among men to protect their rights. Collective rights are merely extensions of individual rights. This includes the right and means of self defense.

Just because you work for Hugo Chavez or George Bush doesn´t give you any magic powers or privileges the rest of us do not have.

Honestly, your explanation above does little to explain your perspective to me. All the same, I was not raising any questions about the "right to bear arms" per se, although I do think its out-dated and should be irrelavant in a well-balanced society, but that's just me...

What I was questioning was the logic of your remark that I then quoted. You essentially stated that as far as you were concerned the right to bear arms was more important than the right to free speech.

I find it ironic that without free speech no one would be even able to voice objection to, or support for, fire arms.

Does it not seem strange that these priorities mean that you place expression of opinion lower than being able to shoot someone?

That is a scary thought to me. Personally, I think guns do nothing for security in a society, they only up the stakes but I don't want to be drawn into a guns are good/bad debate.

However, in Britain I am not allowed to carry a gun. I do not feel disempowered by this. I am allowed to express my opnions and loosing this would disempower me.

Bottom line, I don't get the impression you really thought about what is meant by what you wrote...

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Adventure: it's an experience, not a style!
(so ride what you like, but ride it somewhere new!)

The majority of societies are not well balanced for any significant period of time, say, 200 years.

I mean it more even broadly. Free speech is predicated on personal security.

In the extreme case, if you are dead you can´t exactly express yourself.

A more subtle variation: If you depend on another entity for your personal security then that entity can dictate the terms of your speech.

Ask the Estonians how that works. They should still remember.

Well, that is a little hard to substantiate, given that the world has changed infinitely in the last 100 years alone. There is no society that has been as much flux as the western world is today. Is it unstable: not especially, it is merely morphic....


That extreme case you cite is a fair point but in response to your more subtle perspective: Firstly personal security is a subjective thing. Some people just lock their doors, some sleep with a crow bar under the pillow, some an MP5.
Secondly, if you say that an entity that provides your security also controls your freedom of speech, you are saying that democracy does not work, as which ever entity is set to govern, it cannot be trusted to protect your rights.

I do not feel, living in Europe that our rights are not protected, that we are not protected or that our freedom of speech is curtailed as a result of not being armed.

Thirdly, I do not feel that the Estonian occupation by Soviet forces is an appropriate example. The dependency of which you speak was enforced, not chosen. Estonian security was not high on the agenda, as 60% were carted off to the Gulag. That bears no comparison to say "a USA" where you elect a president using a consitution where the 2nd amendmetn has been repealed.

More realistic would be other democracies where people have elected their protecting body but do not, themselves, own weapons eg most of Europe, Japan (as far as I'm aware) etc. Are these places full of oppressed opinion?

A state where one's rights are ultimately upheld by one's ownership of a deadly weapon sounds a few too many steps close to anarchy...

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Adventure: it's an experience, not a style!
(so ride what you like, but ride it somewhere new!)

The only thing wrong with Latin America are the outrageous Yanks who move in and terrorize the place. I won´t get into too many examples that I witnessed of absolute stupidity with the exception of one.

While celebrating 2007 New Year´s Eve in Mexico with quite an international gathering of travellers, a two bit punk of about 40 years old from San Diego, CALIFORNIA sucker- punched me because he was jealous of my cruiser. So I beat the s**t out of him. I had no gun or pepper spray.NICE WAY TO START THE NEW YEAR:

What , also, pi**sed me off were the number of Yanks trying to pass them selves off as Canadians. I am a Canadian.

Since I managed to ride from the arctic circle in Alaska, all the way to Ushuaia, and one of my citizenships is USA, I'll chime in.

Don't take a gun. It's dumb.

Do take pepper spray. It saved my ass in JuJuy, Argentina. Mine was actually bear spray, left over from Alaska. It was legal in Canada (guns are NOT legal in Canada) and if it wasn't legal from Mexico south, not a single cop told me it wasn't. I'd have to guess, but I'd say my bear spray was commented on by at least one cop in every country. If it was illegal, none of them said anything.

In JuJuy, in a hostel, I was confonted by 3 drunk argentinia 20-somethings. They tried to rob me. Lucky for me, they were drunk. They told me to give them my money. I told them it was in my tank bag. It took me some time to fumble through it and find the pepper spray that I hadn't thought about in ages. I couldn't even remember how to use it. They had no idea what it was, probably because it didn't look like any regular pepper spray. I gave them one little warning shot off to the side. That was all it took, and I was safe.

I like Laser Jocks idea of having it clipped to my riding jacket, but I don't know where I'd put it. Bear Spray comes in a pretty big bottle.

In Alaska and northern Canada I rode with it clipped to the outside of my tank bag. Around camp I wore it on a belt, gun-slinger style. Lots of other campers (Canadian and American) also wore it on their belts.

What I really liked about the pepper spray is that it's non-lethal. The consequences were not the kind that would take me to jail. I didn't bother calling the police. I just got on my bike and rode away. The boys I sprayed had runny noses and teary eyes- not holes in their bodies.

I am 100% sure that, if I'd had to make a police report, I would have been vindicated. It was me against three.

I am 100% sure that if I had not used the bear spray, I would have been robbed, and probably beaten up. It was a very tense situation.

I've traveled, pretty much solo, to about 35 countries. I don't own a hand gun. I don't support the NRA but I do agree with pretty much everything that Laser Jock said.

By the way, if any of you haven't met Laser Jock... he's a pretty cool guy, he's traveled all ove the world, and there is no way I would ever pick a fight with him. I don't think he stopped smiling during the entire two hours I met him. He's as good an ambasador for his country as any other travelar I've met.

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Latin America Ride Report
Wisconsin to Alaska Ride Report