On Fri, 24 Jan 2003 21:14:51 +0100, Ric <
[email protected]> was popularly supposed to
have said:
>
><
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>> Anyone know what the legal situation is regarding accidents caused by dogs ? A friend was today
>> brought off his bike by a dog which ran into him following a call from his 'master'. Result was
>> damage to both bike and rider. Apparently the dog owner was not too concerned apart from offering
>> a casual "allright ? " before walking off .
>
>Realistically I think your friend will have to accept the loss as one of those misadventures of
>life. You can't realistically blame the dog.
>
>FWIW, a while back there was a thread on a similar subject on the yank dominated rec.bicycles.misc.
>There the majority view was that you should pull out the handgun that you should always carry when
>cycling, and blow the mut's head off. I suppose that is not unexpected, given their love of guns
>and killing.
That did used to be common practice, I hear. There is a sub-type of small handgun, produced around
the start of the twentiesh century when there seems to have been something of an explosion (hehe) of
new types of handgun.
On was a "Velo-dog" gun; small calibre (about .25 inch), rimfire, holding only three or four shots
and which had a folding trigger.
The idea seems to have been to shoot and injure (but not immediately kill) an attacking dog, and
thus allow the cyclist to make good his escape.
To put this in context, at the time it was apparently relatively common practice to shoot nuicance
dogs outright, without bothering about trying to catch/restrain them. All rather harsh, and these
days could only legally happen if the dog were attacking people or livestock, and could not
otherwise be contained.
Anyway, the velo-dog guns were produced only over a fairly timespan, for maybe 20 years or so, were
never very common and are now collectors' pieces, and the ammo for them has long since ceased to be
made, and a good thing too.
--
Dan Holdsworth PhD daniel.holdswort
[email protected] By caffeine alone I set my mind in motion, By the
beans of Java do thoughts acquire speed, hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning, By
caffeine alone do I set my mind in motion