Sunday saw a wildfire burn through rural Colorado, drawing a multi-agency response during hot summer temperatures. Amidst the blaze, a Tesla Cybertruck was destroyed, burned to the ground as authorities fought to contain the fire, which broke out in scrubland on private property.
Per reports from the San Miguel County Sheriff’s Office, emergency crews attended the fire in the Coventry Hill area just after 1 PM on Sunday afternoon. Along with deputies from the San Miguel and Montrose Sheriff’s offices, Norwood Fire, Naturita Fire, and Paradox Fire crews also reported to the scene where a Cybertruck was on fire, along with a woodchipper it was towing behind. Thick black smoke could be spotted in the air as 30 firefighters engaged to suppress the flames. US Fish and Wildlife soon joined the fight, supplying additional crews and apparatus to help contain the blaze.
The efforts of emergency responders saw the fire 90% contained just two hours after crews arrived on scene. However, that wasn’t fast enough to save the Cybertruck caught in the blaze. The EV pickup was burned to the ground, leaving little more than a bare metal shell sitting in the dust. It’s a harrowing look at what survives—and what doesn’t—when a fire overtakes a vehicle.
It’s unclear whether the Cybertruck was merely caught in the blaze, or whether it may have been the cause of the fire. Either way, the destruction was all but total. As you’d expect from any vehicle, the truck’s interior is entirely gone, along with all the windows and the plastic components that typically line areas such as the front trunk. The front bumper and lights are also missing, as are all the tires, while the front right wheel has melted down to little more than a hub. The stainless steel panels have also suffered some deformation from the sheer heat.
Flipping around to a rear view, and the damage is even worse. The entire rear sail panel on the Cybertruck has melted and deformed into something unrecognizable. The entire rear tray of the vehicle is little more than ash and cinders. It appears that some of the stainless steel panels, as well as the rear aluminum castings have sagged or melted from the intense heat of the flames.
Interestingly, the Vermeer woodchipper trailer survived the blaze comparatively unscathed. Its tires remained intact, despite the dirt beneath the trailer suggesting at least some sort of scrub fire passed by underneath. There are also some soot or scorch marks on the trailer, closest to the Cybertruck itself, but much of it looks in fairly good condition.
We really don’t know what started the fire; what we do know is that the trailer appears to have held up better than the truck, which isn’t surprising since it doesn’t contain lithium ion batteries. It’s perhaps hard to understand how a scrub fire could be so intense around the truck to destroy everything not made of metal, while leaving the trailer behind relatively intact. Indeed, it’s entirely possible that an external fire engulfed the truck and trailer, which then may have caused a secondary fire to take place in the Cybertruck itself. It’s plausible that the intense heat of a battery fire may have caused the extreme damage seen in these images.
At present, authorities have stated that the cause of the fire is still unknown. The Autopian contacted the San Miguel County Sheriff’s Office for comment and is awaiting a response at the time of writing. Norwood Fire District indicated the matter was still under investigation on Sunday evening.
Until we have a decisive comment on what caused the fire, it’s difficult to draw any serious conclusions about what happened. However, what we can say is that even the stainless steel body of a Cybertruck is no match for fierce fire and flames. More as we have it.
Image credits: San Miguel County Sheriff – Colorado
Well, no loss there…
That may be the best looking Cybertruck I’ve ever seen.
There is a story behind the wood chipper attached to a Cybertruck…and I for one am interested in the what/who/why/when (eg…the 4 horseman of the Cyber apocalypse).
If I had to wager a guess, truck hit rock and battery fire ensued. Simple as that.
When fires ignite, they’re big and bright
Deep in the heart of Teslas
the lord’s work
*clap clap clap clap*
Shut up and take my updoot.
Considering how extremely localized it is and how the [insert joke name here] is right in the middle of it and has the most damage, seems pretty conclusive as to where it started, at least.
I’m just glad none of the firefighters got hurt. The one thing that worries me about EVs in general (not just Teslas, though they seem weirdly susceptible) is battery fires, and I’m glad training seems to be getting better about it, even if this required a bunch of extra resources.
The other thing I wonder about is what the air / environmental result of the burning of 100 kWh of Li-ion batteries is.
Generally speaking, not good.
Battery fire debris and the cocktail of fluids that result from efforts to extinguish them contaminate soil and water with metals, perfluorinated compounds and combustion-related polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).
With that said, even when the car doesn’t go up in smoke in someone’s field, only about 5% of lithium car batteries are being recycled at the moment (vs 99% of lead acid batteries), so wherever your dead Tesla ends up (and regardless of the degree of immolation) there’s a good chance it’s going to be leaking bad stuff into the environment.
The NFPA did some work on the broader impacts of Lithium-Ion fires; it doesn’t make for particularly cheerful reading but you have to hope that we’ll get better at dealing with these contaminants over time. As always though, we will probably wait until the damage is catastrophic before we start to do anything about it.
I’m having trouble finding sources for the “only 5% of lithium batteries are recycled” claim. I clicked through to the IER article you linked and its source appears to be an article by AAA that, itself, has a dead link to the 5% claim. (I also looked up what the IER actually is and apparently it’s a fossil fuel lobbying group founded by, of course, Charles Freakin Koch.)
I’m not saying this to outright deny what you posted; after all, lithium batteries are complex constructs that will require specialized recycling techniques and therefore it would not surprise me to find out that most of them are ending up in landfills. Here’s a paper that says only about 8-9% of lithium batteries were being recycled, worldwide, as of 2018. A 2016 paper (DOI: 10.1007/s11837-016-1994-y) seems to confirm the 5% figure but it’s riddled with dead links and has some odd proofreading mistakes which raise an eyebrow when dealing with something supposedly well researched.
tl;dr version: the actual number does appear to be low but let’s just be careful before sharing stuff from the koch foundation
I don’t have a horse in this race, but I can help you with links! The dead link is trying to go here:
https://www.cas.org/resources/cas-insights/l:~:text=A%20Review%20of%20the%20Current,8%20million%20tons%20of%20waste.
In essence, it’s trying to highlight the specific text on the CAS Insights page that says “A Review of the Current, 8 million tons of waste.” The “%20″ is just indicating a space in the text search.
This is weird because the Insights page is a listing of articles hosted on that website, so the link was always destined to die the moment that whatever was quoted here is pushed to the next page by new articles.
Regardless, I cannot even find the article that the dead link is attempting to highlight. This is why you have to source from a permalink and preferably from a place like the Internet Archive if it’s something that you want to stick around for a while.
Sorry for the rant, dead links makes me roll my eyes so hard. Some sites are so careless with links that pages go dead in mere months.
In an alternate universe, if you did have a horse in this race, would you be Horsedes Farrier?(for reals though, thank you for educating me on hyperlinks! I didn’t realize the thing about the %20. It’s a treat for one of the staff to reply with a well researched
rantreply!)As best as I can find, it’s based on an analysis (which I can’t find the details of) of a 2018 paper called “Cobalt Life Cycle Analysis Update for the GREET Model” focused on cobalt specifically: https://greet.anl.gov/files/update_cobalt
But that’s 7 years old and essentially predates any mass-market EVs getting old enough for their batteries to need recycling.
This person did a pretty thorough job tracking down the source and attempted to find updated numbers: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/battery-recycling-myth
This paper from 2023 seems to think the number is significantly higher: https://www.mdpi.com/2313-0105/9/7/360 at around 54% in the US and 59% globally in 2019.
In the US at least, Redwood Materials started actually processing batteries at scale in 2022, so I’d expect the percentage to be much higher after compared to before.
These are great finds, and they help highlight the difficulty of finding accurate information when there’s so much sludge to sift through. Thank you for the research!
I can tell you that the burnt spots on the pavement that used to be Waymos in Downtown LA stank to high heaven for a few days.
As an EV owner this is why I never park the thing in the garage.
That incelcamino is definitely a total loss.
That’s going to cost the insurance company at least $20k.
If you include the woodchipper, yes.
Dry brush can’t melt steel exoskeletons
The chipper survived? Then nothing of value was lost.
OK, more serious answer now that I don’t think it’s Trump…does that shooting fire look like a wellhead to anyone else? It would be a real fluke, but if for some reason this guy (and let’s face it, we know it’s a guy Because Cybertruck) parked on top of — or near — a plugged/decommisioned drilling site, and something triggered a spark or the plug deteriorated, you’d get a similar kind of flame. It just looks too pressurized to be a normal fire, like there’s a major accelerant.
And the chipper survived. Seems very localized.
With enough heat, it’s possible it was just the batteries burning and creating enough hot gasses to look like that. Flames can do some very weird things.
Never mind the looks — I think it looks arty like that — think about the smell.
Very little smells as bad as a burnt out car — an acrid plastic stench which lodges in the back of the throat and gets the lung tumours bursting out in seconds…..
Reminds me of this David Cross stand-up where he was talking about the smell near ground zero right after 9/11. He described it as tires and skunks. He said that the skunks were being used for insulation on the WTC and tires made up their habitrail.
Ran when parked.
That’ll buff out.
This is the only website to not blast headlines that the cyberpunk 2077 patch is delayed. Like a whole week telling me this.
So fire it up and you too can be late to this party like everyone else.
Some people say it’s a landmark vehicle. Some people say it’s a land fill vehicle.
I’m sure it could be recycled into some nice cutlery.
I understand the edges are already sharp.
It’d need some modification. You usually want 302 stainless for cutlery (more corrosion-resistant) and the cybertruck’s closer to 301.
Seem better off buying that woodchipper than a Cybertruck, no matter the use case scenario.
Need a statement vehicle that gets noticed? Drag around a Woodchipper.
Got some trees and limbs you need destroyed? Woodchipper.
Need to hide your criminal life in Fargo? Woodchipper.
Need some side-gig, Cybermoney? Paint it silver. CyberWoodchipper.
Run into Elon? You know the answer.
Waiting for the Fargo reference. You did not disappoint.
#1 on the list of xmas toys that did not sell well to children: Fargo Woodchipper
I got one just for the Steve Buscemi action figure. Tried to get a William H. Macy figure with the Oldsmobile dealership playset (with TruCoat!), but, damn, those went fast.
I would imagine that the Vermeer chipper is made of a pretty stout gauge of metal whereas the truck is only as heavy as it needs to be to be.
That said, that looks like severely annealed not melted to me.
My grandfather had a forge that could get steel to a pretty limp state on coal or wood if I was cranking fast enough. I think it was intended for shoeing horses, but it was involved in press fitting some bushings, and various hand forged projects, made some nice hinges and latches.
If you stoked the woodchipper fire with a battery pack, I bet it would burn pretty well.
Yeah, 2000 lbs. of lithium can stoke quite a fire.
Oh yeah, no, I’m betting that part at least started with the truck. Lithium fires can get up to 3,200°F, the type of stainless steel used in the Cybertruck starts melting at 2,550°F, and wood combusts spontaneously at 550°F. Meanwhile even the strongest brush fires never get past 1,600°F, and only wildly out of control forest fires exceed 2,000°F. Ain’t no way this was a natural fire by my eyes.
Are you aware of the firestorm effect?
Yes, but that’s not something that would occur in an open field with such a small fire. Usually you need an enclosed space like a valley ridge and a much bigger fire to cause the updrafts needed.
If we’re talking about the same thing, as seen in Dresden, I have seen it in open air.
It requires still air, often misunderstood, and cooler air enhances it.
The heat from the fire creates a chimney in the still air, and stack effect from the chimney accelerates the draw from the fire.
This can create much higher temperatures than common winds.
I don’t know how small a fire can create this, or how much heat is required.
The one I saw had a very visible chimney at night and you could see the sparks spread out at the top.
I wanted to add, this reminded me of descriptions of a ‘pillar of fire’.
Dragging trailer chains have caused many fires. That’s my guess since woodchippers are usually towed by larger vehicles.
Interesting – what’s the mechanism for a trailer chain to start a fire?
The steel hits a flint and you get some big fat sparks?
Yup, roadway pavements are made from all different mixes of aggregate depending on what’s available locally. If there was flint or another material in that aggregate that could cause a spark, this is totally plausible, especially with a hot chipper coated in sawdust.
But I’d say it’s still WAY more likely it was the Tesla. I mean, look at that fire plume, that’s not a “wood” fire.
Well once the Tesla was on fire, it was a Tesla fire. The question is how it caught fire.
One reason they don’t run F1 races on back country roads with dry grass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTCKhDxmjdY
0:07
I’ve had safety chains drag at times, especially without a leveling hitch.
Steel chain meets abrasive materials and sparks will fly! I have seen trailer chains sparking and made the drive pull over so we could fix them. Living in the flammable California foothills we are hyper aware of such things, and occasionally we get a series of fires started from trailer chains dragging.
So that’s what the aftermath of a literal dumpster fire looks like.
Jet fuel doesn’t melt steel beams.
We were waiting for that one.
Does a nice job of softening them though.
As a child I melted aluminum using notebook paper as fuel.
So no bet.
I hear anything will burn with enough oxygen.
Not melt, burn.
I used to throw aluminum cans in the campfire as a kid to see them burn. It doesn’t take much
I was surprised at the time.
Aluminum can burn very well under the right circumstances, the Royal Navy found that out in the Falklands
it appears that this is a myth, my good man
More like a slightly distorted partial truth, it is established fact that the Type 21s were more susceptible to fire damage and less hardened against enemy attacks than all steel ships, which is why the following Type 22 and Type 23 reverted to steel superstructures and the 21s were sold after very short service lives. But it is more of a warping/melting/distorting thing than actually burning, and was already a known problem following an accidental shipyard fire in the late 1970s
Second post is more factual than the first, as the aluminum in question didn’t burn.
I know, I know, it’s semantics, dead is dead all the same
/pedant
The space shuttle boosters burned aluminum as fuel.
Every so often, someone pours molten aluminum into water and gets a big surprise when the aluminum pulls the oxygen out of the water to oxidize, generating a vast amount of heat and hydrogen gas as well as aluminum oxide.
I don’t know what conditions permit that to happen or prevent it
As a serious reply to what I assume is a facetious post – carbon steel loses strength at relatively low temperatures, and if this steel is under stress because, say it is holding up a skyscraper, the steel will bend and fail way before its melting point. I have not been able to find the picture on the web, but one of my engineering textbooks has a picture of the McCormick center after its fire, where the I-beams look like a tangle of overcooked linguine – what were once straight now are wavy as you can imagine. Also, for fun find a video of a titanium fire – any old school machinist can tell you stories – you need different cutting tool geometries, speeds and feed rates than most other materials, and if you are not used to cutting titanium (and moving the chips out of harms way) you can have problems.
Yes, it softens once above its eutectic temperature — was it ~1700 F or so, I forget — and the phase change takes place. Again if I remember correctly, from martensite to austenite. Or maybe the reverse. Anywat, 50K steel reverts to 30K steel when you heat it past eutectic.
Can’t find an online image yet, but after the 1991 Oakland Hills fire, we went back up to the house where we had been renting (moved out 2 weeks before the fire) and all that was left was the chimney, the somewhat melted/warped looking appliances in what has been the bottom level and the steel I-beam they put in what had been our living room for bracing was now a shallow wave shape. I also recall seeing burned out car hulks with melted windows and what I’m guessing were puddles of aluminum underneath. Our former landlady and her family lost everything but the clothes on their back, luckily they all lived.
Aluminum melts at ~1200F, again IIRC. In any case, before steel is affected.
[Inappropriate comment]
I have a CT and am German, your generalizations are as stupid as they are uncalled for. Grow up.
I agree the position is somewhat childish in the way it’s expressed, but it is not necessarily wrong to associate support of an Elon Musk company with support of the man’s political views nowadays. Much of the credibility and valuation of most of those companies, are a result of not much more than the cult of personality he has developed.
Serious question for you though somewhat off topic…As a German, how do you view the salutes Elon gave when Trump was elected and his AfD endorsements? Do you think it’s fair or correct to associate him with the far right ideology or is that an oversimplification or something else?
As a cyber truck owner, did you buy before or after all those things? If after, did his actions at all influence your decision to buy?
I’m genuinely curious how folks in other parts of the world view him, and particularly in your country, for (I think) obvious reasons, and would be interested in your perspective if you’re willing to share.
He may be of German decent, or even a German immigrant, but if he owns a CyberTruck it’s probably not in Germany. Not sold there – too dangerous to other road users, as in much of Europe. A few have been privately imported, but some countries have been kicking them out none-the-less.
Yes, impossible to register as a ”car”. There are probably some creative loopholes around the regulation, esp. national regulation, as there are grey imports of US pickups. And lately some official importers as well – but those trucks are officially classed as light trucks (over 3.5t) with less rules e.g. about the pedestrian safety and truck specific requirements, esp. the 80 (~90) km/h speed restrictor. And a truck license is needed as well. There is some sort of individual/small scale import scheme as well, but it helps mostly with USDM/JDM emissions and lights etc. Still, I would not be terribly surprised that someone finds a way to register a Cybertruck in EU, but as a passenger vehicle flying down the autobahn – not likely.
Let us talk about the Elon’s salute and let us talk about the media misrepresenting politicians/political groupies on both sides of the aisle.
Have you seen the video clip of the moment when Elon reportedly gave a Nazi salute? It is maybe 15 seconds long and it may change your perception of his hand and arm motion. It is very easy to take a single frame from a video and freeze it, and sure enough… you have a nazi salute.
The same photo “gotcha!” has been done to Hillary Clinton, Obama, Biden, Kamala Harris, Tim Walz and Ronald McDonald. At some point in an event they made an arm motion with a flattened hand stretched out and a single frame was captured and it sure looks like they are giving a Nazi salute. It’s quite comical, but nothing to be taken seriously – unless one allows themselves to be manipulated and has a need to have their bias confirmed for whatever reason.
Now, will you take the time to find out if Musk actually gave the salute or didn’t, or will you just disregard what could be the truth and insist that he gave a salute as he is aligned with some modern day Nazi party?
And you know what Mulder always says…
Nah, I’ve seen the video and it’s clearly a Nazi salute. There’s even a helpful .gif out there that side by sides it with Hitler himself. You can get a picture of any politician with their arm raised (except John McCain I guess) but the context doesn’t help Elon.
I guess the part where he say “My heart goes out to you people” (or something along those lines) and he swept his arm out to the people was in your video as well?
Does it matter on being called a Nazi or Fascist any longer? Worldwide, the Left calls everyone a Nazi or Fascist if they do not agree or bow down to them or if they think they are a threat to their political power or economic model.
It loses its meaning after awhile.
By the way, your John McCain mpon-salute observation is hilarious!
(Do you remember when John McCain was called a Nazi and a racist? The racisist acts, and his Nazi cred, came about as he had the temerity to make a political run for President against a Democratic party candidate.)
The fact that MAGA has become so used to being accurately described as fascists doesn’t make it untrue. It just means they are comfortable being fascists; they just don’t like the label.
I remember the hysterical hatred MAGA had for John McCain because he wouldn’t bow to Trump. Remember “I like people who weren’t captured”?
The problem with the Nazis wasn’t the style of salute, that is just a single symbol they used, it was their beliefs. The fact that Elmo is a white supremacist and fascist is the issue.
Yeah you can take a still frame of lots of people waving and maybe try to say “See, that’s a Nazi salute!”.
It’s quite another thing entirely to have the entire salute on video, clear as day. Twice.
Interesting since the so called leftists with their cult bigotry and vilification of human rights and most American citizens, makes them our Nazis.
I am highly impressed that they succeeded in making the gop look good, in spite of areas they have it wrong.
I bet they do it again too.
What human rights? And are you trying to say that the xenophobic christian nationalist party that wants to force christianity on everyone, claims it doesn’t need to follow any laws or constitution, pardons violent insurrectionists becasue they were following the directions of the rapist leader (some of them who wore 6MWE gear during their crimes), happily integrates overtly white supremacist policies into their platform, continually vilifies the LGBTQIA+ community to increase violence against them and eliminate their rights, defends the assasination of elected officials using unhinged conseriousy theories, has long promised to use the military against its population, and sends out masked gangs to kidnap people based on how they look isn’t fascist?
If you’re so upset that MAGA is being actively described as a fascist movement that you defend them, it simply means you don’t have a problem with fascists.
I guarantee those complaining about the fascism label have no idea what that word means. It’s absolutely accurate.
Very accurate, plus it is the type of person that doesn’t believe anyone they actually know, including themselves, should be called a fascist, even if they overtly support fascism. They seem to think fascism comes fully formed from people wearing Nazi uniforms rather than grows step by step fed by neighbors and family members.
Not just any old Christianity either, but evangelical protestant Christianity.
A guy I worked with (in different companies but shared projects and spent a lot of time traveling together) always wore a cross and tried to steer the conversation toward church. Well, he also talked about his son’s baseball career despite the fact that the kid was 10.
He was a part of one of the mega churches in Kentucky that preached the “prosperity gospel.” Essentially, the only thing he needed to do to be good in the eyes of Jesus was to convert other people and make money.
He also always wanted to go to Twin Peaks for dinner and spent most nights in the VIP room of strip clubs. He is the purest manifestation of a standard Trump supporter I can imagine.
Exactly what human rights does the left villify? The “right” of billionaires and corporations to not have to pay taxes if they don’t want to? The “right” of Christians to force their religion on everyone else in the form of laws that place the 10 commandments in public classrooms and restrict women’s healthcare? The “right” of men to decide what a woman should do with her body? The “right” to kick out non-white people without trials simply because they “maybe could be” gang members while ignoring white supremacist gangs? The “right” for creeps to ask a stranger to show them their genitals to make sure they’re using the “correct” bathroom?
Most basic of all, the universal, natural human right to security and self determination, including governments, as recognized by the Second Amendment in our Constitution.
Note it does not grant these natural rights, merely recognizes they exist for every person ever born anywhere.
NO legitimate government may restrict them. It is not negotiable.
The same right that you have to defend yourself from violence, protects your right to make medical decisions like abortion for yourself.
You cannot support one and not the other.
That’s a small part of the attack on human rights, but it’s enough.
And non negotiable.
Next, we should talk about the Four Freedoms.
The Second Amendment reads, in full:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The first two phrases actually meant something before the rise of the NRA as a lobby for gun manufacturers instead of a group dedicated to training and personal responsibility.
Just for the record, I’m a pretty good shot, but I’ve also been around too many sudden suicides and know of too many unused guns that were purchased “for protection” instead getting stolen in burglaries – not to mention road rage cases that end up with holes in cars and people.
MARA!!! (Make America Read Again)
Don’t buy the transparent propaganda.
The early law makers wrote hundreds of pages clarifying their intent.
There is no mystery.
The milititia refers to the citizens.
Well regulated was a term commonly applied to clocks.
In this instance, it refers to being skilled with firearms, understanding them and maintaining and using them, and as a militia, understanding tactical use.
Deliberately removing safety training has been irresponsible and dangerous.
No responsible parent allows a child to grow up without understanding safe practices.
Some schools still had safety training when I was small.
Local schools now don’t even offer driver education now.
My safety training began at three years old.
I learned to shoot at five.
I do support safe training.
Part of that ‘well regulated’ thing you support too.
I have taken the state required courses for civilian and professional carry permits, and one of my instructors was a police academy teacher.
He trained me in advanced tactics.
Even though I haven’t been part of the police or military, I think I meet the standard of a well regulated militia as written. I hope you do as well.
I helped teach advanced tactics working for a military contractor, including secret service protocols and active shooter intervention.
Most educational was working with special operations training for specific missions in shoot houses.
That included explosive door breaching.
Better than caffeine!
My current goal is mastering shooting without sighting.
This is obviously useful when shooting from cover.
I advocate this level of training for everyone.
FYI beginning level trained women usually outshoot men with equal training in life and death events.
This evens out with more training though.
So how well regulated is your training?
“Well regulated” in the context of the Second Amendment had nothing to do with clocks. The very first line of Federalist 29 is “THE power of regulating the militia, and of commanding its services in times of insurrection and invasion are natural incidents to the duties of superintending the common defense, and of watching over the internal peace of the Confederacy.” And no, that last word wasn’t referring to the states that rebelled 73 years later.
You certainly have much more training than I ever got. However, I first fired a gun when I was eight – in a very controlled, very supervised setting. While I don’t remember the particulars I’m sure we received one or more formal lessons before being allowed on the range, and I received many more lessons on gun safety and the responsible use, handling, and storage of firearms in the years since. Which again, was one of (if not the) main goals of the NRA before they became essentially a gun and ammo manufacturers’ lobbying group.
I live in a state that no longer requires any license or training for anything this side of a howitzer, even if concealed. It first passed a law to regulate firearm sales and possession in 1870 or so in the name of public safety – according to some, the first state to do so. I remain a good shot, but seeing someone strutting around with a hand cannon strapped to their butt or flashing a military weapon doesn’t make me feel safer – no, quite the opposite unless there’s an actual, tangible danger (such as rattlers).
The context of well regulated is the same as clocks.
We weren’t that far past laws requiring everyone capable to always carry rifles for general safety.
Maintaining weapons and knowing how to care for them and use them safely was an obligation then, as it is now.
Citizens carrying firearms are always there first and are still the primary first responders.
The principle is that average citizens are smarter and more responsible, more trustworthy than governments.
Weapons are obviously not important.
The person using them determines if they are safe or not, effective or not.
Biden famously threatened those that embrace the Second Amendment, stating the obvious, that an AR-15 is a trivial weapon, which is true.
He bragged about having fighter jets.
Look to asymmetric warfare in Ukraine, Afghanistan, anywhere.
We gave the French single shot zip guns, and they used those to obtain all they needed during occupation.
Vehicles can only be compared to artillery in potential damage they can cause.
Laws should be ratíonal.
My state allows carry without a permit, but still offers levels of carry permits which are recognized in other free states, like not california.
Your state may also.
Don’t underestimate how quickly your skills can escalate with the right training.
After experiencing close protection convoys I would really like to work with tactical vehicle training.
It can be hard to break into.
As for my training, in a small circle, I am the worst shot and the least trained, so I learn from them.
I did have to kill a dangerous snake near the house, but never thought of using a gun.
Got an ax, but thought better of it and used my truck.
Had to be done.
You are on to something. If you read the debate in the House of Representatives, it is clear that the point of the Second Amendment was not to have a standing army, but to allow the states to draft men to bear arms.
https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendIIs6.html
The original text of the Second Amendment is:
“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms.”
It obviously had nothing to do with individual gun ownership, it’s right there in the text. It was about being able to draft “the body of the people” to take up arms.The “but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms” was deleted because it was argued that religious liberty would be abused to avoid bearing arms.
If it was about individuals owning guns it would say something about individuals and about ownership. It would probably say something about guns as well, rather than arms in general.
Considering that most of the Constitution is about protecting property rights, even slaves, if they meant treating guns as property, they would have said so.
But it does talk about bearing. Bearing has always meant to carry, not to own.
Women bearing children don’t own them.
People who carry objects for others are called bearers. Historically, they were often enslaved as in the phrase “native bearer,” and certainly did not own or control what they were bearing.
See also this: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gunbearer
Also see load-bearing walls. Back on the topic of automobiles, those spinny things are called bearings because they hold the moving parts. a machine element that allows one part to bear (i.e., to support) another
They wrote extensively about their intent, and part of that was a population ultimately with more power than the government.
Gun ownership was a given.
Besides, governments have proven throughout history that government has no control over who has weapons, past passing laws that only honest people will obey.
I can give you endless chapter and verse proof.
Gun control under Nazi occupation was absolute, yet Polish resistance succeeded in mass production of effective firearms.
Turning citizens into sheep led to slaughter by leaving them unarmed while surrounded by armed criminals seems to be the goal in some states.
This country was founded on the precept that citizens, as a whole, are wiser than any government.
The opposite of monarchy, and servitude.
The founding fathers didn’t leave any mysteries about their intent.
I’m not arguing with you about historical facts, you are absolutely correct about the Nazis. and I’m not categorically anti gun. Lefty and marginalized people really ought to look into some guns in the current climate. It’s just that the second amendment has nothing to do with individuals’s unrestricted ownership of any type of gun that might be invented in the future. I’m pretty sure that providing access to weapons to commit treason or insurrection (ak violently overthrowing the government) was not the intent and “the people” certainly didn’t include all persons. Convicts for example , and slaves couldn’t even get 3/5 of a gun.
Sure, maybe being able to shoot a few policemen might be a good idea, but it’s not in the second amendment, and if unfettered access to arms is guaranteed, where’s my RPG?
Another thing is game theory. If someone has indicated that they are able and willing to kill on one or two seconds notice, at what point is it reasonable to kill them first? IE if someone open carrying a gun puts you in fear of your life, under what circumstances can you kill them? Assuming you aren’t a cop. Cops get to kill people carrying a cell phone or a random piece of metal. Do you wait and see, or do you act?
Anyway, guns probably aren’t going awa in the USA, the Australians managed but probably it won happen here.
Making people responsible for any gun they own and carrying a million dollars in insurance would be a reasonable compromise.
Leaving a gun in your car and it getting stolen should earn you jail time. Same for letting unsupervised children get ahold of your gun.
Insurance is yet another end run around human rights.
The founders specifically guaranteed access to all military weapons, including crew fired weapons.
And citizens overthrowing an errant administration was specifically mentioned.
Some recommended it.
As for weapons in cars, that nonsense is promoted by law enforcement that are always the ones responsible for theft from cars and anywhere else.
The laws allowing or banning carry in certain locations are usually the locations criminals shop in.
They do call it shopping.
A local chief of police had multiple guns stolen from her vehicle in what I assume was robust protection.
Open the door to punishing robbery victims and I guarantee everyone cries.
Won’t affect robberies at all, obviously.
Some people are not capable of handling guns safely, but attempts to weaponize the idea makes the bar justifiably high.
And government has NO control over who has a gun.
Just ask any criminal.
For a snapshot of how real life works concerning weapons access, try these search terms for different countries –
“improvised, expedient, homemade firearms”
Once someone in a USA prison built a gun and ammunition from raw scraps, and used it successfully.
I think ammunition was the tough part!
I wanted to address the defense response question. I tried to keep this short. Didn’t work.
It is impossible to cover everything even in a book.
It’s the heart of why you train.
In USA, there are legal fine points specific to each state, even case law, that matter.
You need to know those.
Training will make you far more capable than you might think.
It can even reduce adrenaline reactions.
It gives you more time and more comfort to protect yourself and others.
You can do this without over spending.
The right training is priceless though.
Another point, is when there is a threat, you must react when mandatory.
Criminals think you won’t react and often don’t care.
Smart people are not armed robbers.
Be assertive in preventing someone from becoming a threat, if possible.
Tell strangers to stop or stand back, as called for.
Assessing a threat?
All strangers are armed until you prove otherwise.
The laws mandate you must not allow someone to take your gun.
That is usually followed by your death.
A news special covered multiple defense events in people’s homes where each robber has a gun as did the victims.
In every case the citizen was armed and told the robber to stop.
None of them did.
Every attacker rushed the resident and was shot.
That is how it works.
Last, every person that carries protects not only themselves, but also those that do not carry.
We watched the odds of robbing an armed citizen get higher and higher here.
My friend was training to enter the military and had changed his appearance.
Permits for non wealthy were new and robbers don’t watch the news.
He had 8 different armed robbers pull a gun on him in weeks.
This was unwise.
He was actually wearing a visible holster while running.
An excellent source of information is the Armed Citizen database.
It can be searched by state, gender, etc.
It only includes samples, but hundreds.
Final note- Most defense events don’t end in firing a weapon.
Most don’t even require drawing a weapon, once criminals realize life has changed.
I have had prowlers put their hands up when I moved toward my weapon.
Last time, they didn’t comply and tried to rush me.
Train and keep learning.
Police only arrive in time to draw those chalk lines.
His choices are his own, I don’t agree with them. They were not Tesla’s or the employees choices.
It is, unfortunately, impossible to separate the man from the car. Plus, the Wank Panzer is just a stupid, pointless vehicle with no redeeming features, performance, use case or purpose other than to announce to the world that you have more money and sense and zero imagination.
You are wrong on every single account. See my response to David below.
Hi Michael! I am also German (well, dual citizen), and I enjoyed driving the Cybertruck, so — even though I know you get all sorts of flack on the web for owning this rather polarizing pickup truck — just know that you’re welcome here in this community.
I should have been more clear, I’m a US citizen. My grandmother moved her in ’39 as she and her parents saw the writing on the wall. She raised me far more than my mother, so I’m very German centric in beliefs (and diet) but not native.
That said, the point of my post was to not judge someone on a product they want and are willing to pay for.
Just because someone bought a Stanley Tumbler, doesn’t make them an idiot. Or someone that bought a Chevy, a moron. Though my biases are palpable… I don’t hold them against those folks. It’s a product, not a weapon of war or cult offering. Though some seem to act that way.
I bought the truck because I grew up in the 80’s, love sci-fi, and have wanted a Tesla since I first saw the roadster. This truck was a perfect representation of who I am. I never buy stuff to show off or keep up with the Joneses, I buy stuff that I want.
I don’t agree with musk, but I respect what he created. I support the company and the people that work there.
I have stickers and images on my truck deriding Musks BS. Folks need to stop being so shallow in their opinions of others. That’s what got the US in the mess we see today!
Agreed! And I bet the majority of Autopians do, too. Please don’t be discouraged, and know that you’re welcome here.
Just keep in mind the well-known anecdote about the anti-Nazi bartender: https://web.archive.org/web/20221221103518/https://god.dailydot.com/bartender-kicks-out-tweets/
“If you’ve got ten people sitting around a table and one of them claims to be a Nazi, you’ve actually got 10 Nazis.”
DT is one of those guys who thinks the United States can “both sides” their way out of the current constitutional crisis, ignoring that many Replublicans would be quite thrilled if a certain member of his website’s staff were to un-alive themselves.
People wonder how fascists in the past rose to power… All the people with a platform or influence who apologized for them, said or did nothing. It looks just like this.
As a Canadian, I can do little to influence what happens to the south. All I know is my country is doing its best to thwart a trade war and threats to our sovereignty. Musk is a key player in the events leading to this situation. I do my best to continue supporting the American businesses and media that are sympathetic to the current situation for our country, those who make their positions ambiguous are becoming difficult to tolerate.
“People wonder how fascists in the past rose to power… All the people with a platform or influence who apologized for them, said or did nothing. It looks just like this…”
Violence, including the murder and imprisonment of even mild dissenters was a big part of how facists of the past rose to power. People who spoke, even in private to people whom they considered to be friends and family disappeared.
But those rises to power started with disillusionment and disenfranchising.
I. Am an Artist, I love paint, I love flat surfaces, and I have seen a handful of amazing cybertruck wrap jobs. There is a wood grain wrap, some sort of shimmering orange, and the closest thing to an International Klein Blue I have seen in the wild. There is also a perl white one that is hard to tell where the surface is.
Others than that they seem awfully large for being so small, and those sharp corners seem a little hostile.
A noisy subset of CT owners make it a product that symbolizes things I’m not interested in identifying with, and the CEO is reprehensible so that discourages me from owning on. Also, one or two are cool. Having a bunch of around is sort of like being caught in a traffic jam of Lancia Stratos Zeros.
An entirely rational viewpoint.
Very good work knocking down the fire before it grew. It’s still early in the season but that area looks like a tinderbox already.
I was going to say, “the Tesla was probably just caught in the brushfire” but from looking at the pictures, it sure looks like the fire started with it.
Very glad the fuel in the wood-chipper didn’t ignite.
I really hope that woodchipper survived and can be repainted and put back into service.
It’s a priceless Vermeer!
Fair, as long as it runs then all is well in the world.
Genius!
No need to repaint if the tree service I used to work for was running it.
Yeah, its industrial equipment. I work for an allegedly $62 billion global building materials company, and every one of our facilities looks like its ready for the scrap heap, nothings been painted since the 1990s and any vehicles that don’t see public roads are in the same condition. Fresh paint doesn’t make things work better and you have to shut down/take them out of service to paint them, so they just keep going into the ground
Sounds about right.
This works up to a point, but eventually ends with an entirely avoidable catastrophe that costs a huge amount of money, at an inconvenient time. It also communicates to employees that caring for company property is “optional” at best.
I once tried to call a tow for a company Ford F550, after the check engine light turned into limp mode and it started belching smoke. I was told to ignore it- We had an important job. Made it another 10min before the engine blew. Of course the truck was so trashed it wasn’t even worth repairing, even at ~5 years old with only 90,000km on the odo.
Now, this was a customer facing vehicle. During the time I worked there, I witnessed the company begin to cede some of their hard-earned prestige to regional upstarts with better equipment and superior methods of work.
Trump airstrike. I’m calling it.
It could have also been the J… err, I mean Globalist Space Laser that was used to start the fires in Hawaii and SoCal.