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Comment by dmm | Hacker News Reader

Cities should levy a bike tax and use it to fund some snipers that shoot assholes who steal bikes.

You could just tranquilize them and then release them into the wild.

Although I believe that summary executions are in bad taste, I want to point out that, au contraire, the tax should be levied on car owners (to encourage cycling).

Not everyone can choose to bike instead of drive. When my driving commute was an hour longer than it is now, such a tax would not have encouraged me to cycle instead.

There's always a choice. Maybe you'd've taken a different job - or maybe that job would've relocated somewhere more accessible.

(I don't believe in "punitive" taxes on cars, but I do think gas should be taxed enough to cover the cost of cleaning up its CO2/other pollution, and the resulting money spent on doing that).

Your commute is over an hour? Man, I had a 45 minute commute once for a few months and I vowed never again.

How would the sniper be supposed to distinguish the robber from the owner?

The thief is using a battery powered angle grinder to remove the u-lock. The owner uses a key. The snipers will be well trained to distinguish between the two.

Hmm. Maybe this would be a good application of unmanned drones?

And what happens when an owner who lost his key gets shot for cutting his own lock?

We did that a couple of times with a mains-powered angle grinder and a mini generator. In the middle of the afternoon, in a shopping street. Got some funny looks, I can tell you. Nobody said anything though. Certainly didn't get shot.

Call me crazy, but I'm going to guess that the sniper suggestion was in jest.

Colateral damage. It also encourages owners to keep a spare key ... so it's not all bad.

These guys did that -- set up a bait bike and paintballed the guy. I don't condone vigilantism but here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi6XtthI2F0

That video is totally fake and a great way to get shot by real guns.

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