Uber’s easy-target policy

In an unsurprising bit of political theater, Uber has announced that neither their drivers nor their passengers may possess firearms during the ride, regardless of the laws. That’s possess at all, not just carry.

Back when I was delivering pizza in the Eighties, Dominos made a big media push to declare that all drivers were unarmed and forbidden to fight back. You can guess what happened, in a business where you could pick up the phone in the middle of the night and have someone in a brightly-colored uniform show up anywhere with cash, food, and car keys.

Of course, we all carried keychains and flashlights. Excuse me, that’s “keychains” and “flashlights”. And of course, we all expected to be fired after responding to an attack, but we weren’t stupid.

Personally, I was only ever attacked once, and that was by a feral dog in a trailer park. Since it was a trailer park, my “keychain” and “flashlight” were supplemented by my “collapsible baton”, and the dog got a good smack upside the head. I was threatened by a human once, a customer who had tried to scam a free pizza out of us, and who followed me as I walked back to my car, cutting in front of me and flexing his muscles. I displayed my “keychain”, he got out of my way, and the next time there was an order from that address, we sent our three largest drivers. I’m told he was quite polite.