The reason why cars are not a reasonable comparison is that more people would die if all civilian vehicles disappeared tomorrow than if they didn’t. Few people could get to work, including those who drive the publicly-owned vehicles like police cars and emergency vehicles. Food could not be delivered. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that chaos would result, at least in developed countries.
If all civilian firearms were to do the same, ironically, quite the opposite. We know this because there are countries that have very few guns in civilian hands and yet function very well. At worst, some types of crime would increase slightly. Of course, the homicide rate would fall and there wouldn’t be any schools shot up that day.
You also have a majority effect. Even in the US, where there are more guns per capita than any other developed country, a minority of households have guns. (The NRA says it’s half of households. The NRA says a lot of things.) The vast majority of US households have at least one car-- maybe 5% don’t have any. So you have something that a majority know they need-- a pity, I’m not fond of cars-- compared to something a minority claim they need and that occasionally gets used to murder a bunch of extra innocent people. I say “claim” because very few civilians actually ever need their guns for, well, anything. I say “extra innocent” because most car fatalities are drivers, and the people who get killed in the events I’m talking about are not using guns. Then there’s that whole murder vs. accident thing.
The car comparison is obviously catching on with gun hobbyists and their supporters. I guess they got tired getting shot down with their claims that guns make you safer, prevent crimes, stop tyrants, and make you sexy. Even if the private car was a good comparison, it would still be a weak argument because if one thing is bad, other bad things aren’t made OK. If you have crabs and a headache it doesn’t mean you don’t do anything about either one.
The funny thing would be if this punk ass comparison actually got people thinking about how bad private cars really are. Thus far, nobody making the comparison-- that I’ve seen, anyway-- even mentioned global warming.
This can’t stand. The NRA tends to be very accurate about what it says. If they ever make a demonstrably false statement, there are just too many people and organizations waiting to publicize any such error or deliberate falsification. Opinions are another matter. They, like everyone else, are entitled to theirs.
BTW, the NRA quotes a UN study which says that just UNDER half of all US households own one or more guns.
The NRA used misleading statistics on its to give the impression that crime had gone up after gun reform in Australia. I’ve been skeptical of stats attributed to the NRA since I got burned on that one.
I haven’t driven a car with a governor in years, maybe decades. What car companies are using them now? Either that or the speed setting is so high it’s useless.
Perhaps you don’t drive a car that can go fast enough to need a governor (engine cut-off, actually). I heard somewhere that imported Mercedes are set to cut off at a bit over 155 mph (250 kph) as a requirement for import to the US. I have no idea whether this is true, and have never tested it myself. The fastest I have ever driven is around 140 mph (225 kph), and that wasn’t in the US, anyway. It was very fast, and things happened (like overtaking) at a disconcerting quickness. I would have to get a LOT of practice before being willing to do that as a regular thing. You need to teach yourself to look a LOT farther down the road for potential trouble than at typical US speeds.
The vast, VAST majority of cars on the road don’t have the electronic obstacle-avoiding sensors in them. And as for the speed cut-off: assuming that’s actually the case, What’s that “certain (speed) amount”?
I’d be willing to bet it’s well over the maximum speed limit - which it is, according to another poster just above. My analogy stands - you don’t need to be able drive at 200km/h.
After I posted I googled around and found that yes, Mercedes and some other top of the line cars are routinely given governors and the slowest I found on any of them was 140 mph. Which is why I said “Either that or the speed setting is so high it’s useless.”
I have driven almost all of our cars and trucks at very high speeds - in Montana during the day, in the desert during the day, when passing - and the only two I’ve had try to control the speed was a Dodge Dart when I was a teen, and a Ford F150. I don’t remember where the Dart stopped, but the truck cut off at about 100 mph. Which is a useful speed to cut off at, but as I say it isn’t common IME.
Pick-ups frequently have large engines for towing purposes and might need such a limiter to prevent speeds faster than their handling warrants. I considered putting a governor on my daughter’s car (5L Mustang) when she was first driving, but she seemed fairly level-headed, so I never did.
Yeah, I wasn’t really all that surprised that the F150 was limited - I figured it was more a revs limitation than speed - but the Ram truck doesn’t appear to have a limit. Or maybe I just haven’t hit it; because of the price of gas, I’ve only taken that truck on one significant trip, which was essentially a drive from one end of the 40 to the other. Not a whole lot of opportunities to do any serious speeding!
That’s the only company vehicle I ever got up to that speed. The others may or may not have had one. I was late starting out for a job about 3 hours away, once, while driving that truck. I almost made up the time. Without the governor, I probably would have made it on time. As it was, I was only about 15 minutes late.
The Dodge Omni I owned at the time could do 110 mph. It didn’t have a governor. That was obviously its max engine power based on the way the acceleration rate dropped as I approached that max speed. The Ranger’s performance, just before the governor cut in, compared to the Omni’s performance on that max speed test run, leads me to believe that the Ranger could have topped out at considerably more than the Omni, possibly as much as 30 mph more than the Omni, except for the governor. It was still accelerating pretty zippily until it hit that 96 mph wall, then suddenly had no power to spare. It slowed down until it hit 95, then suddenly it had mucho excess engine power for acceleration, again… until it hit 96 again… Lather, rinse, repeat, until I figured out why it was happening and just stuck to about 93 until I got to where cops were likely. You can make up a lot of time, if you are willing to grossly thumb your nose at ‘Speed Limit’ signs. But you can’t make up all of it if your vehicle’s governor keeps you under 96.
