Spotlight fallacy / biased sample.
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[QUOTE If it costs US society a million bucks to save one child’s life, that’s only about 1/3 of a cent per person, so rather cheap. But if that same million could have been spent on something that would have saved 1000 childrens’ lives, then it’s an unethical stance to say that “saving that one child’s life is worth the cost”. You’re trading 1000 kids’ lives to save the one.
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Thank you, that is exactly the point. The incredible stupidity of the concept “if it only saves one life” as well as the moral aspect of the consequences of not thinking any deeper than the emotional appeal of the simplistic concept. It is not limited to any party, by the way. It doesn’t help that I’m currently reading “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Kahneman.
The other stupid thing is that people who say something should be banned or any expense paid if it saves one life don’t really mean it - when it’s applied to something they care about losing. It’s just a tired, cliched thing to say when you want to sound ‘caring’.
For example, I don’t see a big movement to ban backyard swimming pools, but they kill about five times as many children under 15 per year as guns do. And no one needs a backyard pool. Sometimes neighborhood kids even sneak into these things and drown, so it’s affecting more people than just the owners of the pool. Ban 'em!
Or how about sport bikes? No one needs a sport bike. Sport bikes make up 10% of all motorcycles, but are responsible for more than 25% of all motorcycle fatalities. No one needs a 100 hp motorcycle, and there’s no health benefit to owning them. Banning them would save far more lives per year than any of the gun regulations currently being considered.
For that matter, we could get rid of motorcycles completely, which have a fatality rate almost 10 times higher than cars. Ban them! No one needs a motorcycle. You can drive a car, or ride a bicycle, or take mass transit.
When we’re done there, we can look at skateboards, which kill almost as many children under 14 as guns do. No kid needs a skateboard - I never had one. Ban them.
We could go on all night listing things which are A) not necessary, B) kill a lot of people, and C) are under no threat of being banned.
Actually, I’m starting to understand the seductive appeal of “if it saves only one life” . There is some weird pleasure in saying really dumb stuff that somehow appeals, without having to have regard for the consequences.
I didn’t see a particularly spirited defense of the NYC subway, so it is toast AFAIAC. Next, pleasure boating.
Hundreds of people get killed in pleasure boating accidents, thousands get injured. Many (Too many!) of them are children. Boats are clearly dangerous things. I’m not talking about legitimate boating. If you transport iron ore, or fish, or otherwise have a legitimate need for a boat, and can prove this, no one is going to take your boat away. But you recreational batty boat buffs will need to enjoy the lakes and seas from shore from here on out.
It helps that many of them are registered already, especially the really dangerous ones, which will facilitate monitoring. And the great thing is - we won’t just save one life, but some 6-700 each year! (and probably some 40 manatees per year as well, as a bonus).
I do not, at present, own a boat.
Will this finally be the thread where the intelligent members of the SDMB left officially disown Der Trihs? Guy’s been ridiculously stupid for years. Stand up and be counted if you agree.
Sorry, Sam - I did not see your post before typing mine. But I see no reason to stop doing this. It’s fun! I now know why prople do this. For an old timer on the board, your list is pretty good. So so far we have:** Subways, 2nd hand smoke, backyard pools, sportbikes and motorcycles, skateboards and pleasure boats**. Also mentioned were hands and feet, but I have both so I am not ok with that. For the same reason, I’m also not ok with the universal draft method of wholesale depriving us of a bunch of pretty nifty rights. But I’d consider the banning of hiking in bear territory…
Oh, you need to ban hiking in general (not just in bear territory). After all, every time a hiker goes missing, a whole bunch of Search and Rescue people have to put their lives at risk looking for the missing person. And no one needs to go hiking; they can walk around the mall if they want some exercise. Ban hiking!
I’d also add horseback riding, downhill skiing, snowmobiles and ATVs, and sportscars to the ban list. People should get their recreation in front of the TV or a computer screen, as God intended.
Sorry, no on the non- bear-territory hiking, as I do occasionally engage in that. Same for downhill skiing. Clearly one of the rules of " if it only saves one life" thing is that the proposer doesn’t have to give up anything they care about. I’m ok with adding the riding on horses, snowmobiles and ATVs though.
This is pretty ill thought out. First of all, there have been substantial efforts to effectively “ban” second hand smoke in several industrialised nations, yours included (assuming you’re an American). In Slovakia, it’s actually illegal to smoke within a certain range of a bus station. In comparison, it’s perfectly legal for a citizen to brandish offensive weapons, in public, in many states in your country. There are also countries which have far stricter regulations on citizen ownership of handguns than the US with far lower intentional firearm homicides per capita and considerably lower homicides per capita. There are state laws extensively regulating backyard pools, including laws necessitating fences. As far as I’m aware, one may be sued for failing to prevent a trespasser from drowning in one’s pool. Not to mention that there is not a constitutional right to own any of the things delineated.
Despite the regulations, five times as many kids under the age of 15 die in backyard pools than are killed by firearms. We’re all understandably distressed by 20 children being killed by a guy with a gun, but each year around 500 children drown in backyard pools in the U.S. So by what rationale would you support banning guns while allowing people to have their backyard pools?
How about sport bikes? Or supercars? Why should Ford be allowed to sell a street car with 500HP, when the full use of that horsepower would almost certainly be reckless and possibly endangering the lives of others? 4,000 people die every year on motorcycles - 1,000 of them on sport bikes. Banning sport bikes would likely save hundreds of lives per year, and there are plenty of other alternatives. In addition, when people lose control of their sport bikes they can hit bystanders, damage other vehicles, or cause chain reaction accidents as people swerve to avoid them. So they’re a threat to the public. Why aren’t you incensed that sport bikes are allowed on the roads?
Just to be clear, I do not support banning any of this. But then, i don’t support gun bans, either. But for those who do, please explain why guns should be banned while other unnecessary things that kill hundreds or thousands of people per year are not?
Gamerunknown: you’re missing a few points here. My issue is not with the gun control efforts per-se, though they are the current instance where someone is looking to restrict or ban or regulate something that doesn’t require (much of) a sacrify from them, but restricts others, and is justifying it with “if it saves only one life” - thus combining two things that upset me.
Also, to fight ignorance, in some states, brandishing a weapon will get you a charge of “brandishing a weapon”. In many (all?) others, it is likely to get you a disordely conduct charge - so it is not in fact perfectly legal.
Open carry (the carrying of a gun without trying to conceal it), on the other hand, is legal in many places. So if you have a Desert Eagle on your hip and you are in an open carry jurisdiction (and are not restricted from owning a gun) you may make me nervous, and I will think you slightly or more than slightly douchey, but you are not doing so illegally. But if you wave it in my direction, or display it in a rude, angry or threatening manner, you are looking at being charged, should the cops show up in time.
Well, in that case horseback riding and hiking both have to stay on the OK list. But I’ve never ridden on a snowmobile or an ATV, so let’s get rid of them! After all, if I don’t need them, clearly no one needs them, and if it would save even one life… 
No, horseback riding is dangerous. I got badly thrown off of a runaway once. Same with an ATV. I learned the hard way that there is no purpose to those things other than to hurt, maim, or kill under the seduction of ‘fun’. Ban them. I have a friend who got hurt skiing in Colorado this week (as in ICU and may never walk again). Completely unnecessary. I grew up around guns and never knew anyone that got hurt with one unless it was a suicide but I have seen the numbers and there is some risk even if it isn’t as great as many other common things. We should leave no stone unturned in this quest for safety perfection. Hint: Home Depot is about to have a run on bathtubs if I have my way so buy some stock now.
I think we really need a ranked list of all these threats weighted by the value of the people they tend to hurt if we really are going into the life-saving business full-scale. We can work our way down the list starting at cars and then swimming pools before we get to guns but it will be paradise once all the threats are eliminated and no one dies anymore.
Since they don’t freak out about, say, a drug dealer getting clipped by competition, I rather doubt that’s true. Aside from that, you missed my point - those who want to ban guns say it is to save all the lives that would otherwise be killed by a very small percentage of gun owners. Banning guns isn’t going to cut down on all that many deaths.
The analogy breaks down at several points. I’ve mentioned some of the points already, namely precedent set by other countries and the extensive regulations already placed on backyard pools. Others include the fact that pools cannot be carried across state lines, nor are mass drownings common in backyard pools. Then there is the question of the base rate: how imperilled would a child be on any given day, discounting guns or pools?
I’m not sure what you might have said in other posts, but regarding extensive regulations on pools already, the same can be said for guns. If people are still dying in both, why do you think more regulation will do anything?
And your point about mass drownings not happening in pools just supports my point that people only care when it’s a bunch of people at once, preferably children, and then it’s just hysterical knee jerk “ban everything that might hurt our children”. :smack:
If you are comparing guns to cars, trains, bicycles, cigarettes, pools, skiing, bombs, missiles, or speech, you are being stupid. Stop it.
There are about 300,000,000 guns in the U.S. versus versus about 10,000,000 pools (30 times more guns than pools). Do you you want me to do the full math for you or will you just accept that swimming pools are much bigger danger to kid’s safety in total and as a rate of injury or death?
Why?
I don’t get it either. I think drew870mitchell needs to explain in detail.