This fallacious gun-debate exchange simply MUST stop

The BBQ Pit
1

In the interests of full disclosure I am not pro nor anti guns specifically. Personally I would never own a gun, but I realise that just because I feel that way doesn’t mean that it is the best way for any nation to be run, and it also doesn’t mean that any nation would run that way, so I ought to suss out my feelings about legal gun ownership anyway. You want your guns, you got 'em. Whatever. Doesn’t bother me in the slightest until you shoot me or someone I know. :slight_smile:

That said, I feel I must also warn you that this is going to be a very poor rant on the scale of vitriol. I’m just not good at that, at least not writing it anyway. If I were ranting at each of you personally, I’m sure my point would be heavily obscured by a veil of curse words and creative insults. But why don’t I shut up and just get on with the rant, then?

Some coworkers earlier today were discussing gun control and one of them brought up how guns cause death and Death Is Bad, Okay, so guns are evil. The other then replied, “Yeah, well, cars kill more people each year than guns do so let’s just ban cars too.”

Point 1: This analogy, quite frankly, is crap.

Guns: Created to deliver small pellets at vast speeds with the intent of said pellets causing grievous damage to whatsoever with which they come in contact.

Cars: Created to deliver person from point A to point B quickly and relatively conveniently.

Guns: Owned by anywhere between 77 million to 90 million Americans. [cite: apparently pro-gun Reason Magazine, data compiled from two Gallup polls in years 1999 and 2000.]

Cars: Owned by 87% of the US population, or approximately 267,000,000 Americans. [cite: a publication titled “All-Consuming Passion”, based on data from the following source: Jeremy Rifkin, Ed., The Green Lifestyle Handbook (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1990), p. 54.]

Unfortunately I cannot find any further cites to represent the rest of Point 1. I do think that what follows will be a fairly obvious mental leap and hope that you smart people here agree with me.

a) Given that there are more car owners in the US than there are gun owners, it is therefore likely that there are more cars in the US than there are guns

b) If there are more cars than guns it makes sense that there are more car-related deaths than gun-related deaths

c) This one may be more of a mental stretch, but I think it is highly likely that car owners use their cars more frequently than gun owners use their guns. For example I use my car between two and four times a day on average; if I was not opposed to having a gun, and thus owned one or even several, I doubt I would be using the gun once a day, let alone two to four times. There may be a sector of the public that uses their guns more often than cars (police, I’m thinking) but they are more than likely far outweighed by the number of people who use cars more than guns.

d) A higher frequency of use means a higher probability of accidental, damaging misuse.

e) When handling a gun that is not loaded it is pretty damn near impossible to accidentally kill someone. When handling a car at any time, it is possible to kill someone.

f) Thus there are an infinite number of times nation-wide where a car may cause a death. Every moment in time where two cars are cohabiting a road, there is a chance - even if small, still a chance - that the operation of one or both of those cars will cause a death. Guns that are being handled without ammunition in them, with the safety engaged, or with a trigger lock in place, are very unlikely to cause an accident that would result in grievous injury or death.

Point 2: Since there are more cars and more chances for cars to be involved in fatal accidents than there are guns and chances for guns to be involved in fatal accidents, perhaps the fatality rate of cars is actually better than the fatality rate of guns.

For this section, gun statistics are taken from a U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee report citing information from 1999, and car statistics are taken from a Car-Accidents.com report citing information from 1999.

a) If you follow my reasoning above, the actual percentage of car deaths as related to car usage would be 0, because of the infinite probability that any car could cause a fatal accident at any time and the fact that division of any finite number by an infinite number is basically 0. I will thus be using a ratio of fatalities caused by object to American owners of said object.

b) American owners of cars: 267,000,000
Fatalities due to car use: 41,345
Percentage: 0.00000155% (rounded to three significant digits in keeping with the ownership statistic)

c) American owners of guns: 77,000,000 to 90,000,000
Fatalities due to gun use: 866 accidental; 29,842 non-accidental
Percentage of accidental fatalities: 0.00000011% or 0.000000096%
Percentage of non-accidental fatalities: 0.0000039% or 0.0000033%
Percentage of total fatalities (comparable to the above car percentage, as there is no way to separate “intentional” car fatalities from “accidental” on the page I am citing from): 0.0000040% or 0.0000034%

d) Percentage of car deaths to car owners: 0.00000155%
vs. Percentage of gun deaths to gun owners: 0.0000039%

So if you’re using these statistics to prove that guns are “better” than cars, you’re not doing a very good job of proving it. In fact if you gave it just a half-second of thought I think you’d see that this is one of the stupidest. Arguments. Ever. Ever!

Not only is your analogy (not to mention the facts) completely untenable, but … You do realise you’re opening yourself up to the equally fallacious but apparently popular counter-argument of, “Well let’s just regulate guns like cars then!” … right? You realise this? And you want to deal with this? WHY?!

Why would you want to deal with some equally dumb anti-gun person telling you that guns should be treated like cars? If this is the case, then:

You wouldn’t be able to operate a gun without a “gun-learning permit” that you’d only be able to obtain after reaching a certain age

You’d have to log so many hours of “gun training” before you could even take the “gun test” to see if you qualify for a “gun licence”

You’d have to provide the government agency handing out these “gun licences” with a lot of information and basically register your gun, so it was constantly linkable to you and any government official could access these records and discover your gun ownership

You’d have to purchase “gun insurance” to cover any liability costs curtailed in the usage of your gun

You’d have to renew your gun licence every 4 years

People might start lobbying to limit the licence such that you could no longer carry one after a certain age

You might get your gun towed by the county if you didn’t use it for a certain amount of time =)

And there are plenty other stupid things that the anti-gun people might say along these lines. Plenty! Why invite stupidity? Why why why?

Look, I don’t mind a gun control debate. I really and truly don’t. But please, for the love of all that is holy (or holey, depending on your political persuasion) …

leave the stupidest argument ever OUT OF IT!

deep breath

Thank you.

2

Nicely put. Well reasoned.

But it ain’t going to stop the gun debates. Not being a gun owner (although I’ve considered buying various ones for various reasons), it’s easy to recognize the underlying motivation for many (NOT ALL!) gun owners: emotion. They want a gun. People want all manner of things they don’t have much use for, are status symbols, look cool on the wall, are fashionable (and completely useless).

You can turn an amiable conversation instantly into a hostile encounter by criticizing anything that people are emotionally attached to.

People who are against guns… I don’t know how they appear to gun owners. How does someone who’s emotionally attached view anybody who doesn’t share the emotion? As unfortunate? As needy? As insensitive? As a loveless and ignorant shadow of a person?

Many of the arguments you have characterized so well are more or less side issues to the central emotional beliefs. About being safe, in control, powerful, etc.

3

I agree that an argument that seeks to draw an analogy between guns and cars for the purpose of showing that guns should not be banned is seriously flawed. As the OP recognizes, this is a foolish argument, and as I’m sure the OP knows, a strawman for the issue of gun control as a whole.

I’m more interested in partly_warmer’s off-the-cuff psychological analysis. He or she claims that many, but not all, gun owners simply want guns, without a rational basis for this emotional desire. He or she invites us to consider that gun owners “don’t have much use for” guns, that guns are, to the owners, “status symbols,” and that they “look cool on the wall,” and are “fashionable.”

This is not consistent with my own experience amongst gun owners. I doubt there are very many gun oners who believe their guns are “fashionable.” According to the ATF, the vast majority of gun owners in the country use their guns for hunting - surely a legitimate and practical purpose.

Perhaps partly_warmer was referring to handgun owners. In the case of handguns, while there are certainly legitimate uses for the owners thereof, there’s also much more potential for the sort of non-practical, emotional reasoning partly_warmer describes. I don’t agree it’s accurate for all or even most handgun owners, but would be hard-pressed to rebut “many”.

  • Rick
4

Very good OP. It would be nice if we could head off some of the silliest pro- and anti-gun control arguments like this (guns as cars, America vs any other country in statistical terms and so on). I’d hope that it might make the inevitable debates a little more civil and a little less predictable as a result.

5

That’s a pretty good post synnove, however, a couple of nits. Your b) above implies that almost every citizen in the US owns a car, considering the latest census puts the US pop at around 290 million. I think the number is considerably lower, with one owner owning multiple cars (FWIW, Jay Leno owns something like 60 rare vehicles). Which leads to c) 77-90 million owners of guns own somewhere around 250 million firearms (I own more than five). What happens when you crunch those numbers? (I really, really sucked at statistics 201 and 202)

6

Well, the “banning cars” argument does just miss a valid point – that, pragmatically speaking, we could probably save more people by concentrating on traffic safety than by making every gun vanish. Same point could be made in regards to the “War on Drugs”. Something between 40,000 to 50,000 Americans die in car wrecks every year, yet it’s accepted as normal instead of being considered a public safety disaster. Of course, that doesn’t mean that guns aren’t a problem. (Well, the real problem is that people are stupid.)

My own take on guns is pretty middle-of-the-road. I don’t care for them myself (although I do have a lot of hand-to-hand weapons around). But I do care passionately about the Bill of Rights. I know there are valid arguments one way or the other about the precise meaning of the Second Amendment, but when there’s ambiguity, as there obviously is, I’d rather err on the side of individual rights.

I’d be happy if everybody decided they didn’t need guns, but the only way to impose that would be through a level of government oppression that would scare me far more than gun owners do. So I’ll take the risks along with the advantages of liberty. (Apparently John Ashcroft agrees, at least about the Second Amendment – although curiously he doesn’t seem too interested in the rest of the Bill of Rights.)

7

Quite right that it was off-the-cuff. I have no real vested interest in a particular opinion, the observations were more on the order of “this is one of those issues that aren’t going to be solved by reason alone”.

My comments about guns being “fashionable” I’ll stand by firmly. Apparently you don’t know the same gun owners I do. There’s enormous status involved in knowing about guns, and in owning them, in being able to debate the opinions expressed in gun magazines, etc. (Not much, that I’ve perceived, about being able to shoot with them, I note with interest. Particularly since I’m a good shot…)

As far as emotional response, I was being pretty even-handed about emotions on both sides. Fairly cutting comments about non-owners. Not-too-acid comments about the value of owning things for status, looks, comfort.

8

BF, you’re right and you’re wrong :slight_smile:

The actual cite reads,

So it takes into effect that some households own more than one car.

However you’re right in that I counted it as percentage of the population (which I rounded up to 300 million) when it’s really percentage of households. I don’t know how many households there are in the US. So I’d have to recalculate those percentages. I’m not sure they’d be off by a factor of 3 though.

(After all that doesn’t take into account the number of people who not only own cars and drive them to and from work but who also work for a living as driving around, like truck drivers or couriers or whatnot …)

Anyway the percentages I devised were with respect to the number of owners of cars/guns, not with respect to the number of cars actually owned and/or operated, so I think I’m still kind of safe there :slight_smile:

As for guns it states that the average number of guns owned per gun owner is 4, so depending on which estimate you use, there could be between 302 and 360 million guns in the U.S. … I couldn’t find anything about how many cars the average car owner owns or anything near a total of cars owned in the U.S. (I looked for a good 45 minutes trying different combinations of “cars owned in U.S./America” on google.) So while there may actually not be more cars than guns in the U.S., (my mind boggles to think of this! Are there really more guns than cars? Holy shit, that’s frightening since I see cars everywhere … wow.) I still think that the potential for car death is far greater than the potential for gun death considering the amount of use cars get on a daily basis compared to guns. :slight_smile:

partly_warmer, I have no problem with gun-control debates. I have problems with the often stupid arguments used in such debates. There’s a lot of other arguments that bug me too, but this one was the easiest one to “debunk”, as it were.

9

Now that’s just not true at all. There’s something in there about Establishment of Religion that he’s very enthusiastic about. :stuck_out_tongue:

10

So you equate an interest in status with having the intelligence to learn about something one is interested in before going out and spending a significant chunk of change to buy it, and certainly spending quite a bit of time learning to use that thing properly so that one is trained well enough not to be a menace.

If that is so, then give me a ‘status seeking’ gun owner any day. Please.

Some people are interested in firearms, including rare and old firearms. Some people are interested in cars, including rare and old cars.

But honestly, how many times have you seen Dick and Jane at the grocery store talking about the pros and cons of a ‘Small 8’ engine in a 1987 Chevrolet Caprice Classic and remarked that all they want is status?

Why is it that if Dick and Jane are discussing the pros and cons of an M1-Garand for long range target shooting, you automatically assume they want to look like they’ve got some kind of status?

As someone who professes to be a ‘good shot’, you ought be well aware that knowing quite a bit about the guns one owns or is considering buying can definitely improve one’s marksmanship skills. What, exactly, is wrong with being knowledgeable about the tool you use?

Would you say to a bunch of carpenters that they were silly for knowing their tools by intimating ‘I have no idea what kind of table saw I have. I can cut straight though.’?

Perhaps you ought to get to know more gun owners, because all of the owners I know (including myself, thanks) spend a great deal of time and effort to learn everything we can about the tool we use because it makes us better at using that tool. So yes, you might overhear me talking about or refuting the editor of some magazine’s opinion on whether or not 14 power scopes should be tightly controlled as ‘sniper accessories’ because quite frankly when I’m practicing 1000 yard shots with my rifle to prepare for deer season, I want magnification.

So, what have you against gun owners who like to be knowledgeable about guns? Hmm? You think they should only talk about making shots on target? Stick around a minute, you might hear that. And a whole lot else. Because not everyone has the one-track mind of ‘I got all 10 in the 9 ring last night at the range’.

11

Ah, thanks synnove I didn’t see the percentage cited. Went to the DOT and found this.

12

catsix, you appear to believe I’m against gun owners. More or less proved my point that even writing a post that’s quite rude about non-gun owners, you only see the tentative, slight criticism of gun owners.

It is, as I said, an emotional issue.

I don’t disparage pride in tools. Guns are frequently awesome pieces of craftsmanship.

I’ll stand by my statement, though, about lack of emphasis on use of guns vs. knowledge about guns. Compare a gun owner to a karate black belt. The karate owner wants to do with his skill. To meet people in competition. To admire people with greater skill. Gun owners… let’s see… collect dozens and mount them on a wall… hide them in a bedside drawer so they can nail a burgler… plaster them in walls so the police can’t find them (a friend of mine did this) … lock them in a glass gun cabinet so everyone can admire them…

If I owned a gun, it would be because it was a superb work of craftsmanship. It might be to defend myself. Or to shoot rats and squirrels. But as a fencer of long standing, I, personally, wouldn’t see a gun as a sports activity. It would be an object of status and security. The same as most people I know who own guns.

13

partly_warmer, I was in general agreement to a point with you, however I found this statement to be wide of the mark. As a competitive trap shooter, most of the firearms I own are an integral part of my sport activities. I’ve shot more than 10.000 rounds this calendar year through 3 of the 4 shotguns I own, and regularly shoot with a group of guys who won’t hesitate to put 5,000 rounds through a 70 year old shotgun who’s value is in the $40,000 range.

14

:confused:
But there are already states where some of those car-like things ARE the case. For example, Massachusettes

15

BF, no question there are people who are serious about guns as a sport. But of the folks I know, only a couple are serious about the sportive aspect. The rest are in the status/security category.

In a way, i’m mostly making a point to the OP, which is that rerunning old arguments, no matter how well-phrased, isn’t going to convince anyone.

There is something else at issue here. Exactly what it is, and how gun and anti-gun folks can have a reasonable discussion… not quite sure…

16

This is entirely your speculative opinion based on no evidence whatsoever.

That you take my pointing out how baseless your opinion is as rudeness shows me that there is little reason to try to have a discussion with you.

You’re bent on labeling the world of gun owners based on your own desire to perceive them in a certain way, and it seems that despite logical refutation, you will not admit that your opinion might be wrong.

I can’t have a reasonable discussion with you so long as you insist on telling me how my guns are stored, handled, dealt with and what my attitude toward them is.

In fact, the things you choose to believe are true about all gun owners are not true of me. Can you admit that you might be painting with far too wide a brush?

17

The number of people saying the OP is ‘well reasoned’ is just proof that if you agree with someone, you’ll accept even the most specious of reasons. I found the OP to be very poorly reasoned. Let’s look at it:

First of all, guns are not necessarily created to cause grievous damage to anything. A large number of guns available on the market are ‘sporting’ arms, used for anything from trap-shooting to Olympic shooting. Another large class of guns are hunting weapons. Another large category is ‘collector’ weapons which are basically designed to be collected and fired for the pure enjoyment of owning them.

And the OP has failed to explain why the original, intended purpose for creating something is somehow relevant.

And there are more cats in the United States than both of those. I haven’t noticed a huge spike in cat-related deaths. The logic of this argument is baffling. I’m not even sure what the point is supposed to be.

All this is apparently leading to the conclusion that car-related deaths are more acceptable than gun-related deaths because cars are used a lot more. This is a total non-sequitur to the debate.

And the point is…?

Another very strange point. A car that has no gas is pretty harmless, eh? Again, if you are trying to destroy the argument that guns shouldn’t be banned because cars aren’t, focusing on how many there are and how accidents happen is way beside the point.

You lost me on this one. Why again do we care what the exact nature of the risk of the two items are? The point is, they both carry risk.

So what? Would it matter for the debate if there were ten times as many guns but the fatality rate was the same? You’re aiming at strawmen.

And all that does is show that your reasoning is flawed. Because the ratio is demonstrably NOT zero. You’ve achieved this by defining the opportunity for an accident as to be basically every movement of a vehicle - a ridiculous measure. By your standard, I could say that the ratio of gun uses to gun deaths is ‘essentially zero’ by defining a ‘gun use’ as every time someone thinks of one, holds one, sees a picture of one, looks at one in a book…

Right, because anyone who attempted to do this would be engaging in the same kinds of logical fallacies and incompatible comparisons that you’re trying to do on the opposite side.

And you’re still aiming at strawmen. Show me anyone who says that guns are ‘better’ than cars because the number of fatalities per use is lower. You are totally missing the point.

[quote]

Not only is your analogy (not to mention the facts) completely untenable, but … You do realise you’re opening yourself up to the equally fallacious but apparently popular counter-argument of, “Well let’s just regulate guns like cars then!” … right? You realise this? And you want to deal with this? WHY?!

Why would you want to deal with some equally dumb anti-gun person telling you that guns should be treated like cars? If this is the case, then:

You wouldn’t be able to operate a gun without a “gun-learning permit” that you’d only be able to obtain after reaching a certain age

You’d have to log so many hours of “gun training” before you could even take the “gun test” to see if you qualify for a “gun licence”

You’d have to provide the government agency handing out these “gun licences” with a lot of information and basically register your gun, so it was constantly linkable to you and any government official could access these records and discover your gun ownership

You’d have to purchase “gun insurance” to cover any liability costs curtailed in the usage of your gun

You’d have to renew your gun licence every 4 years

People might start lobbying to limit the licence such that you could no longer carry one after a certain age

You might get your gun towed by the county if you didn’t use it for a certain amount of time =)

[quote]

HUH? Did you just make this up? You’re playing the act of a ‘really dumb’ opponent, to show…what? How really dumb people think? This is an argument?

Well, really stupid people are going to say really stupid things no matter what your argument is. I don’t see why worry about what the ‘really stupid people’ think is apropos of anything at all.

Look: I think it’s a pretty stupid argument as well. Guns are not cars. Cars are not guns.

HOWEVER, most of the time I’ve heard pro-gun people make this argument it’s to COUNTER an equally stupid argument, which is that the SOLE reason that guns should be banned is because X number of people a year are killed. The media loves doing this. Remember when TIME magazine printed a cover showing everyone killed by a handgun that year?

That’s the kind of annoying tactic that gets gun people going, “Hey, if the number of people killed is the only measure, why not put out an issue of TIME that shows everyone killed in a car in the last year? The cover would have to be 40 freaking feet tall.”

In other words, gun people use the gun-car analogy SPECIFICALLY to show how silly it is to make an argument based on absolute numbers of people injured/killed, etc.

The gun debate is far more complex than that. Your ‘response’ to your friend is full of exactly the same kinds of logical flaws you say you hate.

18

You can’t possibly believe that that is a fair characterization of firearms owners, can you? :confused:

FTR, every single “black belt” I’ve ever known IRL was much more concerned with bragging about how they were a black belt, and how they were walking, talking killing machines - when in fact, they were much more reminiscent of Bart Simpson in the “Touch of Death” episode…they were little boys dropped off at the Dojo every second weekend by their parents, where there was a fixed schedule, posted on the wall, that said “Black Belt - 3 years”. Prices for the whole program (to progress the Sacred Path from Grasshopper to Elite Suburban Ninja Assassin) were also listed as well. :rolleyes:

But of course, that’s an unfair characterization on my part, and no more valid than yours of firearms owners.

But not at game animals?

As a long-time firearms owner, I personally find the idea of having a weapon as some sort of status builder to be offensive. Having the ability to take a life so easily with a weapon is not a status symbol.

When there are several tens of millions of persons worldwide that compete in firearms sporting events, and some even in the Olympics, it seems odd that you don’t see firearms competitions as a “sporting activity”.