The 3 Worst Arguments Against Gun Control

[flamin lib]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/30/the-3-worst-arguments-against-gun-control.html

Guns don’t kill people. Making it hard for criminals to get guns makes it hard for everyone. Any gun law puts us on a slippery slope. We’ve heard it all before. It’s all wrong.

Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People
This is the granddaddy of them all, a brilliantly clever way of conveying two related ideas: (1) because guns themselves are morally neutral objects that become a problem only when used by dangerous people, it makes sense only to focus on punishing bad people who use guns, rather than regulating guns themselves; and (2) even if dangerous people can’t get guns, they will simply use other weapons to inflict death and injury. In short, there is no gun problem; there is only a people problem.

Would we find this reasoning persuasive in other contexts involving dangerous products? Consider automobiles, for example. A car also is pretty innocuous sitting in a driveway, until it comes into contact with a driver who may be untrained or reckless. Yet our public policy toward preventing auto injuries is not confined to punishing careless or reckless drivers following a tragedy. We think it equally important to have a licensing system in place to prevent untrained and potentially high-risk people from driving in the first place. Similarly, we should have laws in place to prevent dangerous people from having guns—at the very least, required background checks for all gun sales.

Yes, it is true that dangerous people could turn to other weapons if denied access to guns. But this is a false equivalence. Research shows that attacks with guns are five times more likely to be lethal than attacks with knives, for example. Does anyone really believe that the Orlando shooter could have killed 49 people and injured 53 others with a knife or baseball bat? Guns don’t kill people, but people with guns kill people, far more effectively and efficiently than with other weapons.

Good read. Over in the gungeon I've shut down two threads about how older WWII vintage rifles were the assault weapons of their day and are just as deadly or more so than the holy AR-15. Simply ask, "Ok, so if the Orlando shooter had one of those instead of the AR-15 derivative would he reasonably have been able to shoot 103 people?" Crickets after that.

I did the same with a personal conversation about "criminals don't obey laws so it's pointless". Ok, so just get rid of speed limits, traffic signs and traffic patrol officers because some people still speed and run stop signs. That'd make the drive to the grocery store a lot more interesting wouldn't it.

The justifications for refusing to regulate the way people buy guns are simply foolish and can be made to look so without a lot of effort. No deep research, not supreme court decisions, just common sense.

Become a single issue voter if only for a few election cycles.

[billh58]

1. Second Amendment absolutists

and ILA/NRA/GOA apologists are too emotionally involved with their precious to listen to any form of reason. Their standard response to any common sense approach to reducing gun violence is "it's just another step towards confiscation."

The paranoid is strong in these defenders of the Constitution, who are almost always within reach of a lethal weapon. The term "armed and dangerous" was custom tailored for these "patriots."