Reply #180: ... [View All]

[DanTex]

I really couldnt give a shit less about your plutonium/anthrax analogy. Seriously. Don't care. Nope. Not one bit. When either of those even become anything like an issue to worry about, let me know. Until then, they simply go in the "wildly fantastical bullshit" pile. You're trying to say that since on the extreme end of indiscriminate substances we control access, why not control access on the more pedestrian end. It is a garbage argument and you know it. One does not extend edge solutions to the middle. A more commonplace example of this would be suggesting we jail people for exceeding the speed limit by 10 miles an hour - after all, we would jail someone who drove 200mph on public roads....same thing right? Just a matter of degree? That degree is what makes the difference.

Of course, what matters is not what you "couldn't give a shit less about", what matters is whether gun control laws save lives. The plutonium/anthrax analogy is still a valid argument and you still have no answer for it. I don't even think you really understand it completely. The reason neither one of those cause many problems is precisely because they are controlled. But if people could get hold of plutonium just as easily as guns, you can be pretty sure that there would be problems.

You also fail to understand that I'm not arguing that, since plutonium is controlled, then guns need to be controlled as well. Instead, I'm responding to your argument, that just because "normal responsible adults" can be trusted to own or carry something, that obviates the need for controls on ownership. Plutonium illustrates the fact that some things do need to be controlled anyway, despite the fact that many responsible law-abiding adults could surely be trusted to own plutonium without causing any harm.

But the plutonium analogy certainly doesn't automatically imply that guns need to be controlled as well -- whether and how guns should be controlled depends on just how much of a danger to public safety they present, just how severe the social costs of gun ownership are. And here is where those studies and statistics come into play. One could imagine an alternate universe where you could get away with lax gun laws like we have in the US, that people by and large would be responsible enough that there would be few if any real negative consequences to public safety. But when you look at the statistics and the academic literature, you find that we do not in fact live in this alternate universe, but that our lax gun laws carry with them a significant toll in terms of violence, injury, and death. And the toll is greater that what we as a civilized society should tolerate. In the end, there is no simple rhetorical trick that will make the 30K gun deaths every year just disappear or not matter.


BTW I find it amusing that you first claim that you don't want to get into "My statistics are better than your statistics" but then two paragraphs later you make a statistical argument yourself: "gun ownership is at an all time high in the US while gun-related crime is at an all time low". Granted it's not a very good argument, particularly since gun ownership has actually been steadily dropping for two decades (something that you would know if you paid a little more attention to the actual facts and statistics, rather than just ignoring it all). But at least you do seem to recognize, at least momentarily, the importance of determining whether there is a link between gun availability and deaths.