September 17, 2013 by David K. Sutton
Throw Your Stupid, Self-Centered, Straw Man Arguments Out The Window
Another day, another mass shooting in America. Yesterday’s violence and death at the Washington Navy Yard is just the latest chapter in America’s sad obsession with guns and gun culture.
But gun rights advocates, you can go ahead and throw all your selfish, self-centered, conceited arguments out the window, because there are two simple facts you cannot refute.
1. America has by far the greatest number of deaths by gun than any other modern first-world democracy. In fact, it’s not even close.
2. Americans by far have the easiest access to guns compared to citizens of any other modern first-world democracy.
Now I realize that these two facts alone do not prove causality, but if it quacks like a duck…
The purveyors of human death and suffering have no response to these two simple facts. Instead, gun nuts will resort to stupid arguments, selfish arguments, straw man arguments, and oh yeah my favorite, the stupid selfish straw man argument on the rocks with a twist.
Car crashes cause thousands of deaths. Does that mean we should we ban automobiles?
Nobody would suggest banning cars because of car accidents. Automobiles were not invented with the implicit purpose of racking up a body count. They do happen to have a primary purpose of getting us from point A to point B, and they do that quite well. And while people may re-purpose an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle for sport, the fact still remains, you cannot undo it’s primary reason for existing.
I have a constitutional right to defend my family…with an AR-15.
Nowhere in the constitution does it guarantee you a right to defend your family with a gun. Trust me, I know. I’ve read it. Have you?
Gun control will not completely solve gun violence in America.
Since when have we required a perfect solution before we act? We don’t need a singular answer to gun violence, we need a multi-pronged approach. And no, even then, the problem will not be completely solved.
Bad guys will always be able to get a gun.
Bad guys might be able to get a gun regardless of laws, but all guns start out legal. All guns are manufactured by for-profit companies and sold legally. Later on some of these guns find their way to the black market and are used to commit crimes. So, for example, if we banned the AR-15, that would mean less AR-15s that eventually find their way into illegal activities.
Only law-biding citizens obey the law anyway.
See the previous comment. If less assault style weapons are manufactured, less will ultimately end up in the hands of criminals. And besides, most of the mass shootings in America happen with legally purchased weapons by people who were not previously criminals.
Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
Do I even need to respond to this one? People who still use this line do so at intellectual peril. Without a gun, it’s A LOT harder to kill someone. Without a gun, it’s near impossible to kill someone from afar. The reality is that guns make it too easy to take a human life, and in my opinion, most human beings are not responsible enough to have that kind of ability in the palm of their hand. And this doesn’t even take into account a person who is perfectly lucid and sane at the time they purchase a weapon, only to later suffer from a mental disorder. Do they still get to keep their gun?
We don’t need more gun laws. We need to enforce the ones we have.
If a person is able to obtain a semi-automatic assault weapon along with hundreds or thousands of rounds of ammo, proceed to the nearest school, military base or movie theater, and then kill dozens of people in seconds or minutes, it’s pretty simple — WE DO NEED MORE GUN LAWS.
