4 Votes
Guns versus Cars
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So social media has been littered with pro-gun and anti-gun memes since the school shooting. Each party tends to view the other as incomprehensibly stupid (amazingly just like politics). But there is one joke meme that I would like to toss out to the OmniNerds.
Reference the attached image regarding the Assault Vehicle. It makes the same arguments against sports cars that many anti-gun advocates make – which ultimately boil down to no law abiding citizen needs it. Cars are clearly a significant vector for deaths in America. From the CDC :
Motor vehicle crashes are one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. More than 2.3 million adult drivers and passengers were treated in emergency departments as the result of being injured in motor vehicle crashes in 2009. The economic impact is also notable: the lifetime costs of crash-related deaths and injuries among drivers and passengers were $70 billion in 2005.
I couldn’t find the cited data on the CDC page, but vehicle specific deaths average 31K per year. It makes you wonder since gun related deaths are pretty much equal to traffic deaths. Thus, if a gun as an instrument is a problem due to the per capita death potential, then so is a car and thus it must be treated with the same scrutiny if not more. Why more? There are more ancillary injuries from traffic accidents than from non-fatal gun accidents. Traffic accidents further impact other drivers and have a economic loss for business and industry whereas guns tend to be pretty localized, spot events.
So for the anti-gun crowd here – if taken seriously, how can you refute the car meme?
Similarly tagged OmniNerd content:
- Ban Nerf Guns!, by VnutZ 5 months ago
- If An Assault Rifle Ban Is Passed?, by VnutZ 5 months ago
- Texas Firearm Legislation Session 82 2011, by MateFrio over 2 years ago
- Official Denial of Alien Ambassadorship, by BillMTracer over 2 years ago
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False Equivalence by wyldeling
The vast majority of such comparisons are false equivalences. Yes, a car can and will cause serious injury to both its occupants and passerby. But, the same argument can be made for practically anything as given enough time a ream of paper can be transformed into a deadly weapon. However, each of these items has a purpose other than causing injury and death. A gun, though, has a single purpose: to kill. Similarly, a knife has a single purpose, to cut, but that purpose is more expansive than inflicting harm on others, so it too would be a false equivalence, albeit closer than the others I’ve run across.
Note: I don’t know which side I support in this, but the arguments coming out of the pro-gun community tend to border on the absurd.
Specious by Occams
I will start by admitting to being a sports car driver, but it is only a miata, and, although it provides me more driving fun than a V8 monster would, its kind contributes no more to road deaths than would a Ford lady’s car of the same vintage and engine size.
I think the counter argument comes down to the fact that guns are designed to kill people and have no other purpose. Therefore it is not a just matter of good citizens not needing one, but more one of them of not being allowed to have one in the public interest, because it increases the risk of a horrible death for other folks.
Sure cars can kill people too, but that is not their specific purpose. They are made to give people the convenience of modern transport, and sports versions allow them to have fun at the same time. All road deaths are accidental, most gun deaths are deliberate.
So there is a vast difference, and this is a specious argument designed to appeal to gun-owning, car-racing red necks.
( having a false look of truth or genuineness)