LogFAQs > #972941881

Ozmose posted...

They make it sound like everyone needs to live in fear of being gunned down, when the odds are incredibly small.

That's because your odds of dying to anything in any given year are incredibly small (about 1.3% - of all people living in the US at any time, just under 99% of them will still be alive the following year). That doesn't somehow diminish the role of guns in killing people.

Guns are the sixth-most common cause of death for all ages in the US (the only things above it are, in order, heart disease, cancer, COVID-19, chronic lower respiratory disease, and opioid overdose). They are the single-most common cause of death for children. Your lifetime odds of dying to a gun are a staggeringly high 1-in-89. You are more likely to die to a gun than to a motor vehicle crash.

Try and worm your way out of the statistical truth all you like, it won't work.

Ozmose posted...

Drunk drivers kill 4 in every 100,000. Should we ban cars too?

Hmm... good point. Drunk driving does kill a lot of people - not as much as guns, of course, but still quite a few. So what do we do to address that?

Well, we restrict who can drive our cars, of course - no one under the age of 16, save for a training period where they can drive under supervision. And if you're eventually found to have a health condition of some sort that impacts your ability to drive safely, or you show yourself to be irresponsible with your use of a vehicle by breaking the law, you can have restrictions or an outright ban placed on your ability to drive.

Of course, you also need a license to drive, one that requires you to pass a test demonstrating your knowledge of how to operate a vehicle and the responsibility, awareness, and maturity to do so safely. Registration of all vehicles is similarly mandatory. All vehicles on the road have mandatory safety features, which get ever more strict by the year, and the police have the right to inspect your vehicle at any time and ticket you for violations.

You know, since you brought this up, I think I agree - we should be addressing drunk driving and gun crime the same way.

Ozmose posted...

Punish the millions upon millions of responsible law abiding people because of the actions of a small fraction of criminals.

Um... yes? That's how laws work. We legislate to the lowest common denominator because we have to.

Like... do you think traffic laws exist to punish the millions of responsible, law-abiding drivers who drive safely? No, of course not - you could turn most people loose onto roads that have no traffic laws to speak of and they would still drive in a safe, orderly fashion; it's the small minority of people who drive like fucking maniacs that wreck it for everyone else and make it so we need traffic laws.

Guns are no different. Are the overwhelming majority of gun owners responsible and use/store their guns in a safe manner? Yes. Does that mean we shouldn't pass gun laws? Absolutely not, because there are enough lunatics who *aren't* being safe in their handling/storage/usage of guns that America has a massive fucking problem that needs to be dealt with.

Gun laws aren't being passed to "punish" you - if you are as responsible a gun owner as you claim to be, laws enforcing that responsibility should not be a concern to you.