US Philadelphia Student Carrying Legal Firearm Shoots It Out

[Clinton Huxley]

Nope, lots more people are killed in RTAs - at least partly because of gun control laws. Rather, my point is that no-one gets in a car intending to kill someone with it, so the comparison between guns and cars is a little specious.

Wrong. People do get into cars with the specific intent of using them as deadly weapons all the time. And they also form a specific intent to use them as deadly weapons while driving them. Ever hear of "road rage." And that discounts the "accidental" deaths caused by those who act with gross negligence and callous disregard of the safety of others by driving drunk, which is, and should always be charged as attempted 2nd degree murder or 2nd degree murder, as appropriate.

And people who carry firearms lawfully do not carry them with a specific intent of killing someone with it, they carry it for self defense in the event they are attacked by someone using deadly force.

So no, the comparison is apt, and unanswered.

Unoconvincingly argued. Road rage is not an intent to kill someone. Nobody gets into their car to commit a massacre, at a school or university say, with the intention of running dozens of people over. Neither do drunks deliberately set out to kill people with their cars, though I agree they should be severely prosecuted.

It's a fallacious comparison.

[Clinton Huxley]

Nope, lots more people are killed in RTAs - at least partly because of gun control laws. Rather, my point is that no-one gets in a car intending to kill someone with it, so the comparison between guns and cars is a little specious.

So it's morally outrageous to kill someone by a gun, but perfectly acceptable to kill them through, what 'carelessness', with a car?

Wow, are you signed up for the 2012 Olympics? With leaps like that, you'll be a shoe in for a gold.

It appears you still aren't getting the point.

[charlou]

Nope, lots more people are killed in RTAs - at least partly because of gun control laws. Rather, my point is that no-one gets in a car intending to kill someone with it, so the comparison between guns and cars is a little specious.

Wrong. People do get into cars with the specific intent of using them as deadly weapons occasionally. And they also form a specific intent to use them as deadly weapons while driving them. Ever hear of "road rage." And that discounts the "accidental" deaths caused by those who act with gross negligence and callous disregard of the safety of others by driving drunk, which is, and should always be charged as attempted 2nd degree murder or 2nd degree murder, as appropriate.

And most people who carry firearms lawfully do not carry them with a specific intent of killing someone with it, they carry it for self defense in the event they are attacked by someone using deadly force.

Statistical analysis comparing the two (deliberate use of those tools for murder) might be enlightening on a factual level.

The comparison remains a non sequiter really, as it implies that because people can conceivably use a car as a weapon of death, therefore arguments against gun control are valid. You might as well include knives in that. And beer bottles. And frozen chickens.

[charlou]

Nope, lots more people are killed in RTAs - at least partly because of gun control laws. Rather, my point is that no-one gets in a car intending to kill someone with it, so the comparison between guns and cars is a little specious.

So it's morally outrageous to kill someone by a gun, but perfectly acceptable to kill them through, what 'carelessness', with a car?

Intentional v accidental holds no significance for you in this train of thought?

[Clinton Huxley]

Doctors kill more people than guns. We should probably ban doctors.

[Seth]

Nope, lots more people are killed in RTAs - at least partly because of gun control laws. Rather, my point is that no-one gets in a car intending to kill someone with it, so the comparison between guns and cars is a little specious.

Wrong. People do get into cars with the specific intent of using them as deadly weapons all the time. And they also form a specific intent to use them as deadly weapons while driving them. Ever hear of "road rage." And that discounts the "accidental" deaths caused by those who act with gross negligence and callous disregard of the safety of others by driving drunk, which is, and should always be charged as attempted 2nd degree murder or 2nd degree murder, as appropriate.

And people who carry firearms lawfully do not carry them with a specific intent of killing someone with it, they carry it for self defense in the event they are attacked by someone using deadly force.

So no, the comparison is apt, and unanswered.

Unoconvincingly argued. Road rage is not an intent to kill someone.

The hell it isn't.

Nobody gets into their car to commit a massacre, at a school or university say, with the intention of running dozens of people over.

Sure they do, and have, and can. Driving at high speed in to a crowd of people is actually probably a better way to kill many people at once because it happens quickly and cannot be stopped. We've had many incidents of crowds of people being killed and injured by drivers, some of them deliberate. And people try to run down their enemies with some frequency. Husbands run over wives, wives run over husbands, and mothers drive into rivers and off cliffs with their children in the car specifically to kill them. So you're spouting nonsense.

Neither do drunks deliberately set out to kill people with their cars, though I agree they should be severely prosecuted.

Sometimes they do, and sometimes they form the intent while they are driving.

It's a fallacious comparison.

No, it's not, because we're not comparing deliberate homicides using vehicles with deliberate homicides by law-abiding gun owners, we're arguing about whether the private carrying of arms by law-abiding citizens, pursuant to a permit to do so, is more or less dangerous than many other forms of socially-approved behavior like driving cars.

The facts show that such legal carrying of firearms is extremely UNLIKELY to result in any injury or death to anyone other than a criminal bent on dealing death or serious bodily harm to an innocent, armed victim. I'll bet you cannot even find a published government statistic on how many permitted, law-abiding gun-carrying citizens have unlawfully killed someone with their lawfully-carried gun, even accidentally. The numbers are so low that even Handgun Control (the Brady Campaign), when it tried to create an anti-concealed carry propaganda site was only able to come up with about 160 documented incidents of a permitted person committing a murder with their firearm, and that's out of TENS OF MILLIONS of permitted gun owners nationwide.

The simple fact is that lawfully possessed firearms, even those carried daily pursuant to a permit, are so far down on the list of hazards to life and health that they don't make the top 15 causes of injury or death. Five gallon buckets and bathtubs are far more dangerous than legally-owned firearms.

And without a substantial and provable danger to the public caused by the private lawful ownership of firearms, there is no legitimate, rational reason to regulate away the right of law-abiding citizens to own and carry them. The only excuse left is paranoid fear on the part of those who are ignorant of guns and therefore are irrationally afraid of them, and their fellow citizens. But the facts show that those fears are indeed pathologically irrational to the point of being a form of mental illness.

[colubridae]

Nope, lots more people are killed in RTAs - at least partly because of gun control laws. Rather, my point is that no-one gets in a car intending to kill someone with it, so the comparison between guns and cars is a little specious.

So it's morally outrageous to kill someone by a gun, but perfectly acceptable to kill them through, what 'carelessness', with a car?

Wow, are you signed up for the 2012 Olympics? With leaps like that, you'll be a shoe in for a gold.

It appears you still aren't getting the point.

My point is that you are morally outraged by gun deaths, yet show little concern for road deaths.
ie someone is killed by gun bad, someone killed by car acceptable.

Now if you disagree with ‘someone killed by is car acceptable’, that means you find it morally wrong that people are killed in road deaths.

What I don’t understand is why you feel it appropriate to voice your opinion strongly over gun deaths, yet not even start a thread-of-outrage over road deaths. Is it your view that a relatively small number of guns deaths is an outrage, but a relatively enormous number of road deaths (by ‘carelessness’) is not?

Is it your view that only the intent makes it an outrage?

If so I would disagree. Deaths by intent are an outrage, but deaths because of recklessness, carelessness seem immoral to me. Killing people on the road because one can’t be arsed to drive carefully actually seems morally worse to me.

[charlou]

Mass murder. Ok so if it’s numbers that count. I will ask it another way

If you had a choice, press a magic button to prevent road deaths or gun deaths. Which button do you choose?

I don't do magic button exercises.

Both can be addressed on their own merit, and need not affect how we address the other.

If we're talking about deliberately killing people with a vehicle or with a gun, both clearly ought to be prevented if possible.

Same applies to accidental killing with a vehicle or with a gun, obviously.

Road deaths are an active process. It’s not as if too little is done to fight poverty or disease, people killed on roads are killed actively. Mostly by carelessness (not psycopathy ), but does that make their deaths less morally wrong?
Is that killing by guns is immoral, but killing by car is moral?

Morality .. hmmm ... accidental (careless, as you put it) killing can be eliminated here, as there's no motive involved. So to intentional killing ... by car or by gun ... mostly wrong, but there could be exceptions related to self defense.

Sure often (though, not always) the numbers per incident are small, one here, two there, numbers spread out. But overall the numbers are several orders of magnitude higher than gun deaths (even including so-called combat conditions)

IIRC the WHO quotes road deaths as the third biggest killer.

Yes, but most, if not all road deaths are accidental/careless, not intentional. Can the same be said for gun related deaths?

[Clinton Huxley]

Deliberately owning or carrying a weapon is not the same as deliberately owning or driving a car. I don't get into my car thinking about how I would run someone over if I had to. The psychology of driving a car and carrying a gun are different.

[colubridae]

Nope, lots more people are killed in RTAs - at least partly because of gun control laws. Rather, my point is that no-one gets in a car intending to kill someone with it, so the comparison between guns and cars is a little specious.

So it's morally outrageous to kill someone by a gun, but perfectly acceptable to kill them through, what 'carelessness', with a car?

Intentional v accidental holds no significance for you in this train of thought?

Please don't use the word accidental. This is not valid. The deaths are not, definitely not, accidental.
They are no longer called RTAs by the police in the UK. They are incidents.

‘Accident’ implies that they are unavoidable. This is not the case.
They are caused be recklessness/carelessness.

Ban guns and gun deaths will cease.
Ban cars and car deaths will cease.

So again, why gun ban but not car ban?


edit I know I used the word accident. I should not have done. Long years of ingrained use. I will try to stop calling them accidents.

[JimC]

You remember that massacre in Todmorden, where that guy ran over those 32 people? No, I don't either.

I don’t understand your point. Are you saying that far fewer deaths occur in Road Traffic Accidents than by guns.
If so you are wrong and your point is hopelessly invalid.
Several orders of magnitude more people are killed per year in RTAs than by guns.
Simple stat. easy to look up.

Or is it your belief that people killed in road deaths are unimportant.
Or is it your belief that people killed in road deaths are acceptable.
Only when killed by a gun does it become a moral issue worthy of a thread/rant.

If people are killed in a road accident are you less affected than if they are killed by a gunman?

You are right, old chap. You don't understand my point.

May I ask you then, is it your point that fewer people are killed in RTAs than by guns?

His point, I suspect, is that few if any RTAs are mass killings by deranged individuals. When such massacres occur, they are fairly likely to involve guns, not cars...

RTA risks are a separate issue, to be managed by sensible road laws, education capaigns, whatever. Brining them into a debate about gun control (in fact, mostly hand-gun control) is to bring oranges into a debate about apples...

[charlou]

Deliberately owning or carrying a weapon is not the same as deliberately owning or driving a car. I don't get into my car thinking about how I would run someone over if I had to. The psychology of driving a car and carrying a gun are different.

Good point ... likely too subtle for "from my cold dead hands" gun advocates, though.

[JimC]

Nope, lots more people are killed in RTAs - at least partly because of gun control laws. Rather, my point is that no-one gets in a car intending to kill someone with it, so the comparison between guns and cars is a little specious.

So it's morally outrageous to kill someone by a gun, but perfectly acceptable to kill them through, what 'carelessness', with a car?

Intentional v accidental holds no significance for you in this train of thought?

Please don't use the word accidental. This is not valid. The deaths are not, definitely not, accidental.
They are no longer called RTAs by the police in the UK. They are incidents.

‘Accident’ implies that they are unavoidable. This is not the case.
They are caused be recklessness/carelessness.

Ban guns and gun deaths will cease.
Ban cars and car deaths will cease.

So again, why gun ban but not car ban?

The purpose of cars is to get from A to B, but they sometimes kill by accident.

The purpose of guns is (largely) to kill. Sometimes they kill by accident, but mostly on purpose. This vast disparity in intent is quite enough to mean that they should be considered as separate entities in any rational argument.

[charlou]

Nope, lots more people are killed in RTAs - at least partly because of gun control laws. Rather, my point is that no-one gets in a car intending to kill someone with it, so the comparison between guns and cars is a little specious.

So it's morally outrageous to kill someone by a gun, but perfectly acceptable to kill them through, what 'carelessness', with a car?

Intentional v accidental holds no significance for you in this train of thought?

Please don't use the word accidental. This is not valid. The deaths are not, definitely not, accidental.
They are no longer called RTAs by the police in the UK. They are incidents.

‘Accident’ implies that they are unavoidable. This is not the case.
They are caused be recklessness/carelessness.

Ban guns and gun deaths will cease.
Ban cars and car deaths will cease.

So again, why gun ban but not car ban?

When I use 'accidental' I use it in contrast to deliberate/intentional. But do insert 'careless' in my question if you prefer.

[colubridae]

Nope, lots more people are killed in RTAs - at least partly because of gun control laws. Rather, my point is that no-one gets in a car intending to kill someone with it, so the comparison between guns and cars is a little specious.

So it's morally outrageous to kill someone by a gun, but perfectly acceptable to kill them through, what 'carelessness', with a car?

Intentional v accidental holds no significance for you in this train of thought?

Please don't use the word accidental. This is not valid. The deaths are not, definitely not, accidental.
They are no longer called RTAs by the police in the UK. They are incidents.

‘Accident’ implies that they are unavoidable. This is not the case.
They are caused be recklessness/carelessness.

Ban guns and gun deaths will cease.
Ban cars and car deaths will cease.

So again, why gun ban but not car ban?

The purpose of cars is to get from A to B, but they sometimes kill by accident.

The purpose of guns is (largely) to kill. Sometimes they kill by accident, but mostly on purpose. This vast disparity in intent is quite enough to mean that they should be considered as separate entities in any rational argument.

Cars killing by 'accident' is nonsense. The deaths are avoidable. They are caused by recklessness/carelessness. Very few are unavoidable accidents (eg mechanical malfunction).

Killing by recklessness/carelessness is every bit as morally reprehensible as killing by intent.
If you disagree please tell me why you think that Killing by recklessness/carelessness is less immoral.