| Next they take your car. Why? Cars kills way more people than guns. Often not because of a need to get from a to b but because of reckless driving just for the fun of it. So - you could argue - you should not only need to have a drivers permit but a driving permit for your actual trips. Ok. Maybe cars should be banned. Or at least restricted to people with a legitimate reason like politicians and doctors. But do you think it will end there? If we give up cars then air traffic would be a natural next step... You see? This is why I defend the right to have guns, the right to modify cars, have real crypto, say almost[0] anything you want. Because it is a cheap insurance against a society that we really really want to avoid. Because the majority of people who have been killed have been killed by their own or a neigbouring country - not by their neigbours who happened to have a personal gun. [0]: including: "I belive the person behind reitanqilds account is stupid" Not including: "Hi guys! Lets start a fundraiser to kill <anyone>" |
But cars are useful and, on average safer, for many / the majority of people that use them. Guns are, on average, not so useful / safe. Note that I'm averaging this across the planet, not just across one small (5% of global population) country with a lot of strong opinions on the matter.
> Why? Cars kills way more people than guns.
I know it's a pithy aphorism, but in the same way that guns don't kill people, cars don't kill people either. It's a matter of mitigating the risk of misuse of one or the other (or both). And, as I say, cars have a very important benefit for a lot of people. Guns ... less so.
In any case you've missed my point.
We don't have toys that we hand out to toddlers and < 10yo's that encourage the emulation of lethal activities by means of turning a vehicle into a weapon -- but we do with plastic facsimiles of weapons. I was asking should we be discouraging the latter.
You turn that into a 'if the kiddies don't have plastic semi-automatic weapons, then we'll have to give up private transport, and then we won't be able to use commercial airlines'.
Aside: there's sufficient natural experiments out there that demonstrate the benefits of gun control compared to, say, the USA's approach. While I respect your preferences here, it's difficult to make a compelling argument.