Saturday, January 12, 2013

Is the Slippery Slope Argument Valid?

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- During his State of the State speech on Jan. 9, Gov. Andrew Cuomo went beyond demonizing 30 round magazines. He said he doesn’t see why anyone needs 10 rounds.
Just think: it hasn’t even been a full month since the crime at Sandy Hook Elementary, yet some prominent liberals – like Cuomo – have already moved from banning 30 round magazines to banning 10 round mags (and the guns that use them) as well.
He approached it this way:  ”No one needs 10 bullets to kill a deer and too many people have died already.”
This is incredible. Cuomo is making an argument for banning guns and magazines that hold 10 rounds “because too many have died already.” Yet NYC, the biggest population center in his state — in the country for that matter — is recording the lowest homicide and shooting rate in 50 years.
Here’s the problem — the slope IS SLIPPERY.
Once they ban 30 rounds magazines, they will only be satisfied until a crime is committed with a 10 or even a 5 round magazine, then they’ll want to ban them too.
Soon, thereafter, someone like Cuomo will stand up with a straight face and tell us why we don’t need anything that holds more than one shot.

I'm not sure about the slippery slope argument, they may have a point. But the continual reference to crime going down is definitely bogus.

If they mean it proves that more guns equals less crime, they're wrong because of the correlation - causation thing.  If they mean since crime is down we don't need to do anything to lower it even more, they're just plain wrong in that self-serving gun-owner way.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

12 comments:

  1. Is the slippery slope argument valid? Yes it is. Governor Cuomo clearly stated that he wants to eliminate even 10 round magazines. And we have the state of Connecticut which recently introduced legislation that would ban any firearm capable of firing more than one shot.

    Some people suggested that Connecticut's legislation was some sort of political move or grandstanding. The fact that someone even introduced it is obscene. And what if it passes?

    The mother in Georgia who recently emptied a 6 shot revolver on an intruder (who then walked away and drove down the road no less) is ample evidence that citizens need suitable firearms for personal protection -- and arbitrary magazine/ammunition restrictions interfere with their ability to defend themselves.

    Make no mistake: gun control is not about "reasonable restrictions", it is about citizen disarmament.

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    1. Anonymous:

      "Make no mistake: gun control is not about "reasonable restrictions", it is about citizen disarmament."

      Gun control is necessary to enforce your right to civilian disarmament. Gun control is a means of enforcing the rights of the collective State to rule it's subjects. No such right ought to be limited to "reasonable restrictions".

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    2. E.N., there is no right to civilian disarmament. You are here exercising your individual right to free expression, even though you deny that right and even the existence of the individual.

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    3. E.N., the state has no right to "rule" its citizens. Please note I said citizens, not subjects. US citizens are not subjects. Throughout our history we have consented to being governed and have refused to be ruled.

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  2. Keep in mind there are practically no restrictions whatsoever on firearm choices, ammunition capacities, and calibers, not to mention who can carry them and where they can carry them in Utah and Vermont. And yet there are close to zero incidents of citizens harming anyone with their firearms in those states.

    How is that possible without "gun control" in those states?

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    1. Your question makes no sense at all unless you think you're directing it to someone who thinks guns are the ONLY factor in violence. I don't think that.

      I know one thing. if Vermont had a Camden and if Utah had a Chicago, you wouldn't be able to make that point.

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    2. So we should ban big cities. I've shown you many times that gun laws have no correlation with rates of violence. The data actually show that population density and climate are the significant factors.

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  3. Mike,

    There is definitely a slippery slope that is possible because there are activists who do want to ban guns for everyone except police and the military. We all understand that a slippery slope argument can be a fallacy, but it isn't always one--especially when there is evidence of activists and Politicians who wish to use it. The examples in this article and in the above comments show that there exists a potential here on magazine size.

    Another example would be Carolyn McCarthy's background check Bill. It still allows private sales away from gun shows, so either she's not that concerned with private sales, or she is waiting to exploit that as a separate "loophole" in future legislation. Meanwhile, her background check bill includes regulations that are patently impossible to comply with, and which would be the death of gun shows. The only conclusion one can logically draw from this is that she's trying to use the public support for background checks as cover for destroying gunshows which are popular nation wide.

    If you and others on your side stood up against some of these attempts and said that they were impermissible and were overreaching, we'd be more inclined to believe that you really just wanted regulations but not to chip away at our rights in a gradual way.

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  4. A slippery slope argument is a fallacy, unless good reason can be given for the connections between the anticipated series of events. In this case, we have the evidence right in front of us. First, it was ten rounds. Now, New York is talking about seven rounds. A nut in Connecticut has proposed banning every gun in private hands except for single-shot weapons.

    We can see a trend, no matter how much the gun control freak side tries to hide it.

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    1. Between Cuomo and the Connecticut legislator, you also have Bloomberg recently saying he couldn't see a reason for more than 5.

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    2. Hm... Perhaps my black powder, cap-and-ball revolver with the top chamber empty will come back in style. I've been saying for a while that those newfangled brass cartridges were a passing fad.

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  5. What do I think? I think history suggests that over time governments always seek to establish increasingly greater control over its citizens, in gun rights and everywhere else. This is not always for evil reasons, but liberties are still lost. Once lost, they are "well nigh" impossible to regain. So, yes, I buy the slippery slope argument in this case. As for correlation-causation, if you are unwilling to accept as accurate the idea that more legal weapons leads to less crime, what is your logical basis for accepting: 1) less guns means less crime and/or 2) more gun control means less crime?

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