Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Suddenly the Pro-Gun Folks Don't Like the Car Comparison

Assault Car Ban


--(Ammoland.com)- Comparing guns to cars is a common and seductive but subtle error of logic.
If it makes sense to license drivers and register cars, then it would make sense to license pilots and register airplanes. And we do. That’s parallel logic.

However, if it makes sense to license gun owners and register guns, then it would make sense to license writers and register printing presses. That would be parallel logic too. But we don’t do that, because that doesn’t make sense.
That’s because those are rights, and government has no legitimate power to license your rights.
So, why would an honest writer object to having a license? Most reporters I know can’t answer that question, which explains why so many support “universal registration” — they understand the issue very poorly. I’ll answer it for you.

If you must pass a government test, pay a tax called a “fee,” get fingerprinted, photographed, listed in the criminal database and carry around your card with an expiration date to publish an article, or else go to prison, that’s flat out wrong. Licensing and registering freedom is tyrannical, assaults the innocent and serves no legitimate purpose in America. That’s why.

There’s also the small point that writing down your name, or my name, in an FBI file somewhere, when we buy a firearm (or write an essay) lacks a crime-fighting component, and in fact focuses in the opposite direction.

I wish I had a Mexican Peso for every time one of the gun-rights folks used the car comparison to try and make their biased and silly points. I'd be able to buy me a nice hacienda south of the border where the living is easy.

But now that the argument has been successfully turned against them, concerning registration and licensing, they've come up with this. Licensing gun owners and registering guns the way we do car owners and cars only makes sense if we also license writers.

Does that make sense to you? Isn't that the same thing as bringing the 1st Amendment into the discussion about limiting the 2nd?  We're not talking about writers and we're not talking about the 1st Amendment.

In other words, in order to claim that one comparison is wrong they introduce another.  Why can't these people just say what they mean?

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

6 comments:

  1. The article explains the linkage just fine. Both free speech and the right to keep and bear arms are acknowledged and protected by Constitutional Amendments. If you can limit one, as you say you wish to, by mere legislation, then you can limit the other by mere legislation.

    Playing stupid and pretending you can't understand that is pitiful, Mike.

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  2. Certification gun entrepreneurs and applying weapons the way we do car entrepreneurs and vehicles only is practical if we also certificate writers.

    castors perth

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  3. What's really interesting is that it was decades ago that I first began to hear the car comparison - always from anti-rights people. Now that it's become clear that the argument is fundamentally flawed, some anti-rights people suddenly don't want to discuss it. I understand that. I'd abandon it too, if I were in that position. The problem is, I keep hearing anti-rights people bringing it up, so apparently not all of them have gotten the word. So, until they stop bringing it up, rest assured pro-rights people will continue to expose it for the intellectually and morally bankrupt argument it is.

    Anonymous was right, Mike. I suspect (though I can't prove) you understood perfectly well that the article you cite was dealing with the logical fallacy of the car/gun comparison as so often presented by anti-rights people. Being deliberately obtuse doesn't lend you the credibility your side so desperately needs.

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    1. Actually I've heard it much more from you guys. Aren't you the onew who keep saying more people die in car accidents than gun accidents?

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    2. While I dont know that I'm "the one" I will admit to co-opting the argument, though I try to always give due credit. I usually have three goals (at least), regardless of how I word the argumemt: 1)for people to understand that driving is not an enumerated right, while keeping and bearing arms is, 2)to point out that social utility is a woefully inadequate excuse for limiting liberty, and 3)to make clear the inconsistency of anti-rights people who suggest it's reasonable to treat guns and shooters like we do cars and drivers.

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  4. Comparing guns to cars does make sense in certain respects. But certainly, firearms are specifically enumerated by the Constitution, right there along with speech and the press.

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