"Fact" of the day...

My thermonuclear device never killed anyone...

The logical fallacy of false equivalency.

The person who wrote this may have been killed by a gun nut.  Anyway, this is pretty useful since this is a type of fallacious argument which is used a lot in this "debate".This is a wonderful piece-- it is a clear explanation of why certain gun lobby talking points are ridiculous.

What is a false equivalency? It is a logical fallacy.
You are a libtard/pinko/homo, why should I listen to you? Logic rules remain the same wherever you fall on the political spectrum. Even after showing gun owners the Wikipedia entry, they will continue to use it immediately afterwards and cling to it desperately. That is why this was created.
What is the definition of false equivalency? “False equivalence is a logical fallacy which describes a situation where there is a logical and apparent equivalence, but when in fact there is none.” Wikipedia
I still don’t believe you. What is the structure of the argument? If A is the set of c and d, and B is the set of d and e, then since they both contain d, A and B are equal. Id.
That doesn’t make sense to me. Why does my argument look nonsensical to people who aren’t supporters of my position? Well, when was the last time you heard of someone bringing a car into a school or movie theater and killing and wounding 70 people with it in 4 minutes? Here is how your argument appears to people without a gun proliferation agenda:
Nuclear weapons explode (c) but are still just tools (d). Guns are merely tools (d) that shoot people (e). Since they are both (d) tools they are both equivalent. Because they are merely (d) tools, nuclear weapons should be treated the same as guns under the Second Amendment, and citizens should be allowed to conceal carry them into schools, courthouses, or government buildings.
Well that’s a stupid argument, what are other kinds of false equivalencies that gun owners use?
The variations are endless, but here are some common ones, all of which have actually been used on reddit:
-Guns and alcohol are equivalent, because they both ______
-Guns and cars are equivalent, because they both ______
-Guns and knives are equivalent, because they both ______
-Guns and bleach are equivalent, because they both ______
-Guns and fists are equivalent, because they both ______
-Guns are equivalent to soda, because they both ______
-Gun and stamp collecting are equivalent, because they both _____
-Guns and banana cream pie are equivalent, because they both____
-Guns and swimming pools are equivalent, because they both _____
-Guns and frying pans are equivalent, because they both _____
-Guns and _______ are equivalent, because they both _____
And those are all false equivalencies? Yes.
Are you sure? Yes.
Really? Because I would really like that to be not true. Everyone in /r/guns uses them constantly, and they get tons and tons of upvotes for it! Doesn’t that mean they are even a little right? No. Justin Bieber is pretty popular within his bubble, doesn’t mean it makes sense to people viewing it from the outside.
Can you make the logical fallacy appear absurd in a different way? Sure. Imagine cars are just as legal as they are now, resulting in 33,000 traffic fatalities each year. Now, imagine guns are completely banned and there are zero deaths from their use each year. Would the argument that guns are exactly equivalent to soda sway people to change the law?
If our hypothetical government body could pass a law that instantly implemented the current United States gun proliferation laws while simultaneously handing out 270,000,000 guns to the civilian population, would they do it based upon the fact that obesity is also a problem in the United States so we shouldn't worry about people being shot?
Considering the fact that 30,000 people would then be killed each year and 100,000 wounded, the answer is likely no. And they would certainly not do so under the pretense that soda and firearms should be treated equivalently. Or cars. This example applies to each of the false equivalencies given above. The argument is patently absurd.
Why has this been downvoted a million times? Because there are few good arguments for guns in our society so taking away a popular one, however incorrect it may be, further weakens the talking points. We also only send pro-gun types here to view this and they are not particularly happy to learn that their father was wrong when they taught them this false equivalency or that they have been using a really stupid argument around their loved ones unchecked for most of their lives.
They may also be embarrassed to learn that their loved ones may already know this and are just pretending to agree with them.
What do you think about gun control? The ability to use logic and to correctly reason should be a basic skill for everyone, but is essential for those who carry lethal weapons. Gun owners should have to complete the following sentence before purchasing a gun to show that they can perform basic reasoning: Comparing guns to ________ is a false equivalence because __________.

Tom Tomorrow Asks...

A question that is always on my mind in a society where it is considered "normal" to walk around carrying weapons:

If you had actually read Robert Heinlein's Beyond This Horizon,  you would know that in the "Armed Society" which is considered "a polite society" that there is the custom of dueling to keep societal order.  Someone can  wear distinctive clothing to show an unwillingness to duel, but this results in a lower social status.

That may sound appealing to you, but it's science fiction and fantasy to everyone else.

Something to think about:

From Salon:

Death threats. Think about that for a moment. Is there anything that says you have lost the argument more loudly than that? When you make death threats in place of arguments, it’s because you know your argument’s laughable. A joke. Increasingly that is what the so-called gun rights organizations have become. A sick joke. And everything Raymond said — about their hypocrisy, their cowardice and their hostility to freedom — is absolutely true.

As I have said before, gun loon arguments do not stand scrutiny, which is the major reason I don't pay too much attention to what you have to say (not to mention I've pretty much heard them all and found they are Bullshit).

After all the reason that gun violence research cannot receive federal funding is that the law says that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” And this was in reaction to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Arthur Kellerman and colleagues called “Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home,” which presented the results of research funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

That study found that keeping a gun in the home was strongly and independently associated with an increased risk of homicide. The article concluded that rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.

So, is this yet another thing you lot are afraid of?

Better to keep your mouth shut...

But, this person opened it and confirmed himself to be a total fuckwit on the Esquire forum.  He thought he would be clever and delete the second comment, but it had already been screen capped:

No, asswipe, we think about your type all the time.  We do count on people like you since you are the type of asshole we think shouldn't have a gun because you are irresponsible. You make our job easier by making statements like this.

And you are dumb enough to make a statement where admit you are irresponsible.

What would your friends say if you said stupid shit like this to them?  Or are your friends assholes like yourself?

I'm a nice guy and redacted your info, but you know who you are.  Live with your stupidity.

I know it must be tough being you.

Gun extremists and intimidation

From Chris Hayes "All In"

People unclear on the issue

Meet Mike Lynn, from Memphis, Tennesse, the spokesperson for Fathers for Gun Violence [1]:

Nothing like using fear and emotion to make your point.

He asks a question which he should have thought about before he made this phone call:

"Are you guys for real?"

But, from his phone message--it sounds as if he is indeed for gun violence.

The type of person we really want walking around with a gun.

[1] Before you people go apeshit for me giving his "personal information"--he already does that in the video--if you actually watched it.

If you actually understood it.

You know you're a gun loon when...

You make death threats against someone who sells custom assault rifles and describes himself as on the “right-wing vanguard of gun rights”.

You probably even call him "anti-gun".

Support gun rights...

SUPPORT GUN RIGHTS  
OR
I'LL SHOOT YOU.

I'll Second Amendment Your ass.

Gun rights activists threaten Maryland Gun Shop Owner

And while we are on the topic of "getting away with murder" laws and gun fanatics who want to test the limits of those laws: let's look at the case of Andy Raymond, owner of Engage Armaments, who wanted to sell the Armatix iP1 handgun, but ended up backing down due to threats made against him, his girlfriend, and even his dog.

Dude, I can relate they make their threats against us as well. 

Although, I have to admit that actual threats of physical violence from the "pro-gun" crowd don't reflect well on them.  And it would really hurt the "gun rights" cause if they decide to "Second Amendment" on of their perceived enemies.

And in the case of Andy Raymond, he is indeed a perceived enemy since this is a person who sells custom assault rifles.  In fact, his reason for selling the iP1 was that he thought people should have that option.  In fact, he thought more people might warm up to gun ownership if the possibility of accidental injury were reduced.

Of course, that's not how the "pro-gun" side sees this whole thing. Anything which might infringe the right of a disqualified person from access to a firearm is something which should be viewed with suspicion: even if it comes from someone who is so obviously "pro-gun" that you would need to be a total gun loon to not see it.

In fact, Andy may just have learned the difference between a gun loon and a responsible gun owner.

The problem with this topic is that some people are too swayed by their emotions (gun loons) that they cannot tell the difference between reality and their fears.

And, boy are they one crowd who is scared shitless.

And they have guns.

Teabaggers/gunloons need a reality check. Here it is.

I keep trying to make this point, but some of these people are too thick to get it.

We didn't call the thing the "Grid Square Removal Service" for nothing!

Another stupid "pro-gun" cliche bites the dust

The elephant in the room.

We're all reasonable...

A Message from the Canada Party

A Message from the Canada Party:


Betcha Greg doesn't watch the whole thing before opening his mouth!

So you've found an obscure law and you think it proves your point???

In this case, The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the complete text of this document can be found here.

The proper name of this is An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio, and also known as the Freedom Ordinance or "The Ordinance of 1787", was an act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States, passed July 13, 1787. The primary effect of the ordinance was the creation of the Northwest Territory, the first organized territory of the United States, from lands south of the Great Lakes, north and west of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi River.

OK, do you see a few problems here with trying to claim it is law under the US Constitution?

Next we come to the part that the gunloons like to claim supports "their" position, Article 3, which they quote only part of the article, which is:

Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

The hope is that people who say that the syntax of the Second Amendment means that the proeme (prefatory clause) controls the "operative" clause will be confounded.

Nothing of the like here since the above is only one sentence of Article 3, which says in its entirety:

Art. 3. Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged. The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and, in their property, rights, and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity, shall from time to time be made for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.

Now, do you see some additional problems with trying to analogise the Second Amendment to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787?

If anything it helps make my point that laws can become obsolete due to changes in the Institution.

You can learn more than you ever wanted to know about this document here.

As for the grammar of the Second Amendment--I've posted this several times before, but it needs to be repeated since some people can't get their minds around the concept.

In the case of the Second Amendment, the first clause announces the purpose (from Adam Freeman's Clause and Effect) :

The best way to make sense of the Second Amendment is to take away all the commas (which, I know, means that only outlaws will have commas). Without the distracting commas, one can focus on the grammar of the sentence. Professor Lund is correct that the clause about a well-regulated militia is “absolute,” but only in the sense that it is grammatically independent of the main clause, not that it is logically unrelated. To the contrary, absolute clauses typically provide a causal or temporal context for the main clause.
The founders — most of whom were classically educated — would have recognized this rhetorical device as the “ablative absolute” of Latin prose. To take an example from Horace likely to have been familiar to them: “Caesar, being in command of the earth, I fear neither civil war nor death by violence” (ego nec tumultum nec mori per vim metuam, tenente Caesare terras). The main clause flows logically from the absolute clause: “Because Caesar commands the earth, I fear neither civil war nor death by violence.”

Diagramming the Second Amendment, one should end up with something that expresses a causal link, like: “Because a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” In other words, the amendment is really about protecting militias, notwithstanding the arguments to the contrary.

In his Rudiments of English Grammar (1790), Noah Webster writes that “a nominative case or word, joined with a participle, often stands independently of the sentence. This is called the case absolute.” Webster gives several examples, including, “They all consenting, the vote was passed.” He explains, “The words in italics are not connected with the other part of the sentence, either by agreement or government; they are therefore in the case absolute, which, in English, is always the nominative.” Grammatical independence, to Webster, is not about political self-determination, it's all about the nominative case. But he would acknowledge without hesitation that the vote would not have passed without the consent of the voters.

Webster’s readers would have had no difficulty recognizing that the Second Amendment also begins with an absolute. They would have studied the absolute in school, and they had probably been tested on it in a federalist-era version of No Child Left Behind.

Any educated federalist also would have learned in school that government, in grammar, merely refers to the case of a noun – its inflection as a nominative, dative, genitive, accusative (or, in the case of Latin, an ablative). As Robert Lowth, the author of the most widely-studied school grammar of the time, put it, “Regimen, or government, is when a word causeth a following word to be in some case, or mode.” For example, prepositions cause the following noun or pronoun to take the dative case. Or as the schoolbooks liked to say, prepositions govern the dative. That’s why we say, “Give the gun to me,” not, “Give it to I.”

Anyway, since the clause "a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state" announces the purpose for the right, We need to go back to the citation from Blackstone regarding the “proeme, or preamble” since it is part of a larger section that consists of “observations concerning the interpretation of laws.” 1 Blackstone at 58. One of those “observations” was: “BUT, lastly, the most universal and effectual way of discovering the true meaning of a law, when the words are dubious, is by considering the reason and spirit of it; or the cause which moved the legislator to enact it. For when this reason ceases, the laws itself ought likewise to cease with it.” 1 Blackstone at 61.

If anything, this argument works best on people's historic ignorance, as does most of the gun loon argument.

The Last Hand Gun On Earth

Take an old movie serial, add a new voice over by the Firesign Theatre and you have some very funny stuff.  In this case, the gun loon’s nightmare: Big Brother’s henchmen come for the last handgun on earth.

“To think people used to sleep with these things under their pillows.”

It costs too much to reduce something by 100%

It seems a lot of "pro-gunners" are clueless that the goal is not to eliminate gun violence, but to significantly reduce it.

Yes, other countries may still have gun violence, but it isn't the same amount of gun violence as the US.  Only third world nations have gun violence rates similar to the US.

Newslo takes on the NRA and the Gun Rights Crowd

Want to see how absurd the pro-gun position is: meet Newslo.  Newslo is a hybrid news site: unlike  sites such as Newsthump, Daily Mash, Onion, etc. which try to satire the news.  Newslo takes a story and mixes fact with fiction.

Let's take this story:

NRA: Lack of Injuries in Dekalb County School Shooting Proves Guns Aren’t Dangerous

“If firearms are so dangerous, how could one man bring an automatic weapon into a school full of children and not injure or kill a single one of them? Even after shots were fired, nobody was hurt, so how dangerous could an AK-47 be?”

Better yet:

North Carolina Celebrates Gun Pride with Open Bar, Concealed Carry

After all, a statement like this has got to be a joke, or is  it?

 State Attorney General Roy Cooper continues to defend North Carolina’s bans on gay marriage and second-parent adoptions from an ongoing challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union,

Cooper dismissed suggestions that the state’s laws were inconsistent, saying that “the Bible don’t say nothin’ about banning guns, mostly cus they hadn’t been invented yet. But still.”

It gets even better with:

Americans Comforted by Return to Traditional Shootings

“It’s sort of like a necessary numbness coming back, after the terrible exposure that was last week,” remarked Ed Norcross, a Baltimore Police officer. “Every shooting brings us a little closer to normalcy, to healing. I think that’s what the nation needs right now.”

Yep, all the people who die from guns are just the cost of freedom.  And we all know that freedom isn't free--even if the cost is a bunch of six year olds puréed by an AR-15!

Anyway, at the bottom of the story there is the option to show or hide what is true!

I now understand the gun loon arguments which are based upon the science of pataphysics--they are satire and you've been had!

After all, it's only a matter of time for this one:

NRA Demands Second Amendment Protections for Nuclear Weapons

Tom Diaz's Response to A Coward's Threat