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I don't fall for these kinds of traps usually because I also understand there are potentially second order effects to consider, and thus its not a pure linear tradeoff, even if we design the policy on that basis.
Maybe the population of dogs, despite killing kids, was also curbing some additional threat where, if the dogs were removed, would mostly replace the dogs as the primary threat to child livelihood.
In fact we have a very topical analogy for this, in the real world! WOLF REINTRODUCTION!
Ranchers killed off wolves because they were a threat to cattle herds, but this also allows the local deer, elk, etc. population to explode, which means overforaging of vegetation and other potential environmental harms, which is ALSO bad for the cattle on top of all else!
So they've brought back wolves in certain areas and the argument is that now the herbivore population is back into a 'natural' balance checked by the predators which is better for the local flora, which is better for the ecosystem as a whole.
Similarly, imagine we get rid of guns and criminal psychopaths with knives are suddenly springing up everywhere, stabbing children, unchecked by their natural predators.
So the Buridan point for being in favor of mass dog euthanasia is going to be relatively high, for me, and I would certainly explore other policy options before committing to it.
I'm a 2A guy but stabbings are a stupid example, you can stab a few folks that might die or shoot like 200 that will die in the same amount of time. America would be much "safer" if we yanked every gun. (It would mostly stop suicides and gang bangers, but statistically "safer") A better example is that we still have 1A while most of the world does not.
I'm really not convinced we'd be noticeably safer all told.
I still remember The Waukesha Christmas Parade Attack which killed 6 and injured 62. Trucks are relatively cheap, at least to rent, and can rack up a body count. If shootings get supplanted by trucks running down parades as the preferred modus operandi, I don't know that the death toll from the mass killings would be substantially less.
And I will consistently remind people that Guns can be 3D printed, so a sufficiently motivated psycho or criminal is going to be able to procure a weapon if they really want to. This will only get easier going forward.
And try estimating of the number of casualties that would be sustained in the process of confiscating firearms! If even 1% of firearms owners choose to resist, and 10% of those incidents result in at least one officer being injured or killed, we're talking somewhere on the order of 80,000 - 100,000 casualties over however many years. Compared to 21k homicides per year.
Is that reallllly worth the tradeoff, if we don't believe we can confiscate every firearm without incident?
Anyhow, I would redirect you to my recent policy proposal about banning and confiscating guns for Democrats only,, as my proposed compromise on this topic.
If I could Thanos snap every privately owned gun away in the US (and future proof so it any other gun or firearm disintegrates as soon as it is made or brought within the border) I probably would, I think it would indeed make the country safer. However given that I can't do that, and that regardless of the laws, there are so many guns, and so many ways to import guns or make them, I think banning them would be overall counter-productive for the average citizen as it stands. Which I guess makes me a theoretical gun grabber and a practical 2A supporter, give or take.
Again I'd be curious as to what happens when it becomes known that nobody anywhere is in possession of a gun, whether the incentive shifts would make criminals more bold, or less bold.
If we're talking Thanos-snapping, I'd pretty much prefer to Thanos snap any person with a propensity for uncontrolled violence away, I think it'd create more immediate gains, even if there were second-order impacts.
Sure if we had that power then there are probably other interventions. Instead of snapping them away, why not just "fix" them, so they become contributing citizens. Indeed we could fix everyone to be maximally productive and happy.
I mean, El Salvador basically did a small version of that by just rounding up and locking up the most violent people they could find (as judged by gang affiliation) and it worked fabulously. Murder rates plummeting down immediately.
Didn't need to go after every citizen to see if they had guns, just find the dangerous ones. They arrested and imprisoned about 80,000 people, which is not nothing, but much more modest than forcing millions to hand over weapons.
I have many reasons to believe a similar approach would do the same in the U.S.
Sure, but that won't catch people who snap and go on a spree, or accidental deaths, or suicides etc. But it's not like there is any chance of either happening in the US.
I think those are a proportionally negligible as to the total number of deaths that occur annually, though.
Like, a couple hundred even in the worst years, in the U.S.
Stopping those would probably require a massive surveillance state which would cost billions annually and would, like with gun confiscations, oppress 'normal' citizens. To say nothing of the potential for abuses.
The other way to stop those is to arm responsible citizens who can stop them as they happen
I dunno, seems like aggressively arresting and locking up the most violent citizens would also tip the balance in favor of letting the remaining citizens remain armed, making the chances of an armed citizen being able to stop a random spree killer a bit higher.
What really chafes me is that all discussion is sucked into the gun control debate so we can't have a decent discussion about other policy approaches.
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