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Notes -
A simple argument against gun control.
For context here, they are playing chess.
I find this reasoning really interesting, because Mr.Terrific points out how selective much of the things that are being banned for killing people actually is.
Here are some other weapons that are banned or restricted in certain states in the US, and some countries:
Switchblades, butterfly knives are banned in places like the UK, and in some states like Minnesota & Massachusetts.
Brass Knuckles are banned in about 20 states, also in the UK and Canada.
The real issue I have with these bans and restrictions on guns, and even brass knuckles or knives, is that, the outrage seems to be selective. You can probably find pocket knives that'll do the job stabbing someone to death fairly easily, you could do it with a hunting knife or a kitchen knife. You could beat someone to death with a baseball bat, (or hell, you could make brass knuckles out of some nuts from Home Depot). And as stated, some of these kill far more people than other things, that are actually meant to harm, per the fbi, a kitchen knife has likely killed more people than brass knuckles have (for this, we'll say brass knuckles would probably fall into the "blunt objects" category). And as stated by Terrific, smoking kills far more than guns.
Perhaps the argument here is just to say: Look, bro, hunting knives - tobacco - cars, etc, aren't meant to kill people, so we aren't as interested in targeting them, but thats not personally how I judge (or others) would judge these situations. If I have a psychopath, who stabs someone to death with a kitchen knife vs one who does it with a switchblade. I'm not looking to judge them off the murder weapon in a trial. The dead person before me is what actually matters. Why should we care about the means of death? Its the ends that we are passing judgment for.
If you have a psychopath with a machine gun (or a truck in a tightly packed crowd) then that's a lot more of a problem. The answer is to get rid of the psychopaths, terrorists, enemies, criminals, feral hogs, pit bulls... Not the guns, trucks, drones, fertilizer, chemicals, knives...
In the 18th and 19th centuries they'd go on about good governments bringing Improvement, how obviously you're supposed to drain swamps and irrigate the land and develop agriculture and industry. That was what civilization was all about. We should be continuing with Improvements today rather than just redistributing wealth to and fro.
Guns and drones and vehicles can all be very dangerous if weaponized. Better to make schools more tolerable so nobody shoots them up, better to ensure that school shooters are not sensationalized and rendered infamous by the media... Better to imprison, expel, execute terrorists (or refrain from 'invade the world, invite the world' foreign policy) than make bollards to impede their rampages. Better to liquidate criminals than having a revolving door prison system where they get arrested 14 times and then kill someone, only to be found 'unfit for trial' due to mental illness or retardation. The goal is to render improvements, not just blindly obey a huge agglomeration of laws. The laws were written by men and are interpreted by men for achieving real world goals.
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