The stupidest comparison to guns.

*disclaimer: Wall of text ahead.
yes yes, some of what I am going to say will depend very much on your local laws and country you live in. I am generalizing here because this like most of the internet is a international community so keep that in mind before you nitpick. But yes, it is mostly aimed at the U.S gun situation as it's mostly ever been Americans I have seen stating this stupid car thing and the U.S that seems to have the worlds largest civilian non-war time shooting problems.

I state this for clarification although many will cherry pick this to suit their world view as usual. I may use comparisons and experiences from my own country.

I am not linking anything, most of it is logic or common sense based. You want specifics you have google, feel free to try it.
I must stress that this is NOT a discussion or opinion on whether guns should be banned or not. It is about the validity of the stupid # people use in such discussions!!!

This is just my take on the matter regarding the car vs gun argument.

I gotta say I am sick of seeing stupid reasoning being used in gun control debates. Or specifically one thing that is always compared to guns.

Every time there's a shooting in the U.S you can be sure each and every time there will be at least one idio....person, if not many idio.... people, guaranteed every time using the most stupid thing of all, regardless of where you see the discussion come up, to defend their pro-gun stance.

And I have to say it pisses me off when so many other potentially logical points of debate exist in the whole for or against gun control thing.
What is it?

"IF YOU WANT TO BAN GUNS, THEN BAN CARS!!! BECAUSE CARS KILL TOO."



Seriously will you just #ing stop with that one already. It is apple to oranges and soon as I see someone use that to make their point I stop reading/listening and go take a handful of ibuprofen to counter the inevitable brain hurt that follows from reading it.
It is apple to oranges.

Okay first let us get the similarities between vehicle and gun related deaths out of the way before we move onto the differences and why using cars as the basis for your point to not have tighter gun control is retarded as #.

If a car kills you, you're dead.
If a gun kills you, you're dead.
Guns and cars can both be purchased, owned and used. Legally or illegally.
Both forms of death and injury have the potential to be accidental or deliberate.
You can go to gaol (jail for you yanks ) if you kill or injure someone with either, depending on the circumstances.
People buy both either for practical or cosmetic reasons. Some people buy cars to drive, others to just display and show off. Same for guns.
Regardless of laws and safety measures their will always be injuries and accidents involving both.

The end.
Now let us move onto why it's stupid as # to compare the two and how they differ.

Cars.
The vast majority of car deaths are accidental, regardless of the drivers legal driving status.
Even the unlicensed, unregistered car owner/driver involved in an accident and death in the vast majority of cases were not intentionally trying to kill or injure anybody.

99.99999% of people probably buy a car for transport, pure practicality for modern daily life and survival. To get from point A to B without having to walk or ride a horse for hours days or weeks. They don't think "Oh yeah this new Camaro is gonna be perfect for hunting deer/home defense/mass murder/killing my cheating spouse."

A motor vehicle can be multi functional. It can transport, it can race, it can be used to entertain. I mean who doesn't love a good burnout? :p
Heck I have even used cars as generators to power my house during natural disasters.

Intentional murders using motor vehicles, in the grand scheme of things and since automobiles came into being, have been fairly rare Vs. the many other methods of intentional killing.

Often the more you kill with the car the more chances it will fail. With each death the chances of the car failing increase.
Be it from damage from running people over or from obstacles that exist in the world.
Like curbs, bollards, walls, other vehicles, being spike stripped, pitted or boxed in by cops or other members of the public's vehicles or just plain old driver error like losing control and rolling it.
Ah the many ways and how easy it is to crash a car.....
Often a car can be disabled quite quickly in various ways.
Modern cars are also generally designed these days to limit the impact to pedestrians they may encounter. They're constantly being redesigned to be safer.

You cannot spin a car on the spot to run over someone trying to open your door and pull you out. You cannot hide out of sight like a coward and kill with a car.

Kind of hard to have a spare backup car or 20 in your back pocket or sports bag.
Once your car is done it's generally all over.

There are many ways to avoid being killed by a car if you're aware it is coming. Hiding behind a solid object, jumping out of the way, the car redirecting itself as it jumps the curb and no doubt others.

You must be taught and learn to drive, then be tested by a government official and then pass that test to get your license and be authorised to drive on a public road.
Each year you gotta renew your license, pay taxes/registration have 3rd party insurance.
Sometimes your car needs to be regularly inspected to ensure it's safety and road worthiness along with ensuring it has minimal impact on the environment.
Depending on the circumstances you can be required from time to time to also be retested to see if you still still capable enough to have the privilege to control a motor vehicle. If you're deemed unfit you are taken off the road.
You generally don't have to cross state lines to buy a car as they tend to be equally legal no matter where you are right across any given nation.

Cars and roads are heavily regulated and policed in most Western countries. You will often see police spending most of their day ensuring people are obeying the road laws and adhering to using shared public roads safely.
It's kind of hard to conceal one or two tonnes of rolling steel from the gaze of a police officer and a car will not fit into your pants waist band.

Being an intentional or unintentional A-Hole in a car there is a very good risk you'll injure or kill yourself as much as anyone else, possibly more so.

Many police cars are fitted with number plate readers and radar guns and other tech.
So illegal or unsafe vehicles and drivers are often pulled over and dealt with quickly before they become an issue.
You drive an unregistered vehicle past a cop, chances are you'll see them doing a u-turn in your rear view mirror. Even if your license is expired. As it seems even a registered car will be flagged if the owner is shown as being unlicensed, even if they are not driving it.
(well here in Australia at least)
Police perform random alcohol and drug testing and license checks.
Police and the general public its kind of more obvious to spot a car doing something dodgy. Drive like an idiot and your fellow road users will call the cops and you'll often be tracked down and stopped before you kill anyone.

Continued....

While I have heard of young children and teens stealing there parents or other peoples cars.
I have not hear of any of them grabbing the folks car keys and driving into the living room to run down their sister while chucking a tantrum, or heard of them driving through a school to get back at people.
As for adults, yeah I have seen adults driving down footpaths and such in recent years. Those little rampages thankfully have ended fairly quickly and as stated earlier seem to be a rarity.
But I've not yet seen someone jumping cars out of hotel windows into music concerts, or driving through university campuses and shopping malls.
Do you really think you could sneak a car past hotel staff to your room?

Motor vehicles are often used to save lives without taking any in the process. e.g getting someone to hospital.
Rarely has a car been designed for malicious intent.

Guns.
The vast majority of gun deaths in comparison are intentional, again regardless of the legal status of the gun or its owner.

Be it a cop, a postal worker, a crazy spouse, a schizophrenic, a soldier, a thug, an emo teen or a 9 year old with video game related anger issues, etc.
More often than not when someone is shot, regardless of who is doing the shooting, the person shooting intends to hurt or kill the person accepting delivery of the bullet.

Sure accidents happen, but I'm confident it is way less so than intentional happens when it comes to guns.

Most if not all people who purchase a firearm do so for one reason.
To shoot things. Shooting things, and damaging or killing them are all guns are designed for.
You shoot a gun simply to destroy. You shoot beer cans and bottles to put a hole in them. You shoot cars to disable them. You shoot animals and people to kill them.
They are singular purposed in design and are rarely used or practical for anything else.
Send a metal projectile of some form to put a hole in something at extremely fast speeds and from a safe range (for the shooter at least).
(yeah yeah not counting bean bags and rubber bullets here, plus point blank I think one of those could kill you.)

Modern guns are also generally designed these days with a focus to be more dangerous. They're constantly being designed to be better killers.
Bullet manufacturers seem to be constantly striving for more stable accurate and deeper pentrating rounds.

I'd say that intentional killing with guns is clearly and unarguabley greater than intentional killings with vehicles.
Especially when you look over the entire periods both cars and guns have existed.
How many people were intentionally killed with a gun over the last 10 years Vs. cars?

Guns tend to kill people and animals over and over quite easily.
There is a chance the gun will jam or over heat, but how often has that happened in a murder situation, especially a mass one?
Overall they tend to not get more damaged the more things that die from them. Failure rates seem to tend to be low to non-existent.
If a gun fails, you can have a back up or 20 in your back pocket or sports bag......
It's usually not over until the shooter says it is or someone eventually takes them down.
Being an intentional or unintentional A-Hole with a gun there is a very low chance you'll injure or kill yourself, more likely many others will die before you do.
If you die at all that is.
It's pretty easy to spin on the spot and kill in any direction, putting a stop to any heroes.
Easy to hide out of sight like a coward so people do not even know where the killing is coming from.
Bit hard to stop someone who is 500m away that you cannot see.

Taking out a gunman often seems to take more time and strategy than taking out a car from what I have seen.
You don't see pit maneuvers or spike strips for bullets, you don't see people using bullets to deflect or box in other bullets.
A person using a gun will rarely have it turn against them. Cannot crash and roll your gun.
If your gun kills you during your murder spree it's often because you decided to kill yourself.
How many news stories or movies exist where the police are negotiating with someone holding hostages at car point for hours or days?

In most situations it can be pretty hard to hide from a bullet than can penetrate many substances and can fit through smaller gaps than a large car.
Hiding behind bollards is not going to be effective in most cases. Many bullet types can easily penetrate car doors and panels, cinder blocks and more.
You often don't see a bullet coming to begin with, let alone have the Superman or Neo speed required to dodge one.
Once a bullet is on it's way to you and it's on target, good chance it will hit.

In many places you can buy a gun easily, without training and without testing. Guns are often not as regulated as cars are. You do not always need a license.
No need to pay registration or taxes on your gun every year. No 3rd party insurance required as far as I am aware.
An illegal gun is much easier to hide than an illegal car for numerous reasons.
Police cars do not have 'gun scanners' that detect illegal firearms on people. They are not looking for guns on the general public.
They do not pull people over at random and test them for guns.
Often illegal guns are discovered and dealt with after a crime has been committed.
Unlike cars there is little in the way of preventing dangerous and illegal gun owenrship and use.
Walk past cops or members of the public with a concealed illegal gun without drawing suspicion and those cops and people will ignore you.

You can easily check into a hotel with an arsenal of guns. Nobody says open your suitcase we need to make sure you're not packing.
Hotels don't have scanners and x-ray machines.

We've all heard of young children and teens stealing or accessing there parents guns.
We often hear of many of them grabbing a gun waking into the living room to gun down their sister while chucking a tantrum, or heard of them shooting up a school to get back at people.
Massacaring their co-workers because they got sacked.
We've seen many people killed and injured before anyone was able to stop them. Most shootings end with when the gunman runs out of bullets, kills themselves or gets shot by police.
They can shoot out of hotel windows into music concerts, or walk through university campuses and shopping malls picking off people like a fish in a barrel.
Often many are dead before people realise what is actually happening. It's often quick and unavoidable with no defense especially if your cornered in a night club.

Guns rarely save lives, and they rarely save lives without taking them. We don;t see too many voides of police body cams and facebook live feeds of warning shots ending a killing spree.
Guns mosre often than not send people to hospital, or worse the morgue.
Guns have always been designed for malicious intent.

Summary (aka tl;dr)
There are many reasons why cars are nothing like guns. Too many to list actually without writing a book.
End of the day comparing cars to guns is just #ing stupid. if you ever do this you're a #ing moron.
They are in no way alike anymore than pitbulls are like a domestic cat.
It's a straw man. Nothing more.
Try a bit harder to find a valid reason to own a gun. Hell I'll take home defense and protection over "But cars kill people too" any day.
There's no need for it and people like you just make me wish I could get off this planet more.

Some A-hole animal walking into a school and intentionally killing kids and teachers on mass is NOTHING like some A-Hole blowing through a red light and running some one over.
You should be disgusted to put so little worth and value on shooting victims lives just because you need to reassure and justify to yourself some idiotic notion you have the right to own a tool of death.
Because you know honestly you're the only person you're trying to convince. You only care about your rights and toys and no-one elses unless they agree with you.
You're not changing the anti-gun peoples minds and no need to change the the pro-gun peoples because they're already on board with you.
Are your egos really that #ing fragile?
Maybe think a bit more before you open your goddamn mouth and let some idiocy spew forth. You know it is nothing but bull #.

And yeah, reply and comment away. I'm here to rant, not reply or debate or discuss.
Pick and quote for all I care. You'll only be doing it for yourself and others who want to discuss or debate it.
You won't change my mind so don't waste your life trying to.
I've explained enough to make my points. It's on you how you percieve it.
And if it upsets and offends you then good.
If you cannot understand what I am saying here, then I truly pity you because that says a lot more about you as far as being a decent human being imho than it ever will about me.
And I pity mankind for such backwards adults existing in this day and age.

And if you made it this far thanks for reading. I hope it gives people something to think about.

END RANT.
and goodnight.

a reply to: AtomicKangaroo

Cigarettes and alcohol kill many more citizens. So do American bombs, by the way.

Stops stopping dumb arguments...

a reply to: AtomicKangaroo
You done now? Feel better?

You know what else kills people....

Idiots who build there houses by the river or on the prairie path that allows tornadoes to thrive.

Spoons made you fat...

excuse the typos. no doubt a few in there but I cannot be arsed to go back and edit them. I'm sure you're all clever enough to tell the differences between there, their and they're if I accidentally misused them.

I keep getting mail from the salvation army, they want me to sign up with them and send money.
I don't have money.

Whhhaaaaa.... Whhhaaaaa.... Whhhaaaaa.


That's all I heard.

I think a better comparison to guns would be....

]

ban cars...

as stupid as it sounds, people don't run over other people, because it's not "Cool" it won't get you famous. Name the most famous mass killer by vehicle, and now name all the people you can name who killed with a gun. Guessing one list is long and the other list has one....maybe.

Run a moving truck through all the teenagers that want gun control this weekend, and you will probably see a higher fatality rate then if you use a gun.

a reply to: SocratesJohnson

Ah, but what makes it cool?

It's not the actual criminals themselves, or even the press.

You have to look at pop culture: TV, movies, video games, music.

Knives are used to kill people a lot, so are guns. Crossbows are just as dangerous as a gun but at a shorter range. You can't have an automatic crossbow though. Cars can easily be used to kill a lot of people. Bombs can be produced from legal things that people can acquire and can cause a lot of deaths. It is the person who is the problem, none of these things are dangerous for killing people intentionally if there is no intent.

You can throw a bunch of ball bearings off of a skyscraper and some may hill someone. We need to get rid of the problem not the tool.

I do not think we need military style weapons, people who are a little mentally troubled consider these weapons of war as empowering, it makes them feel strong. All guns have the potential to kill if they are in the wrong hands. Anything can be made into a weapon to kill people. A very sharp knife is a very dangerous weapon.

Is it a stupid comparison, yes, will that stop people using it, probably not.

It’s just one of those things.

Not much you can do to change the mind of a person who actually thinks that comparing a gun to a car is a valid Defense of gun rights after another class room full of dead kids is on the news.

originally posted by: OtherSideOfTheCoin
Is it a stupid comparison, yes, will that stop people using it, probably not.

It’s just one of those things.

Not much you can do to change the mind of a person who actually thinks that comparing a gun to a car is a valid Defense of gun rights after another class room full of dead kids is on the news.

A guy can mow down twenty kids lined up for a bus very easy around here with a car. Many teenagers have better access to a car than a gun. I think cars being used as a weapon will increase now that people are more aware of them being effective. I am surprised that people have not used them more in the past.

It doesn't matter what a person uses as a weapon to kill someone. We must address the issue, why are these mass killing events increasing in our country? How do we fix our society?

a reply to: rickymouse

It doesn't matter what a person uses as a weapon to kill someone. We must address the issue, why are these mass killing events increasing in our country? How do we fix our society?

You must admit at some point, on some level, the gun culture in America is a part of the problem though right or are you going to blame everything else other than the weapon used.

There is nothing you can ban that will stop someone bent on killing others. There are literally more tools one can use to commit murder and while some may be more effecient than others, guns are not the only thing that can cause such harm.

Maybe if in more conversations about the topic people would stop blaming inanimate objects and start looking at and discussing the root problem...that would be people and their issues, not inanimate objects...then we might get further than silly posts like this trying to win a stupid argument because of feels rather than some critical thought.

a reply to: OtherSideOfTheCoin

When you see shooting targets like:



...you have to wonder. And that's the legal owners.