Posted by
Andrews on Monday, April 27, 2009 10:40:10 PM
I have written on gun control over and over, so I won't waste much time, but a thought occurred to me today. Many of those who want to control guns talk about the potential harm. When I raise the possibility of killing people using other, unregulated devices, they always point out that guns allow you to easily kill many people in a short time. To which I used to reply that gasoline and matches could kill a whole lot more people just as quickly, yet are not regulated.
However, I thought of an even better example. Timothy McVeigh, using completely unregulated substances, killed more people than any dozen school or workplace shooters, more than any ten or twelve gunmen I can name.
Of course my arguments against gun control have nothing to do with such absurd utilitarian arguments, but my point is, even if you want to base your beliefs on utilitarian arguments, then why aren't we banning fertilizer, gasoline, matches, and even knives, trucks, cars, bats, wrenches... Well, just about anything not made of Nerf.
Actually, you can smother someone with Nerf, can't you?
POSTSCRIPT
My earlier arguments about gun control are "
Arrogance and Gun Control", "
Those Other People", "
Man's Nature and Government", "
A Good Start", "
An Important Question", "
The Weakest Gun Control Argument", "
Three Ideas That Never Work", "
The Wrong Way to Argue", "
The Intellectual Elite", "
Appealing to Arrogance" and "
Nuclear Disarmament and Gun Control ". I also mention some of the bad reasoning in my posts "
The Citizen Dichotomy" and "
My Vision of Government".