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"Guns are specifically designed to kill: the logic error behind the whole gun debate"

DispositionMatrix

DispositionMatrix

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Guns are specifically designed to kill: the logic error behind the whole gun debate
Sounds like an argument! But “guns are specifically designed to kill” is another way of saying that guns are inherently noxious or deviant. That’s a hypothesis, a starting point. And like any hypothesis about cake, death, or everything in between, it can’t be its own evidence.

Ok, fair enough, few people would disagree at this point. It’s logically sound, in formal terms. But actually internalizing this is a bigger emotional leap than many people are used to making. Because if you’re not allowed to assume a priori that guns are noxious (since that the thing you’re trying to prove), then you have to start from what is, for many people, an idea so jarring that it’s almost a paradox: that guns are not noxious.

That’s the null hypothesis — it’s not where folks have to end up, but it is where they have to start. That is extraordinarily difficult if you have, like many millions of people, literally no first-hand knowledge of healthy gun usage.
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I would wager that 99.9999% of ammo is shot toward a paper or steel target.

The other .0001% maybe are shot at someone, and of those, only about 1% actually result in someone being killed.

Guns are designed to expel a projectile at high velocity. Nothing more. Nothing less. What a PERSON decides to DO with the gun is what matters. The gun is not alive, and has no moral compass of its own.
 
My guns are designed to propel a projectile toward a predictable point at specific distances from the muzzle. What a human being decides to do with the design of that gun is what matters.
 
guns are not designed to kill. Guns are designed like any other tool. What it is used for is determined by the human that possess it. Just like a car, or a hammer or a knife.....

guns have many uses. Hunting is a use. Defending your family is a use. Target shooting is a use.

But the main reason for a firearm is too protect yourself from a tyrannical and oppressive government. I think that is the most important.

Democrats fear that because 2A stands in the way of their tyranny and oppression....
 
robjax said:
guns are not designed to kill. Guns are designed like any other tool. What it is used for is determined by the human that possess it. Just like a car, or a hammer or a knife.....

guns have many uses. Hunting is a use. Defending your family is a use. Target shooting is a use.

But the main reason for a firearm is too protect yourself from a tyrannical and oppressive government. I think that is the most important.

Democrats fear that because 2A stands in the way of their tyranny and oppression....
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Two of the three of the examples you provided (hunting, defense, target shooting) relate to killing or the threat of killing.

I don’t see the same lines of thinking as most people in this thread thus far. Sure there’s a bucket of gun enthusiasts that are only interested in target sports of some sort. But to say that guns aren’t designed for lethality is boggling my mind. A pistol is not like a hammer or a knife - it has much more limited use.
In fact, the fact that guns are designed to kill is indeed a talking point I use when I’m talking with somebody who is anti-gun. They talk about “assault rifles” but are fine with my ruger 10/22. They like to talk about the dangerous features (bayonet lugs, folding stocks, etc), like getting rid of these features makes the weapon non-lethal. It’s silliness, all of it.
And I’m happy to call it what it is. I don’t see how one could argue any other way.
 
Bottom line, of course the fundamental purpose of firearms, the purpose for which they were invented, is to incapacitate (kill or injure) a living target. The target might be food, or it might be an attacker bent on killing or injuring us. Firearms are different from knives or axes which are also potentially lethal weapons, because I can use the cutting function of these other tools for many different purposes. Still, I don't fell trees or open packages by slamming a 55-grain bullet into them at 2800 fps. Nope, guns are pretty singular in their function and purpose.

So, as the linked article points out, to have a meaningful argument we have to question the presumption baked into the anti-gunner's statement; which is that all killing is evil. Anyone who believes that is innocent, ignorant, stupid, or crazy, or he has a dishonest, hidden agenda (to disarm us so that he can use violence for his own ends). Anyone who isn't a vegan has reconciled himself to the killing of some animals to provide food or products used by people. So once you have accepted "normal" killing of certain living things for certain purposes, you can't merely say that "guns are designed for killing" necessarily implies that they are evil. They merely are an effective tool to accomplish a task you have agreed is normal and morally good.

So the debate must progress to the distinction between good killing and bad killing. A condition of no killing at all, anywhere, is nonexistent on planet Earth. The evil is in the offensive use of weapons of any kind for the purpose of violating the person or property of another. And as a force equalizer which for example enables a small woman or an elderly person to successfully defend against the predations of one or more large, evil men, bears, lions or other attackers, guns are a very good thing indeed.
 
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RedLeaf19 said:
Two of the three of the examples you provided (hunting, defense, target shooting) relate to killing or the threat of killing.

I don’t see the same lines of thinking as most people in this thread thus far. Sure there’s a bucket of gun enthusiasts that are only interested in target sports of some sort. But to say that guns aren’t designed for lethality is boggling my mind. A pistol is not like a hammer or a knife - it has much more limited use.
In fact, the fact that guns are designed to kill is indeed a talking point I use when I’m talking with somebody who is anti-gun. They talk about “assault rifles” but are fine with my ruger 10/22. They like to talk about the dangerous features (bayonet lugs, folding stocks, etc), like getting rid of these features makes the weapon non-lethal. It’s silliness, all of it.
And I’m happy to call it what it is. I don’t see how one could argue any other way.
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yup.
 
"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles...the rifle is a weapon. Let there be no mistake about that. It is a tool of power, and thus dependent completely upon the moral stature of its user. It is equally useful in securing meat for the table, destroying group enemies on the battlefield, and resisting tyranny. In fact, it is the only means of resisting tyranny, since a citizenry armed with rifles simply cannot be tyrannized."
- Jeff Cooper
 
I was trained to aim for the center of available mass and to shoot until the threat stops. "Shoot to stop", was the phrase used over and over again. In fact, the point was hammered home that we don't shoot to kill, and we don't shoot to wound, and we don't shoot warn. We shoot to stop. Once the bad guy stops, we stop shooting. Stop could mean a lot of things. Stop attacking me, stop attacking my partner, stop escaping, stop threatening to harm me or others, etc. Of course if the bad guy started again we could shoot again until he stopped again.
What's the difference between reasonable force and excessive force? Reasonable force is the least amount of force necessary to stop the bad guy. The key word being, least. Excessive force is defined as anything that exceeds reasonable force. If one shot stopped the perp, then two or more shots would be excessive. If he gets back up and is still a threat you can continue to deploy reasonable force until the threat is stopped.
If you wind up in court or under investigation just remember that your intention was to stop, not to kill.
 
ETA: They can stick the null hypothesis where the sun don't shine. The reason anything kills (cars, trucks, bats, balls, knives, shovels, rope, etc., etc.) is because of the operator of the item, not the item itself. Therefore, if almost anything can kill depending on the operator, wouldn't the items be assumed a priori to have the design to kill. Finally, aren't people designed to kill?
 
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A parachute is designed to prevent a living being from suffering the almost instant rapid deceleration of their body when it will eventually land on earth after falling from a chosen height.
Guns don't kill, they do however deliver a bullet where you point it as long as it is loaded and a person pulls the trigger.

We have pretty much reached the saturation point of any talking points the control freaks continue to make, it has long since past ludicrous.
 
If people keep writing articles like that I'll be legally required to become and anti. Holy. Shit.
 
The whole line of logic starting with this is peripheral: the guns are designed for one purpose and that is to kill.

Don't get dragged into this argument - it doesn't factor in the debate. It is was is known as a red herring.

The focus is on human rights and the Constitution.
 
67ray said:
The whole line of logic starting with this is peripheral: the guns are designed for one purpose and that is to kill.

Don't get dragged into this argument - it doesn't factor in the debate. It is was is known as a red herring.

The focus is on human rights and the Constitution.
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Saying that they arent made to kill isnt good either.

When people give their opinion on what is ok and not ok to own I cringe. I always say people should have basically what a light infantryman could/should carry. Why? Because the 2A's purpose is to allow a community to form a militia to defend itself. And they do this using weapons that are made to fight the good fight. If I were to say guns arent made to kill people, using them for militia service is probably not a smart idea.

The 2A isnt about making friends with people. It's about scaring bad people into behaving and making evil people pay when they don't.
 
It doesn't matter what it's designed for .
The argument skips over the first major point.
The constitution of the United States says I have the right to own one.
There is nothing to argue about and engaging in one only weakens that right.
I give anyone arguing otherwise the same level of credence as some racist saying that blacks shouldn't be free or that woman shouldn't be able to vote.
 
Guns ARE designed to kill. Nothing wrong with that, though. Some people need to be killed. Like Jonathan Coreas-Salamanca, an illegal scumbag who raped two 11 year old girls in Montgomery County in Maryland (Washington Examiner, 2/25/20). Once again, our worthless and weak government has failed, as progressive d-bags like to say, our most vulnerable.
 
G Port said:
Guns ARE designed to kill. Nothing wrong with that, though. Some people need to be killed. Like Jonathan Coreas-Salamanca, an illegal scumbag who raped two 11 year old girls in Montgomery County in Maryland (Washington Examiner, 2/25/20). Once again, our worthless and weak government has failed, as progressive d-bags like to say, our most vulnerable.
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Actually, according to the news reports, he raped one 11 year old...bad enough in and of itself. The other 11 year old was raped by yet another animal from south of the border. Both men said the sex was “consensual”. Maybe it was but, we have laws here that say diddling an 11 year old is statutory rape and will put you behind bars for a long time and in most jails, kiddy diddlers are looked upon with disdain.
 
I own a lot of guns, and most are milsurps.

Those are designed to kill. Let's stop quibbling.

The rest? They're designed either for SD or police/paramilitary use, or for military contracts. Those are designed to kill, too. Now then. HAVE they killed? Probably. A few of them, anyway. DO they kill? These days, they don't. I own them, and I shoot them at paper.

But yeah. My guns were, by and large, designed to kill. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, and I'm not interested in ticky-tack semantics.
 
Wow. Jerking knees are jerking. Did you all even read the op’s linked article before going off?

All of your “my gun makes holes in <foo that isn’t people>” posts are actually making the same point as the article author:

But in real life, it turns out that “nothing bad happens” is the overwhelming norm. So begging the question boils down to not seeing the denominator — zooming in on harmful gun uses, and not considering (or perhaps even being aware of) healthy gun uses. That’s what “guns are specifically designed to kill” means. If that’s true, then guns are empirically probably the most defective product you can buy.
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R
 
StevieP said:
I would wager that 99.9999% of ammo is shot toward a paper or steel target.

The other .0001% maybe are shot at someone, and of those, only about 1% actually result in someone being killed.
Click to expand...

With an estimated 393 millions guns in American civilian hands, and an estimated 15,292 firearms homicides in 2019, that’s a 0.004% effectiveness rate of kill, or 5.4 sigma units. Looked at the other way around, if guns were never supposed to kill anyone, that would be a defect rate of 40 in a million.
 

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