Death by bullets vs Death by vehicle

[zukiphile]

There are several points that seem commonly missed or resisted.

A firearm can be compared to other objects.

The automotive analogy or comparison indicates the problem with product liability exposure for firearm manufacturers simply for having produced a properly functioning firearm. While an automotive manufacturer may have exposure to product liability for an item that does not work properly, the tactic of exposing firearms manufacturers to frivolous products liability litigation as a political tactic to bankrupt them is a real danger not faced by automotive manufacturers. There is no incoherence in legislatively isolating firearms manufacturers from a class of products liability suits that categorically lack merit.

While firearms and automobiles are both subjects of heavy regulation, the regulatory focus on automobiles is not on reducing their utility. We do not see arbitrary limitations on passenger capacity or top speed or which plastic bits should be fit by the manufacturer onto the car.

While something of a tangent, it is interesting to note that several studies have concluded that as cars become mechanically safer, drivers reassess their risks and adjust their behavior, driving more dangerously. Without touching the merits of automobile safety regulation, we can recognize that people are not static quantities, and their behavior can change in ways not foreseen by the regulatory enthusiast.

If shooting were regulated the way automobiles are, we would have ample public ranges available for use without charge, high school instruction on safety and use which instruction would be designed to lead to possession of a permit, and government incentives to assist in the purchase of "green" ammunition. You might even be ticketed for not having a silencer.

There is nothing illegitimate about noting the special pleading of a citation to the risk of criminal use of firearms and the resulting harm while simultaneously tolerating the risks necessarily associated with other routine activities. Criminal use of a firearm or an automobile does not indicate a defect in the design of either and is not a sound basis for a product liability suit or a public policy on either.

 

[Frank Ettin]

The reality is that a gun is not a car, and a car is not a gun. They are different.

Each has its unique history in human society. Each has served distinct purposes in human society. And societal attitudes about each are different. And they will be regulated differently.

 

[zukiphile]

The reality is that a gun is not a car, and a car is not a gun. They are different.

I doubt that anyone would argue the contrary, however a comparison of one thing to another doesn't require perfect identity. Otherwise, we could only legitimately compare things to themselves.

When comparing social attitudes about each, it is fair to examine the rationality of the difference in attitude.

EDIT - One respect in which automobiles and firearms are very closely analogous is in their symbolic value as a sort of mark of social agency. The ability to drive or carry a firearm legally can be a sign that one has the characteristics that permit him to be trusted with either activity.

An elderly person may drive very little, but the conversation in which friends or family tried to convince the person to give up his keys is almost always an extremely difficult one. That moment is routinely perceived by the individual as a transition from independence and competence to dependence and incompetence.

 

[Frank Ettin]

...a comparison of one thing to another doesn't require perfect identity. Otherwise, we could only legitimately compare things to themselves.

The question will always be whether it serves any purpose to do so.

It's a natural human tendency to look for relationships and order in the universe; and comparisons and analogies are among the ways we do that. But that doesn't always mean that the relationships and comparisons we come up with mean anything or really help us better understand the world in any useful way.

Some years back there was a striking comparison of Lincoln and JFK circulating. Some people thought it meant something, but as described here and here, it was merely a assortment of random coincidences which conveniently ignored the differences and really had no meaning at all.

For another example, consider the "Sokal affair of 1996." As described in a Wikipedia article:

...Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the journal's intellectual rigor and, specifically, to investigate whether "a leading North American journal of cultural studies – whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross – [would] publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions".²

The article, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", was published in the Social Text spring/summer 1996 "Science Wars" issue. It proposed that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. At that time, the journal did not practice academic peer review and it did not submit the article for outside expert review by a physicist.^3,4 On the day of its publication in May 1996, Sokal revealed in Lingua Franca that the article was a hoax, identifying it as "a pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense ... structured around the silliest quotations [by postmodernist academics] he could find about mathematics and physics."...

Essential, Sokal, a physicist, was satirizing a tendency in certain academic, philosophical communities to draw comparisons between various concepts in the physical sciences and the humanistic sphere. Thus he showed the fatuousness of trying to do so. (see also, Sokal, Alan, Beyond the Hoax, Oxford University Press, 2008)

It's possible to compare any two objects, no matter how dissimilar, and identify ways in which they are alike. But drawing meaningful or useful conclusions from such a comparison is another matter entirely.

 

[P5 Guy]

The reality is that a gun is not a car, and a car is not a gun. They are different.

Yet the results of said objects being wielded by a mentally disturbed individual are similar enough to warrant similar charges.

 

[Frank Ettin]

Yet the results of said objects being wielded by a mentally disturbed individual are similar enough to warrant similar charges.

Why? How?

Knives have been used by mentally disturbed individuals to hurt people. So have fireplace pokers. So has gasoline (e. g., the 1990 Happy Land fire). Should knives, fireplace pokers, gasoline, guns and cars all be regulated in the same way?

 

[zukiphile]

The question will always be whether it serves any purpose to do so.

I agree. The purpose served in observing the differences in reaction between a tragedy involving an automobile and a tragedy involving a firearm is to note the relative paucity of hysterical calls for non-remedies.

To be sure it is not the only hysteria. I don't think the very lax attitudes of a half century ago to drunk driving were appropriate, but sometimes we experience the other end of that pendulum swing now. It is nice that fewer people smoke, but there is some vilification of smokers that extends beyond concern over demonstrable risk. While the current model involves viewing alcoholism as a disease to be treated, the current fashion is to treat cigarette smoking as a sort of failure of character.

Identification of an hysteria serves a function where it allows the issue to be discussed with a better sense of proportion.

Sokal's hoax is entertaining and illustrative. The even more offputting aspect of scientific communities is the degree to which even peer review is not an obstacle to the restatement of the orthodoxies of the community.

 

[rickyrick]

I believe that in a free society, some will have to smell a little cigarette smoke.
Some will have to work with an unvaccinated individual.
Some will have to stand in line next to a CCWer without their knowledge.
You may have to overlook the neighbors tall grass and barking dog.

Freedom is abstract, everyone has that point to which they won't accept freedom any longer: is it the smoke? Is it the barking dog? Is it the drunk driver? Or do you stop freedom at who a person can choose to marry? For some, the gun is that right that they don't believe in, and if someone figures out how to regulate it, they will.

Some things need to be regulated, some people want every aspect of life regulated. Who's freedom will you regulate? That's a fact of society.

 

[Frank Ettin]

...The purpose served in observing the differences in reaction between a tragedy involving an automobile and a tragedy involving a firearm is to note the relative paucity of hysterical calls for non-remedies....

Which is reflective of different societal attitudes.

You previously suggested that:

...When comparing social attitudes about each, it is fair to examine the rationality of the difference in attitude....

But the business of assessing the "rationality" of attitudes is hardly simply or even necessarily productive.

Attitudes evolve organically as influenced by a wide variety of factors, including perceived utility, familiarity, and personal values. And if an attitude is shared widely enough shared to be considered a "societal" attitude, it must follow that it reflects a widely shared commonality of perceived utility, familiarity and values.

At the end of the day, people have different attitudes, based on different shared perceptions and values, about cars and about guns. Cars and guns are therefore treated differently in our society.

The challenge for RKBA advocacy is to change at least some societal attitudes towards guns.

 

[zukiphile]

But the business of assessing the "rationality" of attitudes is hardly simply or even necessarily productive.

On this we do not agree. It is true that attitudes, "prejudices" in Gadamer's work, or "tradition" in Burke's writing, arise organically. However, this does not place them beyond scrutiny.

To note the difference in reaction in a death involving a firearm and a death involving an automobile, or the difference in reaction to alcoholism and cigarette smoking, is not to deny any actual differences between the two. Instead it poses a question, "why are these things viewed differently?".

If the reaction to the last acts of Charles Lee Whitman wasn't public musing about how wrong it is that an individual might possess rifles, but a more modern shooting at a university prompts musing about an alleged defect in our laws that permits the availability of the items used, then asking about the shift, giving some scrutiny to unsound attitudes makes a lot of sense.

If one answer to the question "why are these things viewed differently?" is that some aspects of the reactions to news stories about firearms are synthetic, then that should serve to reduce the weight they are given in public discourse.

 

[Frank Ettin]

...To note the difference in reaction in a death involving a firearm and a death involving an automobile, or the difference in reaction to alcoholism and cigarette smoking, is not to deny any actual differences between the two. Instead it poses a question, "why are these things viewed differently?"....

And why are they viewed differently? That can be an interesting question, but not necessarily useful beyond any [academically valuable] insights the process of trying to answer it might provide into human history, beliefs and values.

Indeed, is it wrong that those things are viewed differently in our society? There may be some very good reasons why, based on history, beliefs and values, they are. And examining those reasons would, no doubt, tell us things about who we are. But if that's our real goal, we need to drill much deeper than we are in this thread, and without the agenda.

...If the reaction to the last acts of Charles Lee Whitman wasn't public musing about how wrong it is that an individual might possess rifles, but a more modern shooting at a university prompts musing about an alleged defect in our laws that permits the availability of the items used, then asking about the shift, giving some scrutiny to unsound attitudes makes a lot of sense...

But that's an entirely different question, and a much better and more useful one.

That's not about comparing guns to cars or to cigarettes or to anything else. That's about looking at how societal attitudes about guns have evolved -- and evolved in a way which, from our perspective, is not positive. Understanding the stressors that produced such change can help us look for strategies to now promote the RKBA.

 

[wogpotter]

Apparently the differences between a car & a bullet don't exist for the local newspaper.

They ran the story as "A shooter killed several people with a car" (my emphasis).

As far as I can determine there was no firearm of any kind even remotely involved & the driver was not a gun owner even.

 

[45_auto]

All cars are supposed to be registered, insured and licensed.

What dream world do you live in? By your standards I have a half dozen illegal cars in my garage. Registration, insurance and licensing laws are NOT applicable if the car is used only on private property.

Maybe you could track down some of these "lawbreakers" (by your standards) in these videos and give them a ticket.

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheOfficialNASCAR

https://www.youtube.com/user/nhra

http://www.formula1.com/content/fom-website/en/video.html

 

[rickyrick]

You can't operate those cars in public without registration legally.

You can break the law and operate a car without registration.

I guess if you want the same restrictions on firearms, then go ahead and support the comparisons.

 

[zukiphile]

Indeed, is it wrong that those things are viewed differently in our society? There may be some very good reasons why, based on history, beliefs and values, they are. And examining those reasons would, no doubt, tell us things about who we are. But if that's our real goal, we need to drill much deeper than we are in this thread, and without the agenda.

It might tell us something about who we are, or might tell us that we are involved in an hysteria, or that some of the public expression is synthetic, or may suggest that locating the problem in the instrument itself is irrational.

If there are very good reasons for doing this just with firearms, let's hear them.

But that's an entirely different question, and a much better and more useful one.

Not entirely different. There is commonality: the act is the focus of revulsion rather than any of the instruments the actor employed.

It leads us to the same question suggested in the first post of this thread - why the difference?

 

[45_auto]

All cars are supposed to be registered, insured and licensed.

You can't operate those cars in public without registration legally.

You can't have it both ways.

Is it "ALL" cars that are supposed to be registered, insured and licensed, or just cars that are "operated in public" (whatever that means - are you trying to say "operated on public property?)?

I guess if you want the same restrictions on firearms, then go ahead and support the comparisons.

I would be more than happy (ecstatic would be a better description) with the exact same restrictions on firearms as on automobiles. Guns used "in public" would have to be registered, insured and licensed. But the guns NOT used "in public", and kept on your own private property would have ZERO government restrictions (no infringement) just like cars used only on private property (NASCAR, NHRA, Formula 1, SCCA Modified, show cars, etc).

This would mean no age limit to purchase, no background check, legal full auto pistols and rifles, legal destructive devices like grenade launchers, anti-tank cannons, etc. It would be great!

I would keep a Glock 18 and a Browning .50BMG sitting next to my dragster just because I could!

 

[rickyrick]

I'm not sure what the real intent is except to highlight the fact that you own a race car, big whoop. Still can't operate a race car except in a very limited set of circumstances.

So I guess I'll retract my statement about cars being heavily regulated and we will go back to fairy-tales.

 

[TimSr]

There is a simple factor of human nature. We all tend to be less interested and far less outraged with undue regulations and blame on others that do not affect us.

We all use cars. Any new regulations directly affect us. Not eveybody is a gun owner, and not every gun owner cares about gun owner rights as long it it doesn't immediately affect the guns he owns. For that matter, how many of us who are concerned about our gun rights lose sleep when another state that we do not reside in passes some moroinc new gun legslation?

 

[Double Naught Spy]

It might tells us something abut who we are, or might tell us that we are involved in an hysteria, or that some of the public expression is synthetic, or may suggest that locating the problem in the instrument itself is irrational.

If there are very good reasons for doing this just with firearms, let's hear them.

I am not sure there really are good reasons, not in the manner that the OP has expressed.

No offense to the OP in the expression of being upset in that other issues (automotive, in this case) do not receive the same negative media and/or public response as the sentiment has been expressed repeatedly about the gun community, but the concern is decidedly misplaced and the mock outrage by the injustice is counter productive and insensitive as are the sarcastic calls for more regulation in other areas. This is NOT a productive attitude for effecting positive changes for the gun community.

First of all, you really don't want more regulation in the (in this case) automotive industry. If you truly did, you would not be complaining on a gun forum about it, but in an automotive forum or political action forum. The same goes for those that mockingly have called for the regulation of knives, hammers, chainsaws, and other things. So the call for such change is disingenuous at best since you really don't want it to happen and you are playing on the emotions of the survivors of such events for no real beneficial reason.

Second, you won't effect a positive change in gun laws by calling for more regulation in other areas. That has never happened before, so why go through the motions of suggesting such a lame thing?

Third, if you are making your arguments here that regulation is not equal, then you are not only wasting your time because nobody here wants more automotive regulation, but you are wasting your time here because we are the proverbial choir of firearms. There is no reason to try to convince us that we need fewer firearms laws. We know that. We are not the target audience for your complaints.

So instead of going about this the wrong way and complaining that there aren't enough regulations in the automotive industry and that the media and Obama are bad, how about thinking of some productive ideas in motivating non-believers and the holiday church attendees who sometimes hear our gun choir to see our perspective?

 

[zukiphile]

No offense to the OP in the expression of being upset in that other issues (automotive, in this case) do not receive the same negative media and/or public response as the sentiment has been expressed repeatedly about the gun community, but the concern is decidedly misplaced and the mock outrage by the injustice is counter productive and insensitive as are the sarcastic calls for more regulation in other areas. This is NOT a productive attitude for effecting positive changes for the gun community.

First of all, you really don't want more regulation in the (in this case) automotive industry. If you truly did, you would not be complaining on a gun forum about it, but in an automotive forum or political action forum. The same goes for those that mockingly have called for the regulation of knives, hammers, chainsaws, and other things. So the call for such change is disingenuous at best since you really don't want it to happen and you are playing on the emotions of the survivors of such events for no real beneficial reason.

Second, you won't effect a positive change in gun laws by calling for more regulation in other areas. That has never happened before, so why go through the motions of suggesting such a lame thing?

The vector of his critique isn't new or categorically ineffective. Swift's Modest Proposal employs a similar method to make a serious point.

Third, if you are making your arguments here that regulation is not equal, then you are not only wasting your time because nobody here wants more automotive regulation, but you are wasting your time here because we are the proverbial choir of firearms. There is no reason to try to convince us that we need fewer firearms laws. We know that. We are not the target audience for your complaints.

It is certainly more interesting to make one's point against an opponent of the point, though not every outlet tolerates dissent to the same degree. For OP to test drive his argument, which is a broad and down the middle sort of point, amongst adversaries may be unrealistic.

Partly for that reason, interesting (to me) conversations amongst members of communities tend to occur at the margins. Frank Ettin and I are probably in agreement on 2d Am. legal issues somewhere between 98% and 100% of the time, and even our divergence on the function of prejudices within communities is slight.

Is colbad's post a waste of his time? There is a school of thought that holds all internet argument to be a waste of time, yet the popularity of the hobby persists. My guess is that if colbad has stuck with this thread, his point may be better polished the next time he makes it. In future, if he makes his point to an enthusiast for greater regulation, he may realize a benefit from the discussion above.