The "Guns Are Inanimate Objects" Argument

[billh58]

While it is true that guns are simply tools and have no ability to harm anybody on their own, the assertion that they have no part in the perpetration of violence is absurd.

If properly motivated, somebody can kill their enemy with a pair of nail-clippers, but this is irrelevant to the greater regulatory scheme. Just because there are other ways for people to kill one another, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t in the public interest to restrict the most common way people currently kill each other.

Guns give people a quick, easy, cheap, and relatively detached (compared to stabbings/beatings) method of killing people—even large numbers of people. By making killing easy, guns directly contribute to the thought process that must go into a killing and facilitate even higher body counts. Without guns, people would still kill others, but it would be far more difficult to accrue high body counts.

There is a good reason why guns have become the mass murderer’s weapon of choice; they are simply the most efficient way of getting the job done. Weapons other than guns can be used to kill large numbers of people, but none are as easy to obtain or use as guns:

• Bombs may be lethal to large numbers of people, but they take expertise to build and are very risky for an amateur to handle (just look at the number of people who manage to mangle themselves playing with fireworks).

• Knives are lethal in the right hands, but they can only kill one person at a time and have no ability to kill at a distance.

• Cars can been used to kill people but they are far too large and unwieldy to replace guns (you can’t exactly put one in your backpack to sneak into a school).

https://theprogressivecynic.com/debunking-right-wing-talking-points/refuting-gun-enthusiasts-anti-gun-control-arguments/

The "inanimate object" defense and other lame gun fetishist arguments in support of the right to carry deadly weapons in public are, as the article above states, absurd. Guns are designed for one purpose only: to kill or maim (either offensively, or defensively). Target practice, "recreational" shooting, etc. are all aimed at one activity: to become proficient at hitting a target for lethal purposes.

The gun violence epidemic in this country is far and above the levels in other civilized countries in the world, and the right-wing gun lobby excels at selling this statistic in order to sell more guns for "protection." On the one hand they say that we don't have a gun violence problem, but on the other they say that we need to protect ourselves from gun violence.

Neoconservative right-wing double-speak at its finest.

[Aristus]

1. There's no limit to the rationalizing people will do to excuse the culpability

of their favorite fetish-object.

[Hoyt]

2. Trayvon Martin would not have been murdered if Zimmerman did not have a gun. Zman would have sat in

car and never stalked, intimidated and shot Martin, without his gun. Pretty much the same for the majority of shootings.

[scscholar]

3. Considering how often they just go off...

being inanimate doesn't matter. They still kill.