Misspelled word by the pencil is due to the person holding the pencil. Overweight problem caused by the spoon is due to the person holding the spoon.
Dead person shot by a gun is due to someone else holding the gun. A somewhat different proposition.
While a picture of Stewie holding a gun might make for a cute meme, the logic being presented here is ridiculous. Trying to assert that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" using this sort of flawed logic is just silly.
+Chris Betcher Sooo… wat? That made no sense. The logic is entirely sound. A tool is a tool is a tool; it's neither good nor bad on its own, the moral weight enters when a human uses it for good or evil. Otherwise, we'd have more of those evil misspelling pencils branded "M.A.D.V. — Mothers Against Drunk Vehicles."
+Nathan Hourt The difference is that someone else pulls the trigger. If we want to compare the use of a gun (which has a possible negative outcome of killing someone) to a spoon (which has a possible negative outcome of causing someone to get fat), then both implements (gun or spoon) need to be used by the person being affected.
In this example in the meme, that is NOT the case. Spoons affect the person using them. Guns (unless you're referring to people using them to commit suicide) affect others. I can choose not to use a spoon to make myself fat. I cannot choose whether an armed gunman enters my school and opens fire. It's a completely different situation.
This is why it's so hard to have a constructive debate about guns with the pro-gun lobby… They would not recognise logic if it bit them on the ass.
No, you're shifting the argument. The discussion is not about someone being affected, it's about what does the affecting. The gun doesn't affect the target any more than the spoon does. In both cases, it's the wielder of the utility that does the affecting. Again, otherwise we would be trying to ban cars. Remember that far more people die from driver-fault automobile accidents than gun violence, so maybe we should take notes on how we deal with that situation, and apply them to how we deal with the relatively minor (note word: relatively) issue of gun violence.
With both cars and guns, the vast, vast majority of uses are legitimate, legal, responsible uses of a potentially dangerous tool. But hell, guns look scarier so we should ban them, right? (Remember, every time someone says "assault weapon ban," he is very literally saying "scary looking ban")
There are very few tools designed with the express purpose of killing. Some tools are indeed dangerous but that danger is typically a byproduct of their primary function, e.g. a lawn mower's spinning blade. A gun is a tool designed to kill. Its primary function is to be lethal when used properly. It may be used for sport shooting, deer hunting, law enforcement, and bank robbery. To simply call a gun "just another tool" ignores design intent and makes for an imbalanced comparison.
My point is that as intelligent people and as a society we treat different tools with varying degrees of care and concern based on the intended use of that tool. That isn't a difficult concept to grasp. One might hand a toddler a spoon to play with but certainly not a gun or a box of rat poison. Why? Because of the intended use for which the tool was designed. No one can fully anticipate how a tool may be misused (or misspelled) but we try to make them as safe as their intended purpose will allow and we also regulate tools based on our appraisal of their inherent danger. This is unquestionably difficult when it comes to a tool designed to kill but it is a legitimate issue to debate. To try and assert that a tool is benign until used is obfuscation.
I'm sure there are plenty that can kill someone with piano wire, anti-freeze, or a rusty hex nut but in each case we're dealing with a tool being used for something other than its designed purpose. This "argument" that a tool is neither good nor bad may be true in an abstract sense but that's the extent of it. In application it's clear our society draws the line somewhere otherwise you could pop in to your local Wal-Mart and pick up some hand grenades and head on over the the GM dealer and get an Abrams tank; after all, they're tools too. The dilemma we grapple with, especially with tools expressly designed to kill, is where to draw the line. The far more frightening option is for some agency to attempt to determine, preemptively, our private intentions as individuals so that we are prevented from using law mowers and spoons as murder weapons. This seems far more disastrous and undesireable.
Misspelled word by the pencil is due to the person holding the pencil. Overweight problem caused by the spoon is due to the person holding the spoon.
Dead person shot by a gun is due to someone else holding the gun. A somewhat different proposition.
While a picture of Stewie holding a gun might make for a cute meme, the logic being presented here is ridiculous. Trying to assert that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" using this sort of flawed logic is just silly.
Also, the irony of the term "miss spell" is not lost on me.
+Chris Betcher Sooo… wat? That made no sense. The logic is entirely sound. A tool is a tool is a tool; it's neither good nor bad on its own, the moral weight enters when a human uses it for good or evil. Otherwise, we'd have more of those evil misspelling pencils branded "M.A.D.V. — Mothers Against Drunk Vehicles."
+Nathan Hourt The difference is that someone else pulls the trigger. If we want to compare the use of a gun (which has a possible negative outcome of killing someone) to a spoon (which has a possible negative outcome of causing someone to get fat), then both implements (gun or spoon) need to be used by the person being affected.
In this example in the meme, that is NOT the case. Spoons affect the person using them. Guns (unless you're referring to people using them to commit suicide) affect others. I can choose not to use a spoon to make myself fat. I cannot choose whether an armed gunman enters my school and opens fire. It's a completely different situation.
This is why it's so hard to have a constructive debate about guns with the pro-gun lobby… They would not recognise logic if it bit them on the ass.
No, you're shifting the argument. The discussion is not about someone being affected, it's about what does the affecting. The gun doesn't affect the target any more than the spoon does. In both cases, it's the wielder of the utility that does the affecting. Again, otherwise we would be trying to ban cars. Remember that far more people die from driver-fault automobile accidents than gun violence, so maybe we should take notes on how we deal with that situation, and apply them to how we deal with the relatively minor (note word: relatively) issue of gun violence.
With both cars and guns, the vast, vast majority of uses are legitimate, legal, responsible uses of a potentially dangerous tool. But hell, guns look scarier so we should ban them, right? (Remember, every time someone says "assault weapon ban," he is very literally saying "scary looking ban")
There are very few tools designed with the express purpose of killing. Some tools are indeed dangerous but that danger is typically a byproduct of their primary function, e.g. a lawn mower's spinning blade. A gun is a tool designed to kill. Its primary function is to be lethal when used properly. It may be used for sport shooting, deer hunting, law enforcement, and bank robbery. To simply call a gun "just another tool" ignores design intent and makes for an imbalanced comparison.
If I buy a lawnmower for the purpose of murder, and a gun for the purpose of target shooting, which one would you rather I not get around to using?
If you had thoughts of murder I'd prefer you be locked up and unable to buy anything.
I rest my case: the tool is irrelevant.
My point is that as intelligent people and as a society we treat different tools with varying degrees of care and concern based on the intended use of that tool. That isn't a difficult concept to grasp. One might hand a toddler a spoon to play with but certainly not a gun or a box of rat poison. Why? Because of the intended use for which the tool was designed. No one can fully anticipate how a tool may be misused (or misspelled) but we try to make them as safe as their intended purpose will allow and we also regulate tools based on our appraisal of their inherent danger. This is unquestionably difficult when it comes to a tool designed to kill but it is a legitimate issue to debate. To try and assert that a tool is benign until used is obfuscation.
I know many that could easily kill a person with a spoon…
Well put. Thank you, +marc stowe at least one person here has some common sense.
I'm sure there are plenty that can kill someone with piano wire, anti-freeze, or a rusty hex nut but in each case we're dealing with a tool being used for something other than its designed purpose.
This "argument" that a tool is neither good nor bad may be true in an abstract sense but that's the extent of it. In application it's clear our society draws the line somewhere otherwise you could pop in to your local Wal-Mart and pick up some hand grenades and head on over the the GM dealer and get an Abrams tank; after all, they're tools too. The dilemma we grapple with, especially with tools expressly designed to kill, is where to draw the line.
The far more frightening option is for some agency to attempt to determine, preemptively, our private intentions as individuals so that we are prevented from using law mowers and spoons as murder weapons. This seems far more disastrous and undesireable.
This is where the rules and laws of the world come to plan in my opinion. Well that and how you were raised.
Bad parenting is the cause of many issues..
We wrote about it from the Law Enforcement perspective and what we see daily here:
http://www.coptalk.info/2010/03/21/where-have-all-the-parents-gone/
Its just another perspective on why things happen in society…
lol