Of course, you could also have just answered my question. Maybe you meant to, and forgot. So I'll submit it again.
A handful of "law-abiding" drivers in a year (and a fraction of "law-abiding" drivers, and of incidents of driving, so small as to be completely insignificant) who deliberately use their cars to cause injury or death are being compared to a whole hell of a bigger number of "law-abiding" firearms users (and a much larger fraction of "law-abiding" firearms users, and of incidents of firearms use) who deliberately use firearms to cause injury or death.
How is this "the same"? In any meaningful way, I mean, of course.
("The same" was your characterization of the things in question, I believe.)
.
Now, what the heck, I'll have a look at what you did say.
"A meth head in a BMW decided to take his rage out on me one Saturday morning after a perceived traffic slight. He herded my trash-laden pickup truck onto a dead-end road and proceeded to smash out my windows with a tire iron. If I'd had a gun I could have legally shot him."Hell, yeah. And if
he'd had a gun, he wouldn't likely have bothered smashing out your truck windows. Guns being so darned easy for criminals bent on mayhem to acquire, I wonder why he didn't.
"If you account for demographics (white, age 45, college graduate, no criminal record, employed, relatively affluent, homeowner in a low-crime neighborhood in a low-crime city) I am about a hundred times more likely to die in a motor vehicle crash than I am to be shot dead in a crime or accident."Here's where you really needed to acknowledge the question I had asked, so you didn't look like you were maybe just trying to avoid it or pretend that it had never happened.
How many times more likely are you to BE IN CONTACT with a car (i.e. in a situation where there is a possibility that you might be killed) than you are to BE IN CONTACT with a firearm (i.e. in a situation where there is a possibility that you might be killed). What is the probability
in each instance of contact?
I'm probably several thousand gazillion times more "likely" to be killed by a car than I am to be killed by a firearm -- largely because
I am likely to be almost never in a situation in which I am in contact with a firearm in my life.
I did hold a handgun once, for a split-second. Not going to go into the details, but essentially I was part of an arrangement for someone to hand the handgun over to me so that I could hand it over to the cops, all of us being in quite close proximity at the time, but of course the cops having to be far enough back that the people setting the conditions were assured the cops wouldn't be taking advantage of the opportunity to move in. I'd expected that I might turn around in order to do that, after the handgun got into my hand. No need. Talk about yr greased lightning, those city cop boys were fast ones. I expect never to be in contact with a firearm again in my life -- unless someone uses one unlawfully in my vicinity.
I know of people who have been killed in car crashes, one I knew personally, and none of them because someone
deliberately harmed them with a car, let alone purchased the car for the purpose of causing the harm. I personally know two people who have died from being shot: one a depressed adolescent who shot himself dead with the father's hunting rifle (actually, when I met his father the boy was dead already, so I didn't "know" him), and one a client who was shot dead by her sister's abusive husband. Neither death was a result of careless or even negligent use on the part of the person who fired the gun; both were intentional. In the latter case, the firearm was illegally acquired solely for the purpose of killing.
And so the incidence of death as a fraction of the
number of contacts with firearms among people I know personally is about a bazillion times higher than the incidence of death as a fraction of the
number of contacts with cars among people I know personally. We could expand this to a much larger population, and the ratio would hold fairly steady, I'm quite confident. And one reason is that people use firearms to
intentionally cause death, and people do not use cars to intentionally cause death.
So you still weren't addressing my question, which wasn't about the likelihood of being killed by someone driving a car vs. someone handling a firearm. That wasn't even the subject under discussion. If we could remind ourselves, the subject under discussion was the "same"ness of cars and firearms as instruments for
intentionally causing injury or death.
C'mon, really. Is there some chance that we can
just stop this disingenuous bullshit about cars being "more dangerous" than firearms because more people are injured or killed in incidents of contact with cars? (If you're not saying that cars are "more dangerous" than firearms then I'm not talking to you when I say that, but then I don't know what you *are* saying.)
More people are injured or killed in North America in incidents of contact with water than in incidents of contact with rattlesnakes. Is water "more dangerous" than rattlesnakes? Are
cars more dangerous than rattlesnakes? And what would it mean if they were? That people should be permitted to own all the rattlesnakes they want, wherever they want, and take them wherever they like?
But as I was saying, that is not our subject here. Our subject was
whether people get driver's licences and acquire cars in order to cause injury or death.
"One night two teens in a stolen van damaged 10 vehicles as
they spun out of control down a nearby street at 2:30 AM.
My house is situated so that a speeding, out of control vehicle
could easily jump the curb and land on the roof of my living room.And I came home one night to find a car smashed into my front porch. I did not imagine that someone had been
trying to harm me.
Please tell me that you are seeing the difference. Please.
"Here is a list of things I did not have to do in that
transaction, all of which are required to purchase a firearm
in California:
- Show a driver's license. That's right. They allowed me
to test-drive the vehicle (with a salesman as a passenger),
purchase the vehicle, and drive it off the lot without
verifying that I can legally drive it.Well, if they actually allowed you to test-drive without seeing your driver's licences, they're morons. Allowing an unlicensed driver to drive one's car, where I'm at, is an offence. And also something that a prudent person, concerned about the preservation of his/her property, wouldn't do.
But you're right -- and all because there is no requirement that anyone have
a licence to possess a car. The fact that you would be required to show a licence to a firearms dealer is because there IS a requirement that one have
a licence to possess a firearm. So I'm not surprised that you weren't asked to show
a licence to *drive* a car in order to *purchase* a car -- any more than I'd be surprised that you were not required to show
a licence to *fire* a firearm in order to *purchase* a firearm. And car dealerships do not enforce restrictions on *driving* cars off their premises any more than firearms dealers enforce restrictions on *firing* firearms off their premises.
Once again, please tell me that you get this. You are comparing two different types of fruit, and seem to think that you have made a point.
The question that actually arises from the facts is whether someone should be required to have
a licence to possess a car before being able to purchase a car. One reason why I would say probably not, myself, is that I know of no one who has ever acquired a car
for the purpose of causing injury or death.
Moving on ...
"- Complete and sign Part I of BATF Form 4473
affirming that I am not a convicted felon, under a
restraining order related to domestic violence,
an unlawful drug user, a non-resident alien, using
an assumed name, a fugitive, that I am in fact a
resident of this state, etc.I'll bet that even you can come up with some reasons why such questions might be more relevant to the purchase of a firearm than to the purchase of a car. Again: are you aware of anyone who has ever purchased a car
with the intention of using it to cause death or injury?
"- Sign an affidavit that I own a state-approved
gun safe, to avoid having to pay about $10 extra
for a useless trigger lock."Well, y'know, you might have me there. It's illegal here to leave car keys in an unlocked car, precisely to avoid the harm that is often caused by people who steal cars. That rule is not completely effective in preventing car theft, and the resulting harm, obviously. Maybe we should have a requirement that people certify that they have anti-theft devices installed (something a little more effective than the obnoxious noise alarms that self-centred people equip their cars with). Of course, that goes with the
car, again, not with the
driver, so it would have to maybe be a condition of registration of the car.
Oh, by the way, I'm hoping that we might agree that requiring that cars be registered is probably adequately effective for ensuring that illegally acquired cars are not promenading around the streets. After all, they're kinda big and obvious, and they have to have those licence plate thingies attached. It's a little easier to promenade around with an illegally owned firearm, so might it just be a bit sensible to exercise a little more control over the acquisition of one than over the acquisition of a car? Keeping track of who has possession of cars -- if that's something we need to do -- really is just easier.
Which does of course bring us to the question of whether the firearms that people have should be registered, to keep track of them, too. Cars do have to be, after all. Any thoughts?
"Guns are very strictly regulated. Cars are not.(Well, except for that registration stuff, huh?)
Cars present an omnipresent risk to many people. Guns do not."Again, all I hear is blah blah. Saying it over and over does not make it meaningful.
Cars are very strictly regulated.
Driveways are not.
Driveways present an omnipresent risk to many people.
(Just ask me -- I broke my foot falling off one last month.)
Cars do not.
(Hey, I've never had a bone get broken in a contact with a car, although I've broken bones in contact with a tricycle, a staircase, a table leg, a sidewalk curb, and a playground structure.)
You may think that one may take one feature of experience with object "x" and compare it to object "y" on that basis and draw a conclusion on that basis alone. Anyone with a scintilla of sophistication knows that one may not. If one could, I could quite easily say that rattlesnakes are less dangerous than tricycles, because more people are injured by the latter than by the former -- and just as easily, and just as foolishly, go on to say that we should control the acquisition and harbouring of tricycles but not of rattlesnakes. And you'd undoubtedly (if you weren't being disingenuous yourself) call me disingenuous, because I am speaking from
only partial truth, a part of the truth that is virtually useless for the purpose for which I am purporting to use it.
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