Faulty logic

In a letter to the Times Union, I discover a really fun piece of faulty logic in support of gun control:

It’s about time we get real about gun control in our cities. If we can have sobriety checkpoints and now motorcycle checkpoints, why don’t we have cops creating gun checkpoints? Have them create checkpoints in the city where the gun violence is running rampant.

Give the cops metal detectors and make people stop and get checked for guns. They are illegal and they are a lot worse than drunken drivers

I reckon that Mark Arras, the author of the letter missed the part where drunk drivers kill a hell of a lot more people in the United States than gun crime.  How many?  Well, the CDC’s stats don’t allow me to factor in drunk drivers, but in 2005, over 45,000 people were killed by motor vehicles in one way or another.  In that same year, about 12,000 people were killed in homicides by firearms.

So, uh, Mr. Arras, it appears that you’re wrong.  The actual facts don’t support a statement that guns are more dangerous than cars/drunk drivers, in fact it’s quite the opposite.

But hey, it’s not like we expect gun control advocates to use logic these days.

“Feelings, whoa whoa feelings”…

3 Comments

  1. Last numbers I saw (this is about 8-10 years ago) were 1/2 of all fatal automobile accidents involved alcohol. I can’t substantiate that number, though…

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