[benfranklin]

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As there is no sanity in the pro-gun camp, the only sane position is to be against gun ownership.




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In the formal study of logic, this is a fallacy known as "begging the question". (As a pedantic aside, 99% of the people who use that phrase use it incorrectly.)

From Wiki:

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In logic, begging the question is the term for a type of fallacy occurring in deductive reasoning in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in one of the premises. For an example of this, consider the following argument: "Politicians cannot be trusted. Only an untrustworthy person would run for office; the fact that politicians are untrustworthy is proof of this. Therefore politicians cannot be trusted" Such an argument is fallacious, because it relies upon its own proposition (in this case, "politicians are untrustworthy") in order to support its central premise. Essentially, the argument assumes that its central point is already proven, and uses this in support of itself.

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Your premise, that wanting to own a gun is insane, is used to prove your proposition, that not wanting to own a gun is sane. Your premise and your proposition are identical. With a plug for our host, the statement that 2+2=4 contains more information than your statement.

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I don't know a single person who owns a weapon. And most of them are highly intelligent people.

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Another logical fallacy, this one called appeal to authority.

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An appeal to authority is a type of argument in logic also known as argument from authority, argumentum ad verecundiam (Latin: argument to respect) or ipse dixit (Latin: he himself said it, where an unsupported assertion depends on the asserter's credibility). It is one method of obtaining propositional knowledge and is often a logical fallacy.

This is the case when a person presenting a position on a subject mentions some authority who also holds that position, but who is not an authority in that area. For instance, the statement "Arthur C. Clarke recently released a report showing it is necessary to floss three times daily" should not convince many people of anything about flossing, as Arthur C. Clarke is not an expert on dental hygiene.

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Your statement says (or implies):

1. I know some intelligent people (we won't get into that).

2. Those people don't own guns.

3. Therefore, no intelligent person owns a gun.

Well, I know some intelligent people who do own guns. So there, Mr. Smartypants. Nah nah nah nah. Refute that logic! [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

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We have reached the point with guns that there is no management of the risk/rewards for the gun industry. If the gun industry does not want child locks (it may add a few dollars to the cost) the NRA and the gun nuts trot out their mis-interpretation of the second amendment and the pols fall into place.

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This displays total ignorance of the issues, of guns, of gun safety, and of the way that the industry operates. Every reputable gun manufacturer provides some provision for locking a gun. Some build it into the gun, some provide a separate lock with every new gun sold. The industry objects to being told how they have to do it. They want the option to build a safe product in a manner that they deem efficient and that their customers will use.

I would certainly rather have gun safety designed by the engineers at Winchester than by the likes of John Kerry or Ted Kennedy.

The impact of tort law is when victims of crimes are allowed to sue on gun manufacturers who were in no way responsible for the misuse of their product. If a fuel tank explodes, there may be reason to sue the car maker. If a drunk kills someone on the road, it is the fault of neither the car maker nor the brewer.