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> This is famously the slogan of the pro-gun lobby

It's also the view of anyone who hasn't been driven mad by propaganda. Regardless of your political views a tool is a tool at the end of the day. Attempting to anthropomorphize a category of objects in order to shift blame all for the sake of furthering an agenda is plainly bad faith behavior.

I'm not a fan of bike lanes with zero separation from automobiles but that doesn't mean it's appropriate or even remotely plausible to blame cars for killing cyclists. Inattentive drivers and poor road design are what kill them.

As tempted as I am to cast about for a third highly divisive subject to bait people with, perhaps we could avoid blatantly dragging the conversation towards off topic tired political talking points?

A phrase like "who hasn't been driven mad by propaganda" doesn't exactly sound like impationately discussing the issue either.
Calling a zealot a zealot does not mean that one is incapable of discussing the underlying topic. We must not let the desire to converse intelligently hamstring our ability to call out obviously corrupt patterns of thought for what they are.

Anyway my above reply was hardly the appropriate venue to engage in a genuine manner on that topic. The parent was blatantly derailing things by inserting his pet political issue. That sort of behavior undermines the community and so (IMO) should not be indulged.

I agree, and I also agree that zealots who cast anyone who disagrees with them as being literally insane should also not be indulged.
Well done avoiding the counterpoint and setting plenty of distraction traps along the way. Classic.
> even remotely plausible to blame cars for killing cyclists

Car design has significant influence on pedestrian survivability of accidents. This is why hood ornaments were largely abolished, and also why casualties have gone up as SUVs with poor lower forwards visibility have become popular.

If we really want to go off topic, we should drag in the use of technological protection methods: what is the equivalent of ADAS for guns? Maybe as a baseline the US government should mandate geofencing for guns as it has for drones. Put a phone level computer with GPS in the lower receiver with a trigger interlock. It would then disable when within 100m of a school, or during periods of rioting. That could also provide a live feed to the government of every round fired.

> Regardless of your political views a tool is a tool at the end of the day. Attempting to anthropomorphize a category of objects in order to shift blame all for the sake of furthering an agenda is plainly bad faith behavior.

Guns are literally made for killing people. That's their only reason for existence. They are a weapon. This makes them qualitatively different from cars, which only incidentally kill people (and the vast majority of time, not on purpose).

To me, trying to equate deaths caused by purpose-made killing tools with those caused by generic tools is arguing in bad faith.

Blindly repeating superficial slogans seems like a good candidate for “driven mad by propaganda.” At the very least, it’s what people do when they are amplifying a position for ideological reasons, not contributing in good faith.
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People without guns kill a lot fewer people than people with guns. Claiming that acknowledging this fact means you’ve been “driven mad by propaganda” is dumb.
This is not true; there are quite a few people with guns who have never killed anyone, and quite a few people without guns who found a way to kill someone anyway. Poison, knives, hammers, rocks, windows, their bare hands. You name it someone has killed someone with it.
Let's just stop this conversation right here before it derails into ideological battle.
No I think we should definitely find a creative way to drag at least abortion and freedom of speech into this "conversation". Fight fire with fire so to speak.
Well technically killing someone is just a really late abortion.