Would you say, “Automobile run amok in crowd, killing 22”? I think you’d say, “Person drives car into crowd, killing 12” instead. This is a similar case. Also, you don’t blame a gun for killing, but the person who pulled the trigger. The question is still out as to whether we as humans should wield any of those three things. Edit: let’s not get into ideological arguments about gun control, automobiles, etc here; I meant that you can’t blame an object when a human has to take an action, not get into a political battle.

> you don’t blame a gun for killing, but the person who pulled the trigger This is famously the slogan of the pro-gun lobby (funded by gun manufacturers and merchants), who want the society to be awash with guns because they're profiting from it but don't want to be blamed for the consequences. The counterpoint is that when we get rid of most of the guns we also end up substantially eliminating the killings. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_don't_kill_people%2C_peop...

IMO both things are true. The person pulled the trigger, and less guns mean fewer gun deaths.

> 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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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.

Neither the automobile nor a gun can operate without a human. You could say “bull runs amok in a market” after it was released intentionally.

Unfortunately the news commonly do put the automobile as the subject when the driver is of a class politically protected from blame. Just like with people anthropomorphizing AI, it serves to deflect blame from the real culprit.

Newspaper articles generally do say things like "a car struck pedestrians". I agree with your point though.

There's a difference between the driver intentionally driving into crowd, and not intentionally but possibly still recklessly (drifting and losing control, falling asleep, etc). In those cases I would probably use "car hits the crowd", at least in my language

There may be a difference in degree of the crime but the driver is still responsible in both cases and should be the primary subject of any reporting. Let's reserve "car hits the crowd" for situations where no driver was involved like a break failure on a car parked on a slope or a self-driving car bug.

> Would you say, “Automobile run amok in crowd, killing 22”? I think you’d say, “Person drives car into crowd, killing 12” instead. If the automobile was "self driving" I would. > Also, you don’t blame a gun for killing, but the person who pulled the trigger. Nah, I also blame guns and appreciate gun control laws.

>If the automobile was "self driving" I would. thats the point...

Ironically news outlets like to use the phrasing you rightfully point out as absurd. Not sure if they just do it randomly or only when they get orders to push a certain narrative. >Car plows into Christmas market in Germany, killing at least 5 and injuring 200