Breaking Down the Bad-Faith Cars/Guns Analogy
“It’s the guns. Not the doors. Not video games. Not Godlessness. It’s the guns. It’s the fucking guns. It’s the guns. The guns. The guns. For fuck’s sake, what are we doing?”
Tweet from Brian Tyler Cohen, 5/27/22
We all know it’s the guns. We know that the ability of violent people to easily purchase weapons of war inevitably leads to senseless bloodshed. Even the people who spout ridiculous NRA talking points know this, but apparently they think that the slaughter of innocent school children is an acceptable price to pay for the un-infringed “right” of Bubba and the rest of the Proud Boys/Oathkeepers/3 Percenters to open-carry weapons of war, presumably so that they can intimidate and potentially kill anyone who advocates for democracy and civil rights.
Their arguments are completely in bad faith—“Mental illness!” (before we even know anything about the killer and his issues, if any)…”Video games!” (before we know if the killer had any kind of gaming background)…”Godlessness!” (despite not knowing the killer’s religious background, and despite the fact that violence has been enacted in the name of religion for all of recorded history). And then there’s the bad-faith argument that putting any kind of restriction on the sale of weapons of mass murder is somehow equivalent to outlawing ALL cars to prevent car deaths. Obviously, this is a nonsensical analogy, but I’d like to delve into it in more detail to demonstrate just how ridiculous it is under any kind of scrutiny.
“More people die in auto accidents,” they say, “but we don’t ban cars!” despite the fact that to drive a car you need registration and insurance, and you need to pass a test to get a license. The NRA-apologists know this, but they don’t care about a little thing like the obvious truth. To get to a scenario in which the bad-faith analogy of gun nuts is more accurate, we really need to stretch the imagination a lot more. First of all, we would have to imagine that we live in a world where we DON’T require cars to be insured, thereby removing any financial disincentives that would keep bad drivers off the road. And we’d also have to picture a world in which a powerful auto lobby bought politicians and increased their profits by perpetuating a culture that promoted vehicular violence.
Imagine there were no laws regarding how fast or how powerful a car could be, and car manufacturers made, promoted, and sold massive trucks that could reach 200 mph in seconds—the vehicular equivalent of the AR-15, with the same compensating-for-small-dick energy. Imagine that this mega-truck—let’s call it the TurboPhallus-15—was aggressively marketed to young men as the most effective way to display the utmost aggressive, domineering toxic masculinity possible.
In this world, it would be entirely predictable that, every year or so, a disturbed 18-year-old would gun his TurboPhallus-15 up to 200 mph on the highway, causing multi-car pileups with massive fatalities. No defensive driving skill would be a match for the TurboPhallus-15 speeding down the highway at 200 mph. Imagine that every year or so, a violent man under 25 revved up his TurboPhallus-15 and smashed it past barricades to kill dozens of people outside at parades or picnics or fairgrounds….or if he smashed his TurboPhallus-15 into a school/store/theater whose walls were not built to withstand a monster truck barreling into it at 200 mph, again, killing dozens. The violent capability of the TurboPhallus-15 would in itself be an inspiration for disturbed young men to commit unspeakable violence.
Whatever could a society do to make its citizens feel safe on the highways and in public spaces in this scenario?
Imagine if half the politicians in the country, in the back pocket of the auto manufacturing industry, were paid to pretend the solution to this problem was not obvious, using NRA bad-faith logic. Imagine the car manufacturers lobby tried to blame mental illness, or Fast and Furious movies, or video games for the TurboPhallus-15’s carnage…would that make sense, or sound completely stupid? What if they insisted that anyone trying to outlaw the TurboPhallus-15 was trying to outlaw ALL vehicles? Or that even just trying to put restrictions on the TurboPhallus-15 such as minimum age or insurance requirements was akin to outlawing ALL cars? Would that make sense, or would that be immediately recognized as the flagrant lie that it would be? If the car manufacturers tried to claim that the right to own and drive a TurboPhallus-15 SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED based on an 18th century law that protected interstate horse & buggy commerce, would that sound like a reasonable argument to anyone? Or would it sound completely, utterly ridiculous?
What if the car manufacturing lobby then aggressively pushed the lie that a GOOD guy with a TurboPhallus-15 could outmaneuver and stop a BAD guy with a TurboPhallus-15, and therefore EVERYONE should have a TurboPhallus-15—it would be stupid NOT to! What if they tried to make the ludicrous argument that our roads and highways would somehow be much safer if there were more police and more self-appointed highway patrolmen equipped with TurboPhallus-15 vehicles who could chase the bad guys at 200 mph, somehow without endangering anyone else on the road? Would that make you feel safe?
No, the OBVIOUS thing to do would be to simply outlaw the sale of the TurboPhallus-15 to the public…even if it was true that more people in total died in smaller, lower-speed car crashes in regular cars every day…even if it was true that 95% of TurboPhallus-15 owners were responsible and merely used their vehicles for intimidation and not to commit vehicular homicide. No regular civilian NEEDS to own a monster truck with the capability of speeding to 200 mph. Just like no civilian needs to have a weapon of war capable of slaughtering dozens of people within seconds.
Making it illegal for civilians to own military-caliber weapons of mass murder is not the same as outlawing all firearms that people might legitimately use for hunting or self-defense. (Because, really, how often has anyone legitimately needed to mow down more than five people at once in “self-defense?”) But the NRA types spewing this lie know that. It’s bad faith again. Yes, it’s people who commit evil acts with weapons, and not the weapons somehow acting independently, but that’s not a reasonable argument for giving people nearly unlimited capacity to murder. We don’t allow regular citizens to own grenades, rocket launchers, or nuclear weapons…we should similarly make it illegal for regular citizens to own other military-caliber weapons of war.
It's the (military caliber) guns, it’s the fucking guns. It’s the fucking weapons of war.
