Endorse gun control? Drive faster than the speed limit? You’re a hypocrite.
Yesterday, I went to a gun range called the CMP and fired a rifle 40 times at 300 yards see how accurate I could be at that distance (i.e. it’s tough). Two weeks ago, I shot skeet to see how many times I could hit 40mph targets with a shotgun — (I hit 46 of 50). I drove a truck to those shooting ranges.
I used both a car and a gun as tools. Both cars and guns can also be used as weapons. Currently, I’m focusing on my usage of the tools from the perceptive of the person using the tool. However, a car, like a gun can have someone receiving the brunt of the effect from a victim’s perspective. Guns can have something (or someone) alive at the end of the bullet. Cars can also have something (or someone) alive at the end of the hood.
At the CMP, before going to the access controlled shooting range, a 10-minute video is required for all shooters. At the access controlled fields, range masters continue to set the safety tone. The range master watched me shoot until he determined that I knew how to safely operate the firearm. At the skeet field, a club member had to guide me and vet me on safety before I was allowed to continue on my own. I had to do all of these no matter who I was. Side note, I consider myself an expert marksman — when I was 16, I won the Junior World Championship in skeet shooting. While training for those competitions, I would take over 25,000 shots per year. My history did not matter — the only thing that mattered was my current discipline to safety while shooting.
These shooting experiences place safety as the single top priority — nothing trumps safety. My driving experience lacks that same overall culture of safety as a top priority. I say “overall” because car safety culture overemphasizes occupant safety. Yet, that misses the other side of the equation — non-occupant safety. This is where the current logic of gun-control and car-control breaks down. Gun-control recognizes the need for safety to protect the non-gun holders. Car-control recognizes need for safety to protect the driver and occupants.
Speed limits aren’t for the safety of the motorist, they are for the safety of the people who aren’t the motorist.
“On average, a pedestrian was killed every 2 hours and injured every 8 minutes in traffic crashes in 2013.” — https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812124
Let’s talk about a victim’s perspective, because accidental versus intentional is insignificant. Either way, the victim has lost something that he previously had — life or health. If you are walking and struck by something causing pain, does it matter if it is a bullet or a car? Does it matter if it is an careless person owning a gun or a driver talking on the phone? For the victim, does it matter if it’s a person texting or a person aiming?
Back to the Logic
If gun control is about safety, logic says we are missing an equally high potential for citizen safety by forcibly reducing the driving speeds. We have the technology to require cars to obey speed limits, yet we don’t. We have the technology to prohibit phone calls to phones traveling faster than 4mph, yet we don’t (I say 4mph because humans can walk 4mph).
I’m a proponent of gun control, but I noticed a fallacy in the argument, and we need to equally emphasis controlled automobiles.