I don't understand arguments like this at all. Is the argument that "there are other bad things so we shouldn't tackle this thing"?
History has shown us this simply isn't the case. People who want to kill people will kill people with whatever means available. Happy Land, Oklahoma City, etc are just examples of this. I didn't see a huge push to ban pressure cookers after the Boston bombings.
That's not true, "assault pressure cookers" were banned—especially the scary looking ones. Problem solved!
Does anyone take this argument seriously? This is a genuine question - I find it difficult to understand how that argument seems compelling to anyone?
Of course there are lots of ways to kill people!
The primary use of fertilizer, gasoline and pressure cookers isn't killing. The primary purpose of guns is.
- The gun can be a symbol conveying intent. Possibly one can negotiate or leave the premises in time. In contrast a pressure cooker in a corner does not immediately tell me that someone is out to get me. That is, I can be surprised more easily by an exploding pressure cooker or fertilizer bomb. At least with the gun I know what's going on.
- Fertilizer, gasoline and pressure cooker bombs do not tend to produce predictable wounds and often produce fatalities. I'm more likely to survive if an angry man shoots me than if he blows me up with a pressure cooker. Also the trauma surgeons have a better chance of stitching me up. Finally I'd rather live the rest of my life with a bullet in my butt than a pressure cooker lid up my ass.
You may not have noticed it but they were effectively banned from sale by all retail stores. I was tasked with buying a new pressure cooker not 3 weeks after the Boston bombings and I simply could not find one locally. After visiting all the local retail stores, I finally gave up and ordered one on Amazon.
I believe its actually "people can be killed without assault weapons, therefore restricting assault weapons has no benefit in protecting people from being killed". Which, ultimately, has the same basic kind of error in reasoning as "there are other bad things so we shouldn't tackle this thing", but its not precisely the same argument.
Other than that, completely like "banning bad things".