>Gun owners accidentally shooting themselves means there's a 100% chance they were doing something that following the most basic gun safety controls that everyone knows about would make impossible. You can infer from this that those people were not responsible gun owners.
My point was that the supposed "responsible gun owners" also get it wrong.
Else it's more like a No True Scotsman (where a "responsible gun owner would never accidentally mess with their gun, because anybody who does such things is by definition not a responsible gun owner").
If a cop showcasing "gun safety", an NRA employee, and other such cases with more experience and more training than the average gun owning person, are not "responsible gun owner", then I don't know who we can trust to be. And why we should listen to anybody saying "with me it's OK, I'm responsible". After all that's what the cop was saying before he shot himself...
>Its disingenuous to use examples of people doing incredibly reckless things in order to argue that "responsible gun owners" regularly shoot themselves or others.
It's disingenuous to construct an abstract category of "responsible gun owners" vs the "unresponsible" rest, when even the self-proclaimed "responsible" owners, and even safety/gun experts, mess up.
What we do know is that gun owners regularly shoot themselves or others. Even some claiming to be "responsible" (which is something that all do, only an idiot would claim to be irresponsible or admit to it).
Not to mention the whole point is moot. Even if "responsible gun owners" were 100% issue free, the law doesn't give guns to people who are "responsible gun owners" only, it gives them to anybody who passes some basic checks and wants to buy one. Nor does the law follow up with people in their homes to see if they really follow that "responsible gun operation" that they say they do.
The examples you gave were all extreme cases of gross negligence.
You're feigning ignorance and acting as if they are highly trained people dealing with incredible complexity and unmitigatable danger. Its as simple as it sounds. They pointed loaded guns at other people and/or themselves. Its really easy not to do it 100% of the time. Everyone knows its not ok whether they use guns on a regular basis or not.
Everyone should be able to recognize the unusual amount of irresponsibility they showed. You pretending they were above average because they had gun related jobs doesn't make it so.
The No True Scotsman fallacy doesn't apply. Its a form of unfair gatekeeping. That's not the case here. These people were ignoring everything about gun safety so its perfectly fair to say they don't fall into the category of people that are responsible.
Your lack of trust that anyone can be responsible with a gun is a separate issue. You should be able to recognize by the actions that led to the shootings that these people are not experts.
That's the same tired argument of C advocates regarding memory safety faults in C: "just program carefully, just don't double free / don't go over buffers, etc". As if those doing those things are consciously doing them, and can just decide not to.
And even less so is that case that someone teaching about gun safety, consciously shot himself with a loaded gun. The reality is that people with the best intentions and training can mess it, and that even more so for people don't have the best intention and training. Also people are faulty, memory is faulty, and just "you're doing it right, just do it wrong" is a naive non-solution.
>The No True Scotsman fallacy doesn't apply. Its a form of unfair gatekeeping. That's not the case here. These people were ignoring everything about gun safety so its perfectly fair to say they don't fall into the category of people that are responsible.
If these people (gun owning NRA employee, gun safety demonstrator, and tons of similar examples) can those things happen to them (and ignore safety), anybody can do it.
Even more so when gun safety isn't the issue. Even the most fanatic and OCD-level gun safety follower could just get their gun, when in some anger episode, and kill their spouses. So there's that too.
And it happens by the tons -- unless you're in the mafia or street gang, it's more likely to get it by a gun owning family/friend than by e.g. burglars.
>You should be able to recognize by the actions that led to the shootings that these people are not experts.
My point was that the supposed "responsible gun owners" also get it wrong.
Else it's more like a No True Scotsman (where a "responsible gun owner would never accidentally mess with their gun, because anybody who does such things is by definition not a responsible gun owner").
If a cop showcasing "gun safety", an NRA employee, and other such cases with more experience and more training than the average gun owning person, are not "responsible gun owner", then I don't know who we can trust to be. And why we should listen to anybody saying "with me it's OK, I'm responsible". After all that's what the cop was saying before he shot himself...
>Its disingenuous to use examples of people doing incredibly reckless things in order to argue that "responsible gun owners" regularly shoot themselves or others.
It's disingenuous to construct an abstract category of "responsible gun owners" vs the "unresponsible" rest, when even the self-proclaimed "responsible" owners, and even safety/gun experts, mess up.
What we do know is that gun owners regularly shoot themselves or others. Even some claiming to be "responsible" (which is something that all do, only an idiot would claim to be irresponsible or admit to it).
Not to mention the whole point is moot. Even if "responsible gun owners" were 100% issue free, the law doesn't give guns to people who are "responsible gun owners" only, it gives them to anybody who passes some basic checks and wants to buy one. Nor does the law follow up with people in their homes to see if they really follow that "responsible gun operation" that they say they do.