builtjeep
Regular Member
I just had the most insane conversation ever with a co-worker. We were talking about dogs, which turned to pitbulls (my 10 pound terrier mix darted out the door and attacked my neighbors pit bull, who was on a leash, totally my fault. My dog ended up with a couple of staples as a result of a warning/get off me bite.)
The pitbull conversation turned to "assault rifles". Which he believes should be banned (unlike pitbulls). I started pointing out statistics, less than 1% or murders committed with long guns, "assault rifles" being a small subset of long guns, so an all out ban/confiscation would stop a fraction of less than 1% of murders, and in reality those people would just use another weapon.
He asked where I got my statistics, I told him the FBI uniform crime report. Then he says "I believe those numbers are way higher, the FBI just doesn't want to report the number of people killed by assault weapons. The news makes it clear that children are being murdered every day with these things."
I just had to walk away at that point. How can someone be that willfully ignorant? I think I need to wrap ductape around my head before it explodes. The idea that a person can be totally ok with pulling bull$#it numbers out of thin air with no means to back them up, and hold them as a valid argument against provable statistics, to support curtailment of constitutional rights just makes my head hurt.
Edit: To clarify, I do not support bans on pitbulls, nor did he. I pointed out that the lunacy behind those bans is the same as the idiocy of wanting to ban "assault rifles".
The pitbull conversation turned to "assault rifles". Which he believes should be banned (unlike pitbulls). I started pointing out statistics, less than 1% or murders committed with long guns, "assault rifles" being a small subset of long guns, so an all out ban/confiscation would stop a fraction of less than 1% of murders, and in reality those people would just use another weapon.
He asked where I got my statistics, I told him the FBI uniform crime report. Then he says "I believe those numbers are way higher, the FBI just doesn't want to report the number of people killed by assault weapons. The news makes it clear that children are being murdered every day with these things."
I just had to walk away at that point. How can someone be that willfully ignorant? I think I need to wrap ductape around my head before it explodes. The idea that a person can be totally ok with pulling bull$#it numbers out of thin air with no means to back them up, and hold them as a valid argument against provable statistics, to support curtailment of constitutional rights just makes my head hurt.
Edit: To clarify, I do not support bans on pitbulls, nor did he. I pointed out that the lunacy behind those bans is the same as the idiocy of wanting to ban "assault rifles".
Last edited: