[Mr Tonka]

Guns are designed to kill.
Cars are designed for conveyance.

Gun related fatalities are roughly 10,000 per year
Car related fatalities are roughly 40,000 per year

40,000 dead people are acceptable because the car wasn't designed for killing.
10,000 dead people is unacceptable because the gun was designed for killing.

So an item NOT designed to kill actually kills many more than the item that is designed for killing.

If dead civilians, who didn't expect to be dead are what we're talking about, i fail to see how the two items are not a fair comparison.

So, obviously there is a psychological reason that people don't call for banning cars when their loved one dying in a car accident. i guess it has a lot to do with the word accident. Because an accident implies no intent. It's funny how the word "accident" has taken the place of the word collision when describing a car crash. I think this was introduced early on to make people OK with car related deaths.... "it was an accident". When the fact of the matter is, if someone runs into your car they were either: following too closely to physically stop in time, not paying attention to traffic control devices, driving while impaired, driving while too drowsy, or being reckless by driving too fast for conditions, racing, showing off, etc... These are all choices we as drivers make every time we get into the car. These choices cause collisions, not accidents.

At any rate, take that accident where you wife just died and replace the driver of the car who hit her with someone who was driving drunk. It seems that when this happens, the outrage is quite apparent. Most of the time much hate brews within the spouse, children, parents of the departed even though this drunk driver had no intent to kill. We as a society chastise the drivers who are drunk when causing an accident, but when someone causes the same accident simply by being careless; much of society actually feels sorry for the driver at fault. In these cases, society looks at the incident and thinks; this is horrible, so sad, what can we do to prevent this from happening again? Well, we can't ban people, we can't ban cars, we don't want to revamp drivers education, so about the only thing we can do is ban drinking and driving.

Now we have someone who walks into a business, mall or school with a gun and kills 2, 4, 8, 26 people. Make no mistake, the gunman had intent to kill. He is the bad guy, hated by all, but even more hated than him was his tool of choice. Sure, the gun was designed to kill, but it had no intent to do so. In these cases, society looks at the incident and thinks; this is horrible, so sad, what can we do to prevent this from happening again? Well, we can't ban people, we can't ban mental illness, we can't ban mental instability, so about the only thing we can do is ban guns.

I'm sorry, but if my wife dies in a car crash, a mugging, a bike accident or a mass shooting, the result is the same, she's dead and had no intentions to be. Anything that causes an unplanned death is the same in my book because the result is the same, and unplanned death.

Many people think that this argument is comparing cars and guns. It's not, it's comparing causes of death. In these situations, death is the topic. First reports are always about how many dead, not how many survived. Someone brought up the Chinaman who went on a slashing spree with a knife. Few shits are given because no one died. Huge, terrible car collisions take place all the time, everyone gets away with minor injuries, so it's all cool. But all these things change when they cause death to innocent people.

When the worst school killing in US history was committed in 1927 where 38 people died no one called for a ban of cars or explosives. Same holds true for 9-11, no one banned air travel after 4 planes were hijacked in the same day causing the unplanned death of thousands of people. Why, because we can't ban people, we can't ban planes, etc.... In mass killings not involving firearms, there is no one "thing" involved that a large part of citizens can do with out; make the killing tool a firearm and most people have witch to hunt.