Reader Ian in Transit writes:
Much has been made over the years by both sides about the similarities and differences between cars and guns. More specifically the deaths attributed to each. The antis continue to plod along, employing their SOP of lies supported by half-truths to validate their emotions while we de-bunk the lies time and again. Since the antis continue to use feelings to assault freedoms with an energy that rivals a kid trying to bust a candy-packed piñata, the People of the Gun must continue our efforts . . .
First, there’s the tired “guns are only designed to kill” argument. This is as ignorant an assertion as claiming “cars are only designed to race.” While you probably could use your Barrett M107A1 to mug an old lady and competitive tractor/semi racing does exist, both the rifle-wielding mugger and the racer make huge compromises by selecting tools that are far from ideal to achieve their goals. The simple fact is that guns (like cars) are purposefully manufactured for a wide variety of uses the same way cars are.
There are a great many firearms whose very design make them less than ideal for killing. Sure they can be lethal, but they have features that are specifically optimized for sporting, competition (anything from 3-gun to biathlon) or education/plinking (chipmunk .22 rifle or a full-sized .22 pistol). Once we move past firearms expressly designed for uses other than killing, we get to the intent of their manufacture.
Many (most?) firearms are intended for defensive use. While these may include design features that can effectively cause death, they’re manufactured to be used at close quarters to defend yourself or others. It’s the lethality that makes them formidable, but again they are, by design, less than ideal for offense. You’ve probably heard the old adage, “You use your pistol to get to you rifle.” In this role they prove effective in preventing crime (frequently without killing or even firing a shot) thousands of times a day. So no, the hysterical claim that guns are only good for killing is false both when considering their design and intended use.
Cars are very similar in this regard because they’re manufactured with both physical features and intended uses to accommodate a wide variety of activities. Small commuter cars, muscle cars, pickups, motorcycles and tractor trailers are all designed to be capable of exceeding the speed limit, but virtually none of them are manufactured with that intent or designed to be best suited for illegal use. So to strip out the emotion and correct the original assertion, all guns are designed to be capable of killing, just like all cars are designed to be capable of killing. Both can be dangerous and must be used with great care but just how dangerous are they?
Using the Shooter’s Calculator and my Shooter’s Bible Guide to Cartridges I calculated the destructive energy of some common rounds. These numbers represent the muzzle energy of a couple of common pistol cartridges, one high power large game round and last one is the big, scary, anti-tank, can-shoot-down-a-jetliner-with-a-single-shot from-the-flippy-up-shoulder-thingy .50BMG.
200gr 1000fps = 444
160gr 1200fps = 512
250gr 3000fps = 4996
750gr 3000fps = 14,987
Using the same equation we get the following ballistic numbers for your average car . . .
4000 pound car (28,000,000gr) traveling at 60mph (88fps) 481,426 foot pounds
4000 pound car (28,000,000gr) traveling at 120mph (176fps) 1,925,705 foot pounds
What all that means is that a mid-size sedan traveling at highway speed is more than 1000 times more deadly than my .45ACP and 32 times more deadly than a single round of .50BMG Which of these devices was designed to be more deadly? So what can be done to these machines to keep them from being used illegally? What safety measures can be installed to restrain these highly efficient killing machines?
Obviously, the purpose of cars and guns are different and don’t lend themselves to identical safety principles. We must also acknowledge that the safety features of either can’t interfere with the operation of either when they are needed. So let’s start with storage since safely storing dangerous things is of paramount importance. While there are exceptions that lead to accidents, pretty much all gun owners agree that safes are a good idea and locking away firearms when not in use is a good idea. These guns are locked away, frequently unloaded, often away from ammunition, inside a locked house. Cars are usually locked, but left full of gasoline, parked outside (especially when being used in public) completely accessible to everyone.
When being used in public, guns are generally secured by and in the direct physical control of their operator. Their destructive power is contained and it’s rare for it to be released outside of a purpose-built location where their maximum potential can be safely unleashed. Cars generate their destructive power the entire time their operator is in direct physical control of them while driving. When not driven, a car’s left out in public unattended in the hope it won’t be stolen. In short, the storage of, use of and expectation of safely controlling firearms at home and in public far exceeds that of cars. So what physical features and developments are there that make sure they function as safely as the operator is capable?
For a gun to operate it must go bang every time the trigger is pulled. Period. Ideally, it shouldn’t fire when the trigger isn’t pulled. It’s this simplicity that makes them so functional and limits the potential types of safety devices that can (or need to) be applied. Anything that prevents the gun from firing when the trigger is pulled is a potential cause of malfunction. To that end various forms of manual safeties engaged by thumb, index finger and/or establishing a firm grip have been invented. The idea is to ensure that any accidental trigger contact doesn’t result in a negligent discharge. These are widely accepted because by establishing muscle memory through training, these manual safeties can be disengaged in fractions of a second with near 100% reliability making the gun functional.
While simple in their execution, even these simple switches have been forgotten or malfunctioned causing the injury or death of the person who was depending on that gun to save their life. Modern trigger designs virtually eliminate inadvertent full automatic and drop-fire problems. Those that do happen result in almost immediate and public pressure from the buying public. This is why “smart guns” aren’t wanted in much demand. They introduce a new point of potential failure that can cause guns to fail. And when guns fail to work as they should, people die.
The operation of cars is much more complex because there are many more systems and moving parts, all designed to do very different and sometimes contradictory things depending on the input from the driver. Unlike a gun where pulling the trigger moves a few small parts, each of the basic operations depends on a large number of parts and systems in motion to help control the roughly 500,000 foot-pounds of destructive force.
Because there are so many parts and systems at play, more variable and physical safety devices have been introduced. Different tire compounds, brake pads, ABS, traction control, air bags, seatbelts and stability systems give the driver better control over the vehicle. More recently, “safety” has come in the form of systems that allow the driver to pay less attention to how they control their vehicle. Systems like lane recognition, blind spot monitors and automatic parallel parking relieve drivers of having to maintain awareness and skill and somehow this is considered enhanced safety.
In the end, guns have been around for roughly 900 years. They’re relatively simple machines and most of the possible or necessary safety features were invented over 100 years ago. All that’s left is potential fine tuning…or making them more complex and thus prone to failure. Cars on the other hand are roughly 100 years old. They’re highly complex and still rapidly evolving to better suit users’ various needs. By comparison the development of cars is still in its infancy, relatively speaking.
The major difference is seen in the results of malfunction. If your car fails you, in most situations you are, at worst, stuck on the side of the road or in a parking lot. You’re late for work or your kid’s soccer game. When you need your gun and it fails, you or your family’s lives are in danger. That’s why adding more complex safety features to a car can be considered acceptable and that’s not the case with guns.
This won’t work
Source: They don’t care
“Gunsplain”
Like it.
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No, the antis won’t care.
It’s also fun to note that the deaths and injuries associated with vehicles are mostly attributable to LICENSED drivers operating REGISTERED vehicles.
We have decades of experience at that, across millions of drivers and vehicles; what makes the antis believe licensing and registration have any utility?
I don’t expect any of this to sway the anti’s. They are next to impossible to convert and while it can be fun to antagonize them from occasionally it is generally a waste of effort. Logical counter arguments are a valuable tool when you talk to fence sitters and those who haven’t formed an opinion yet. They hear things like, “guns are only meant to kill” in their favorite media outlets daily with no exposure to the counter arguments. These are the folks who can benefit from learning that guns are not meant to kill just like cars are not meant to speed. Back up the comparison with a few design examples and their eyes light up with a moment of clarity.
These are the people that can help save America. Just like the anti’s are failing to convince them with emotional tantrums that don’t answer the basic question, “but why?” we need more than clever bumper sticker mottoes to feed those same critical thinking minds. As for the anti’s, Gunsplain had it right in the first post. They don’t care. They don’t deal in information so this isn’t for them.
Meh. No cupholders. Good air conditioning tho. And a decent commute assisting device mounted next to the driver.
Hospital errors are the third leading cause of death in the US, killing over 400,000 per year.
Don’t go to hospitals. Their only purpose is to make people sick, and to kill them when they run out of insurance.
http://www.hospitalsafetyscore.org/newsroom/display/hospitalerrors-thirdleading-causeofdeathinus-improvementstooslow
I love it when engineers try to explain things to lay people and complicate the heck out of it.
I like guns and cars.
Me too. In the right locale, they can be enjoyed simultaneously.
Sunroof = Gunroof
My first car was a ’61 VW with the big cloth sunroof.
Out in the desert, I could put it in first gear and let it idle along the two track. Then I would stand up on the seat, steer with one foot and shoot my 10-22 out the sunroof opening at the jack rabbits.
Great fun.
A buddy of mine had a 280zx out in western Kansas. Same sorta deal; sitting on the roof thru the sunroof, first gear steering with foot. Our Ruger of choice was a .243 with a malty beverage accompaniment. Good times.
careful. there are those here who suspect that mixing ethanol and gun powder leads to cast metallurgy and abortions.
The grabbers do not care, we need to bet them via taking back education, prevent them from infecting the minds of the youth and the future will belong to us, the forces of Liberty.
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the teachers.”
Dick the Butcher (in this case, “Dick” is a proper noun, not a verb in the imperative)
Dig the potato digger.
Guns are only designed to… shoot bullets.
What is the serialized part in a car/gun?
The Vehicle Identification Number in a car. Stamped in 3 places in modern cars. On my 1967 beetle, it’s on the spinal frame (hard to check) and on a metal plate that’s in the glovebox. Loose in the glovebox. Oddly enough, the DMV has only checked the VIN on that detached metal plate. I could probably just transfer that to another beetle, and they would be none the wiser. Try that with a firearm…
Is that a class 3 vehicle (automatic) or is it a bolt action (manual) transmission.
Looking at that pic reminds me of the old ‘Tucker’ automobiles that had the the headlights geared to the steering wheel…
I have a gun primarily for protection and defense, not to kill.
I used to call my bigass domestic cruiser a 4k lb ground based guided missile. Most people didn’t get how accurate that was.
Is that an air horn mounted on the hood? Wonder what sound it makes.
Are these cars coming out soon? I want one.
I understand the comparison, in the interest of offering a different perspective on the issue…but, there is no right, constitutional or otherwise, to keep and drive cars. And though the topic today is guns, the constitutional right at hand talks about the right to keep and bear arms, in this instance, guns. I just don’t think you can consider your vehicle to be the biggest OC ever, or an EDC defensive “arm”. The EDC that carries…you?
I disagree with you about the constitutional right to cars. In part because it weakens the second amendment as well. We POTG argue (correctly) that the second amendment does not protect only muskets. That the 2nd protects our right to be armed in a manner that if we mustered the militia we would be armed similarly to the regular military. That is, the 2nd guarantees the right to keep and bear arms equivalent to the military of the time. A right to defend ourselves with the best tools available. Otherwise law abiding citizens would be using muskets to defend themselves against thugs with glocks.
While it doesn’t have the same expressly worded protection that the 2nd offers we are all endowed with the basic human right of freedom of movement. From the Articles of Confederation to various SCOTUS cases there are many examples of support for this fundamental right. As such we also have the right to use the most effective methods of travel. Otherwise the law abiding would be crossing the plains in horse drawn carriages while gang bangers whizzed by in cars.
So in my mind we do have a natural right to own an automobile . . . to OWN an automobile. Within this small comparison the difference between the right to firearms and the right to cars is the infrastructure required to make use of them. You can own and drive as many cars as you want on your own property, but once you want to share the massively expensive infrastructure of roads you move out of your public right and into a shared public space. One that you pay for the privilege of using and maintaining. Firearms don’t require any special infrastructure to make them useful for defense.
Your head is so deeply buried in the sand. Nothing else to say
OK, so for the sake of argument, let’s say we regulated guns like we do cars. Then:
> At 16 you could take a written test and a short practical test and carry a gun.
> Once you had your license, you could carry in any state.
> You could buy a gun in any state.
> Anyone could sell a gun to anyone with no background check.
> If you had to shoot someone, and there was no reason to believe you had committed a crime, you could take your gun on down the road with you.
> You could buy ammo at every 7/11.
> The state would provide gunsmiths in trucks that would come out and help you if your gun broke down.
It was too long already to start talking registration also. Working on a follow-up pointed specifically at that portion of the topic.
“.. The state would provide gunsmiths in trucks that would come out and help you if your gun broke down.?
Ha! I am stealing that one!
FAA – Firearm’s Association of America?
Wait, we already have an FAA.
GAA – Gun Association of America?
Don’t like that one…. too many people would try to pronounce it as ‘gah’ and then the anti’s would try to go with the baby noise .
What else could we call Roadside Gun Assistance? Or in the new(ish) trend… Gunsistance.
I think its as simple as this.
Which product, firearm or vehicle, kills the most people UNINTENTIONALLY?
The one with the lower number is the safer product.
Hint: its guns.
A car is designed to deliver a passenger to a desired location.
A gun is designed to deliver a projectile to a desired location.
What the “desired location” is depends on the user, in both cases.
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