The Fallacy behind the Falsehood 0
At The Roanoke Times, Tim Harvey looks at the recent surge in unprovoked shootings and argues that it exposes the fallacy of the NRA’s long-running “politeness” propaganda pitch. An excerpt (emphasis added):
(snip)
The assumption behind the “armed society is a polite society” myth is that someone being armed will change the other person’s behavior. These shootings reveal how being armed changes one’s own behavior. When the gun is viewed as the first response to a situation that is not fully understood — especially when a gun owner is disinclined to identify alternative responses — then people are killed or maimed unnecessarily. It is the tragic realization of the old proverb, “When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
