While the sticker is true of course, it tends to preach to the choir. Someone who isn’t familiar with John Lott’s research will be left scratching his head.
Here are some bumper stickers or t-shirts I’d like to see:
The First Amendment is liberty’s first line of defense
The Second Amendment is its last.
Si vis pacem, para bellum [silhouette of Beretta 92]
PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH
SELF DEFENSE IS A HUMAN RIGHT
so are the tools to effect it [silhouette of Glock]
If you think guns are uncivilized
consider what the world was like before them
What about conservatives against concealed carry? Aren’t they just as dangerous? Bumper stickers are irrational and invite key jobs. I would never put one on my car.
I too am personally opposed to bumper stickers for the same reason. Not only do they invite irrational keyings, stickers give information to potential sociopaths. Girly stickers say “if you see this car by itself in a parking lot, stalk it so you can rape its owner”. A peace sticker says: “rob me, I’m a gullible and low risk target”. Rainbow flag says “gay bash me”. Music festival stickers say “search this car for pot”. Gun related stickers say “bust the passenger side window and check the glove box or under the drivers seat” or potentially “shoot, don’t threaten when carjacking or road-raging me”.
Admittedly this “danger” depends a lot on where you live, and there aren’t that many sociopaths… but it only takes one.
Very funny. In a way, I think you guys are admitting the silliness of the original slogan by laughing at this one. The one so loved by the NRA, of which this is a takeoff, is what you’re mocking.
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” is itself a variation of the simpler gun control sentiment that “guns kill people.” Obedient NRA adherents love to make fun of that one, what could be sillier than a gun, an inanimate object, doing anything let alone “killing.”
But if they thought about it, which they obviously don’t, they’d realize what the gun control folks are saying is that “[people with] guns kill people,” with the understand that without the guns many of those killings would not take place. This makes perfect sense. I’ll bet even the Armed Intelligentsia could go for this.
I would go for the more correct phrase “Criminals with guns kill people”
That makes sense!! Take the two phrases and compare them to each other. Which one is true?
I’ll do it! Let’s see…I am a person… I have gun(s)… I have not killed people (or A person)… so that slogan just doesn’t ring true.
For the second (the correct) slogan… We can rightly assume that some criminals (though not all) who are in possession of a loaded firearm are capable of killing people. That is closer to the truth! If I can make another change I would say, “Criminals with guns sometimes kill people.” I think this slogan maintains the succinctness of the original slogan while not putting all the criminals in a box with the really sick ones. I wouldn’t want to offend anyone. I mean, not EVERY criminal has killed someone. Some are just violent, right?
Mike, I think that you and I have found common ground on this slogan issue. What do you think?
The actual question everyone ignores is WHY do people kill people.
Nothing produces a more anxious and irrational person than being faced with a question which is hard to answer. Rather than relieving this anxiety by proceeding to investigate the hard question (which may have no good answer, even more scary!) it is a common human coping mechanism to simply relax their standards of rigor for a logical argument. They allow themselves to believe that the HOW is the same as the WHY. The HOW is easy to see, requires that you admit no uncomfortable truths about yourself or your society, and seems simple to fix. Problem is that if the WHY is not addressed, the will always be an endless supply of HOW.
Why do people kill people?
1. The frightening reality is that some small fraction of people are psychotic. They have structurally abnormal brains/psychologies. And they look like you and I and you can’t identify them until after they do something anti-social. That is terrifying isn’t it? That’s a hard WHY to address, to debate, to fix. Maybe it’s impossible. Scary. If this problem was a freight train, attacking the problem from the HOW end is about equivalent in effectiveness to covering your eyes as you stand on the track.
2. Then there is validated social psychology to consider. There, there is no “type” of person who can’t be driven to antisocial behavior through external stimuli. These people are not psychotic, but kill anyway. A lot of this research was done after WWII when people were trying to answer the question “is there something special about Germans, or could anyone be induced to be Nazi-like?” Turns out that there is nothing special about Germans, and anyone can be driven to antisocial behavior given the right external stimuli. That is a scary truth about humanity to confront. That is a big imposing WHY to try to address. We should work on it, rather than pretending to keep ourselves busy with the HOW.
3. Also, there is data. People kill people more often in regions with rough socioeconomic circumstances, suggesting that these circumstances correlate to WHY. If you admit that to yourself and proceed to attack the problem from that end, you need to admit to yourself a lot of uncomfortable truths about our society and why you are not stuck in such an area and someone else is. You may even have to admit it to yourself that a majority of what you have is not a function of how awesome you are and your own sweat, but that you were born in the right community to the right people. You might have to admit that your success was more like 80% luck and 20% pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, instead of the other way around. This is an imposing, potentially uncontrollable WHY. Running in circles around HOW does nothing to address it.
Now given these three big, imposing, horribly complex WHYs for people killing people, you need to ask yourself “What can I do all by myself to be less likely to become victim of violence TODAY?”. You aren’t going to figure out how to detect psychos, you aren’t going to change human nature, and you aren’t going to change society overnight.
You can however take precautions to protect YOURSELF. And you may not want to admit it, but you already know HOW.
Sweet!
VERY SWEET!!!
I like it!
Awesome.
Bazinga!
I’ll take two 8 1/2 x 11s and six wallet size.
Check out bumperart.com I got “happiness is a warm machinegun” from them.
Love it! It would go great, right next to my “TYPICAL WHITE PERSON” bumper sticker. (And I’m NOT making that up.)
Will this be one of the optional backs of the official TTAG black t-shirt?
Speaking of which… ?
While the sticker is true of course, it tends to preach to the choir. Someone who isn’t familiar with John Lott’s research will be left scratching his head.
Here are some bumper stickers or t-shirts I’d like to see:
The First Amendment is liberty’s first line of defense
The Second Amendment is its last.
Si vis pacem, para bellum [silhouette of Beretta 92]
PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH
SELF DEFENSE IS A HUMAN RIGHT
so are the tools to effect it [silhouette of Glock]
If you think guns are uncivilized
consider what the world was like before them
Genocide is impossible
with an armed population
Gun control is racist
Arm America’s women
Here are a few that I dreamed-up:
My gun, your freedom
Happiness is a worn gun
Criminals are scared of guns too
Warning! My hands are neither cold nor dead
What about conservatives against concealed carry? Aren’t they just as dangerous? Bumper stickers are irrational and invite key jobs. I would never put one on my car.
It should just say “People against…”
I too am personally opposed to bumper stickers for the same reason. Not only do they invite irrational keyings, stickers give information to potential sociopaths. Girly stickers say “if you see this car by itself in a parking lot, stalk it so you can rape its owner”. A peace sticker says: “rob me, I’m a gullible and low risk target”. Rainbow flag says “gay bash me”. Music festival stickers say “search this car for pot”. Gun related stickers say “bust the passenger side window and check the glove box or under the drivers seat” or potentially “shoot, don’t threaten when carjacking or road-raging me”.
Admittedly this “danger” depends a lot on where you live, and there aren’t that many sociopaths… but it only takes one.
How about Red Dawn Part II-Blue Dawn is coming?
Very funny. In a way, I think you guys are admitting the silliness of the original slogan by laughing at this one. The one so loved by the NRA, of which this is a takeoff, is what you’re mocking.
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” is itself a variation of the simpler gun control sentiment that “guns kill people.” Obedient NRA adherents love to make fun of that one, what could be sillier than a gun, an inanimate object, doing anything let alone “killing.”
But if they thought about it, which they obviously don’t, they’d realize what the gun control folks are saying is that “[people with] guns kill people,” with the understand that without the guns many of those killings would not take place. This makes perfect sense. I’ll bet even the Armed Intelligentsia could go for this.
“[people with] cars kill people”
“[people with] steak knives kill people”
“[people with] medical degrees kill people”
“[people with] framing hammers kill people”
“[people with] deadly communicable diseases kill people”
“[people] kill people”
Yep, you are right.
I would go for the more correct phrase “Criminals with guns kill people”
That makes sense!! Take the two phrases and compare them to each other. Which one is true?
I’ll do it! Let’s see…I am a person… I have gun(s)… I have not killed people (or A person)… so that slogan just doesn’t ring true.
For the second (the correct) slogan… We can rightly assume that some criminals (though not all) who are in possession of a loaded firearm are capable of killing people. That is closer to the truth! If I can make another change I would say, “Criminals with guns sometimes kill people.” I think this slogan maintains the succinctness of the original slogan while not putting all the criminals in a box with the really sick ones. I wouldn’t want to offend anyone. I mean, not EVERY criminal has killed someone. Some are just violent, right?
Mike, I think that you and I have found common ground on this slogan issue. What do you think?
No good. Sometimes non-criminals with guns kill people too.
I would also like to add that without the criminals ALL of those killings wouldn’t take place.
The actual question everyone ignores is WHY do people kill people.
Nothing produces a more anxious and irrational person than being faced with a question which is hard to answer. Rather than relieving this anxiety by proceeding to investigate the hard question (which may have no good answer, even more scary!) it is a common human coping mechanism to simply relax their standards of rigor for a logical argument. They allow themselves to believe that the HOW is the same as the WHY. The HOW is easy to see, requires that you admit no uncomfortable truths about yourself or your society, and seems simple to fix. Problem is that if the WHY is not addressed, the will always be an endless supply of HOW.
Why do people kill people?
1. The frightening reality is that some small fraction of people are psychotic. They have structurally abnormal brains/psychologies. And they look like you and I and you can’t identify them until after they do something anti-social. That is terrifying isn’t it? That’s a hard WHY to address, to debate, to fix. Maybe it’s impossible. Scary. If this problem was a freight train, attacking the problem from the HOW end is about equivalent in effectiveness to covering your eyes as you stand on the track.
2. Then there is validated social psychology to consider. There, there is no “type” of person who can’t be driven to antisocial behavior through external stimuli. These people are not psychotic, but kill anyway. A lot of this research was done after WWII when people were trying to answer the question “is there something special about Germans, or could anyone be induced to be Nazi-like?” Turns out that there is nothing special about Germans, and anyone can be driven to antisocial behavior given the right external stimuli. That is a scary truth about humanity to confront. That is a big imposing WHY to try to address. We should work on it, rather than pretending to keep ourselves busy with the HOW.
3. Also, there is data. People kill people more often in regions with rough socioeconomic circumstances, suggesting that these circumstances correlate to WHY. If you admit that to yourself and proceed to attack the problem from that end, you need to admit to yourself a lot of uncomfortable truths about our society and why you are not stuck in such an area and someone else is. You may even have to admit it to yourself that a majority of what you have is not a function of how awesome you are and your own sweat, but that you were born in the right community to the right people. You might have to admit that your success was more like 80% luck and 20% pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, instead of the other way around. This is an imposing, potentially uncontrollable WHY. Running in circles around HOW does nothing to address it.
Now given these three big, imposing, horribly complex WHYs for people killing people, you need to ask yourself “What can I do all by myself to be less likely to become victim of violence TODAY?”. You aren’t going to figure out how to detect psychos, you aren’t going to change human nature, and you aren’t going to change society overnight.
You can however take precautions to protect YOURSELF. And you may not want to admit it, but you already know HOW.
-D