Debate: Ban automatic guns? tighten gun laws?
Side: No

I don't really see how my post was a strawman; I wasn't even addressing the subject, just your post. If I wanted to tie what I wrote to banning automatic weapons or tightening gun laws I would've done that. But I didn't do that. You might have been pointing out or trying to point out his faulty logic; I was pointing out that you were not comparing like with like. Joe was talking about simply owning an object. You compared that to (presumably) maliciously and deliberately destroying the property of others. It was just such an incredibly unfair comparison I felt the need to point it out. I think a better comparison would be cars or knives, perhaps. On the individual level do nuclear bombs have any purpose other than unquantifiable levels of destruction? You're either not using the nuke or you're using it to blow up several square miles and that's really all you can do with a nuke. Guns can be used and are regularly used for hunting, entertainment, and self-defense. That makes guns at least about as practically useful as cars or knives and hugely more practically useful (and less destructive) than a nuclear bomb. I think you're making another unfair comparison. Like:We don't let people have cars. Sure, a responsible person could have a car and not hurt people, but why take that chance? We determine it is not worth the risk.Except for we do let people have cars (it's a regulated process, like firearms) even though they kill loads of people ever year. When you compare like with like you're point seems to have less impact. It is perfectly acceptable to look at some guns and some gun laws and make rational decisions as to whether some are worth the risk.Cool, that's about where I'm at with gun restrictions, too. I argue they are not. Stats show conclusively smart regulation works.I assume you're talking specifically about automatic guns, again? If you are I agree. Really the gist of my post was pointing out that owning a piece of property and going around destroying other peoples property are not the same thing at all. One is the simple act of owing a weapon, the other implies malicious intent to destroy, which is both not the same thing at all and very unfair because the connotation is all gun owners are malicious destroyers.I also find it is those most vehement that they absolutely must have all of this firepower who are the least mentally stable and should not be allowed them.And the most, because they know they can handle it. My roommate for example is a highly intelligent, self-made successful, reserved, modest, driven, educated (and for all intents and purposes mentally stable) city boy with a family history of military service and extensive experience and interest in firearms. He takes owning, handling, and using his guns (he has several) very seriously and he takes proper care always as the result of his proper training. A lot of my gun-owning family members are very similar to this. I know many people like this besides him. Maybe it's just where I'm living but I know more stable, safe gun owners than not. In fact I can only think of two bad gun owners off tops. And it seems to me with all the gun owners in this country if people were really all that mentally unstable and paranoid there would be a lot more death than what we have now. But what we have now is the vast majority of gun owners chillin with their weapons, not shooting up invisible helicopters or - god forbid - schools. So again it seems incredibly unfair of you (unless you have some tangible statistics on the general mental stability and paranoia of gun owners - which very well might exist) to generalize people who own firearms as nutjobs defending against paranoid hallucinations because they're all so horribly mentally unstable.