Talk:Gun control putdown

It's interesting that the pro-gun lobby seem to fall for hoaxes like this one. There is another one about an Australian granny they particularly like to quote as well. And, of course, the "Doctors are more dangerous than guns" one. I suppose they just happen to confirm what they we believe so they we don't check them.--Bobbing up 05:33, 10 December 2008 (EST)
 * For those who ar not familiar with it, her is the Australian grandmother fantasy.--Bobbing up 05:36, 10 December 2008 (EST)

Urban myth
I just put a delete template on this fantasy, but now I'm wondering. Can we actually do anything with this? A section on urban myths perhaps? How to check your facts on the internet?--Bobbing up 05:42, 24 February 2009 (EST)


 * It sounds like a potentially good idea, but this page is a mess, and the title would need changed anyway. I think that in order to go ahead with it, it may be just as well to start from scratch. LynadHello? 14:54, 8 April 2009 (EDT)


 * Remove the delete template and reword to say that it's an urban legend from the start as if it was a proper article, then link to it from Gun Control. 18:13, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It isn't linked from gun control already? That's silly... and what's the matter with holding the "truth" about the story until the end?  19:21, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I was thinking more along the lines of a re-write into something more like an article rather than a "here guys, look at this!!" announcement. 19:30, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
 * A rewrite couldn't hurt, after all, it's a wiki. 00:07, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

The point with most urban myths and similar stories is that there is an element of truth/'reasonableness' to them - in this case the capacity/training of someone to do something does not mean that they will actually do it: members of the Ermine Street Guard don't go round causing damage with balistas/balistae.


 * On the other hand this myth clearly equates owning guns to sexual organs, one is a choice, the other is how some of us are built. And then there's the implied equation "Being equipped with a vagina" = "Equipped to be a prostitute." with all that that implies about how he views women. Would it have been so funny if the interviewer had been male and he had said - "you have an anus, it doesn't mean you have to be a rent boy"? Its "truth/reasonableness" may be plain to the gun lobby, it is less so to those who would prefer it if our young were not taught to kill. Jack Hughes (talk) 16:43, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

We have hands but don't go round throttling people in a Hobbesian state of nature, 'mouths intermittently linked to brains' and mostly don't become politicians etc etc. (Ermine Street Guard - UK reenactment group covering the Roman period).

As for the second comment - depends upon the context (slashfic writers get up to some weird stuff - and would probably annoy the gun lobby as much as 'women in general who don't know their (submissive) place'). Isn't there a cod-psychology interpretation that the bigger the car/weapon the smaller the ±±±±'?

On the "Massive difference between owning a gun and using it to kill" comment
Isn't the entire point of owning a gun is to induce serious harm, whether to an animal or human being? Comparing a vagina with a fatal weapon is totally absurd.

Again, this appears to be a US-only legend. Osaka Sun (talk) 09:20, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily so, the point could be to threaten to induce serious harm. Whether someone would actually pull the trigger with glee is a different question to holding it out to scare someone off. The comparison is absurd however. Though I do agree a vagina can look pretty threatening. Scarlet A.pnggnostic 12:40, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Remember this? Anyways, if all you want to do is scare people, get yourself a toy gun.--  13:02, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

...and you call yourselves Liberals
Prohibition on an assumption, a "what if?", placing Law and Order over individual liberty is a conservative tenant. Firing a gun isn't a crime, murder is; likewise sex isn't a crime, prostitution is.

She is, by all rights, armed to be a prostitute as an armed individual is armed to murder.


 * -- 94.174.68.63 (talk) 18:49, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The table might be interesting to add into the article to explain the comparison. It makes a neat little syllogism, but I think it highlights that the concluding remarks don't necessarily have that one-to-one correspondence. The jump between discharging a firearm and murder is considerably more than the jump from sex and sex in exchange for (explicit) money. A more accurate correspondence would be "sex = killing" and "prostitution = killing for money", highlighting the initial absurdity of the remark. Scarlet A.pnggnostic 19:06, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * And all men are armed to be rapists. But I'm sort of losing the point.--BobSpring is sprung! 21:43, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * What I want to know is, who's having sex with disembodied vaginas? Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 22:54, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Ask the Fleshlight industry. --184.175.20.175 (talk) 23:48, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

This is not an apples and oranges argument. And even sex is regulated in terms of age of consent, incest, indecency, bestiality, rape laws, etc...you can't just put your dick or vagina anywhere you want. I'm not sure if the staunchest of libertarians would consider getting rid of those. Osaka Sun (talk) 23:19, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Repeal all rape and consent laws -> sales of guns, pepper spray and vagina mounted bear traps increase -> economy saved by the invisible hand. Never underestimate a good libertarian argument. Scarlet A.pngpostate 11:36, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Heh. Don't forget the full legalization of all weaponry...ever. You think there's going to be any crime if everyone's walking around with a suitcase nuke handcuffed to their wrists? Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 00:23, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * (tenant?) Even if the OP is right & it's a conservative tenet - stopped clocks? Rationalists aren't bound by dogma but by what is right. Scream!! (talk) 11:51, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually, there are libertarians arguing against age of consent laws... It is often done in the context of "teenagers getting onto the sex offenders register for consensual sex" and other such cases. Throwing the baby out with the dirty bathwater seems to be a common trait among libertarians.--ZooGuard (talk) 12:07, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

A false analogy written out in a comparison table is still a false analogy. As for making it "more realistic" by inserting the words "hit-men" - what? 00:15, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Prostitution is sex for money, therefore the most accurate analogy is not discharging a firearm to murder, but paid assassination to murder. Scarlet A.pnggnostic 01:13, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think whether any money changes hands is particularly relevant. It's still comparing two entirely dissimilar activities to make a rather tenuous point about one of them.  19:16, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Exactly, but if you are going to compare two different things a la argument from analogy, then the analogous situations need to be as close as possible. So in this case it's being equipped to do Activity X and being paid to do Activity X. By making altering the parameters to be a more realistic comparison, you show how the analogy is invalid because the concluding remarks aren't the same. Scarlet A.pngsshole 15:25, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * You keep saying "realistic comparison" but it really isn't. A person having sex is not analogous to a person firing a gun, & a person having sex for money is not analogous to a person killing for money.  Alter the parameters however you want, it doesn't create a situation where conclusions about having sex can be applied to gun handling or vice versa.  23:54, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Fucksake, it's a more realistic comparison, it's trying to minimise the differences between the situation someone wants to talk about and their analogy. This shows that the conclusions reached are wrong. Scarlet A.pngmoral 14:09, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The conclusions are wrong because the analogy is wrong. Changing a few minor details doesn't make it any less wrong or more realistic.  It's still a fundamentally false analogy.  Two completely different situations with two completely different sets of considerations.  19:35, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Clown
Whoever put Cosgrove in scare quotes, and added a reference with Cosgrove's photo and a blurb about how that guy's name isn't Cosgrove should be embarrassed. I hope you're not from Oz, because he is quite well known here, & I would hate to think that someone could be ignorant enough to not recognise that face. LowKey (talk) 13:36, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I have no idea who "Cosgrove" is. Should I be embarrassed?--BobSpring is sprung! 15:01, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
 * If you are Australian, or if you claimed that he doesn't actually exist, then yeah. LowKey (talk) 21:45, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Never heard of him in here in Kiwiland. Peter Monomorium antarcticum 21:47, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
 * What part about "not from Oz" is causing people such difficulty? I wouldn't necessarily expect foreigners to know our most senior military officer (until he retired) - particularly Americans - but surely a refutation of a fake/fraud/hoax requires something more than just making up content based on one's own extant body of knowledge.  This article displayed more gullibility than was required by the original story.  Is this indicative of the scholarship here? RWians "knowing" the falsity of something and making their case against it from their own imagination? I bet there are maybe a couple of dozen  hundred billion people that you lot have never heard of but oddly still exist.  LowKey (talk) 04:52, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Long past time to get rid of this
It's a copypasta of a lame old sexist joke that really has nothing much to do with gun control or any of RW's missions. Delete. 23:04, 4 June 2014 (UTC)