Or, A Discussion on 2nd amendment, with distractions on voting rights and drag queens.
Or, Non-Sequiturs, Steamrolling and smoke screens! Oh my!
Keith and Nathan examine a media clip that has gone viral in the past month. The topic is about the second amendment, and gun rights. However, we are more interested in the poor logic that is used to prove or disprove the points. The full clip runs approximately eight minutes, but we chop it up into bite-size pieces so we can include our observations.
The argument for Second Amendment rights is presented well enough, but immediately it becomes clear that the host has a personal agenda. He uses a straw man argument, which is making a point or conclusion that is not included in the arguments by the US senator.
As the argument develops a senator does a good job at first, with ignoring statistics, and going for the moral high ground and his solution. Clearly, the host is not listening and is only biding his time to keep throwing out his strawman argument, and derail the Senators line of thought.
With a host of steam rolling distractions, the senator never is allowed to arrive at his solution, and is being led down the trail to the trap set for him. Suddenly the topic of immigration is brought up for no other reason than to keep the senator off balance. The situation is a wild ride with the host in control.
with all the redirection’s and pivots the original stance of the senator is lost. He tries to get control back, but is easily diverted into areas, such as domestic dispute and other topics. Accusations fly, all based on the false, strawman argument that the host posed. Arguments revolving around unrestricted gun access is brought up, although the senator never made the claim. Maybe I missed something. At any rate, registration is something that should be done. We register for other rights Such as voting or driving a car. In a perfect world, and restricted ownership might be nice, but that’s not where we live. Besides, there is the difference in the element of the right to own a firearm a car or to vote, compared to the privilege to use or exercise those rights.
Once the senator has been thoroughly dragged through all the false logic, the host slams him with a comparison of apples to oranges. He compares the rights under the first amendment to those under the second amendment. They’re not the same. Through his false logic, that only makes sense on the surface the host claims that drag queens are only expressing first amendment rights, and are harmless, while guns are not safe and kill people.
The truth is that both are very harmful, but in their own way. Both should be restricted, but in their own way. Kids should be protected from both firearms and drag queens, but those restrictions look different because they fall under two different categories. This is also known as category error.
In the end, we hope that we have been able to uncover false logic and errors in this line of thinking. And in some way help you to recognize it and understand ways to protect yourselves for falling into some of the pitfalls and distractions of an argument that has no real supports.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:12:53 — 100.1MB)
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