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C-dub wrote:

O6nop wrote:The hyperbole argument:
"Since you believe in the 2nd amendment you must think that everyone should own a tank or a bazooka and hand grenades!"

Regarding the OP, you made a very thorough and detailed list of arguments and their fallacies, but your TLA's left me wondering... what is "DGU" and "VCP"?

Defensive Gun Use

and

Violence Prevention Center

I think.

Yep...Defensive Gun Use and the Violence Policy Center

chasfm11 wrote:

Abraham wrote:I've an acquaintance who proudly told me he'd never carry a gun. Didn't believe in them he said.

I asked him if he or a family member's lives were at risk from a violent criminal attack would he approve of my using a gun to protect them or would he rather they be left to their own devices.

At first, he just wordlessly gaped at me.

Then he slowly and slightly nodded his head in assent agreeing he would like me to use a gun to protect him or them in such a situation.

Then I asked why wouldn't HE be willing to protect himself or them, but would agree to let me protect them.

He squirmed in his chair and said not another word and neither did I.

I was too disgusted.

Good for you. Your approach is the only way that I've ever seemed to make any progress with the antis. It has to be personal. As long it is "for the greater good", they will argue all day about how much better having no guns is for society and how some of us have to sacrifice ourselves to that end.

I've tried that approach as well but invariably they will fall back on one of the fallacious arguments I listed. It may be something that is particular to the types of people I generally interact with that they will only listen to a purely academic rebuttal of their emotional nonsense. My co workers all have graduate degrees and have spent most of their lives in an insular ivory tower environment so they tend to use the "holier than thou" argument more than most. Their over inflated opinions of themselves causes them to beat the "mind projection" fallacy to death, ie. "I'm far more educated than you (they aren't) therefore anything I think must be correct."

I'm probably more inclined to use this list to cut and paste into comment threads to flag the fallacies when I see them than in actual conversation.

I've decided this year that I will try to up my game when discussing guns with anti's.

A little background first. I am a middle aged (turn 40 shortly ) college educated guy with a wife and kids who grew up in California. I also work in the theater and music end of the entertainment industry which means I am constantly surrounded by the most liberal of the liberals. Inevitably it comes out that I am a gun owner and gun rights advocate which leads to all sorts of discussion. The amount of herp and derp that comes out of their mouths about guns and gun owners is so overwhelming that it can be quite a daunting challenge to even attempt pointing out their complete disconnect. I've decided instead to hit them by throwing their own sense of superior education and intellect back in their face by pointing out the logical fallacies of their arguments.

What follows is a list of common fallacies that ooze from every pour of the anti argument and I tried to list a relevant example. Please feel free to add more examples and I hope we can maybe make an easy reference list to call up when we experience the day to day herp and derp that we see and hear. I know there are several sites that have some great articles that pick the anti talking points to shreds but I haven't really found an easy list that just plain points out the complete failure of their thought process in irrefutable academic terms. It's an appeal to their own intellect and I hope to force them to just plain admit that their entire stance is based on unsubstantiated emotion. I don't expect to change minds but maybe it will encourage them to let it go.

I put this together to help me focus my thoughts and figured I might as well post it. Someone might find it useful. For the record here's the wiki page I used http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Conjunction fallacy – assumption that an outcome simultaneously satisfying multiple conditions is more probable than an outcome satisfying a single one of them.

Example – Guns are inherently dangerous (ie. It could just go off)

Argument from (personal) incredulity (divine fallacy, appeal to common sense) – I cannot imagine how this could be true, therefore it must be false.

Example – Discounting “more guns = less crime”

Argument from silence (argumentum e silentio) – where the conclusion is based on the absence of evidence, rather than the existence of evidence.

Example – DGU’s don’t exist

Circular cause and consequence – where the consequence of the phenomenon is claimed to be its root cause.

Example – Inner city crime and the appeal for stricter gun laws to fix it

Ecological fallacy – inferences about the nature of specific individuals are based solely upon aggregate statistics collected for the group to which those individuals belong.

Example – Gun owners are old fat white guys

Etymological fallacy – which reasons that the original or historical meaning of a word or phrase is necessarily similar to its actual present-day meaning.

Example – “Well regulated militia”

False attribution – an advocate appeals to an irrelevant, unqualified, unidentified, biased or fabricated source in support of an argument.

Example – Just about anything the VPC cites

Mind projection fallacy – when one considers the way one sees the world as the way the world really is.

Example – Middle class urban progressives in nice gated communities, aka limousine liberals

Moral high ground fallacy – in which one assumes a "holier-than-thou" attitude in an attempt to make oneself look good to win an argument.

Example - Many…on both sides of the issue

Moving the goalposts (raising the bar) – argument in which evidence presented in response to a specific claim is dismissed and some other (often greater) evidence is demanded.

Example – Discounting any studies on DGU’s

Prosecutor's fallacy – a low probability of false matches does not mean a low probability of some false match being found.

Example – The NFA registry, background checks, terrorist watch list

Wrong direction – cause and effect are reversed. The cause is said to be the effect and vice versa.

Example – More guns = more violence

Misleading vividness – involves describing an occurrence in vivid detail, even if it is an exceptional occurrence, to convince someone that it is a problem.

Example – School shootings, lone gunmen, assault weapon bans

Argumentum ad populum (appeal to widespread belief, bandwagon argument, appeal to the majority, appeal to the people) – where a proposition is claimed to be true or good solely because many people believe it to be so.

Example – The violence epidemic in America, wild west, 90% support background checks

Appeal to emotion – where an argument is made due to the manipulation of emotions, rather than the use of valid reasoning. [55]
• Wishful thinking – a specific type of appeal to emotion where a decision is made according to what might be pleasing to imagine, rather than according to evidence or reason.

Example – We need to end violence in America by banning guns

Appeal to motive – where a premise is dismissed by calling into question the motives of its proposer.

Example – Armed school guards are bad because the NRA is in the pocket of the manufacturers

Appeal to novelty (argumentum novitatis/antiquitatis) – where a proposal is claimed to be superior or better solely because it is new or modern.

Example – The founding fathers and the constitution are antiquated relics


Bulverism (Psychogenetic Fallacy) – inferring why an argument is being used, associating it to some psychological reason, then assuming it is invalid as a result. It is wrong to assume that if the origin of an idea comes from a biased mind, then the idea itself must also be a false.

Example – Gun owners are paranoid racists with size issues which drives their interest in guns