The Kansas City Category Error

Influential individuals with anti-gun views typically wish to “wade into the controversy” after an enormous capturing. They’d have us consider that they’re apolitical individuals who had been above or outdoors of the controversy, however as a result of one thing that occurred was so horrible, it deserves them taking the extremely uncommon step and maybe enduring some private sacrifice.

However, for those who do a fast search, many of the celebrities who act like this have a historical past of doing it. The reality is, they’re a part of the anti-gun motion, they do that after each high-profile capturing and so they’ll do it once more.

Need some stable proof? Simply have a look at the speaking factors. In the event that they had been a recent voice getting into the controversy, they’d deliver some recent concepts with them. However, they are saying the identical factor all the different celebrities do. So, it is smart to level out that they’re being disingenuous so that folks can see that they’re faking it.

However, after the Kansas Metropolis Tremendous Bowl parade capturing, there’s one other beneficial level to be made: These “I’m not usually political” celebs don’t wish to discuss concerning the factual circumstances of the capturing itself.

The actual fact is, this was a gang capturing, not a mass capturing. Whereas each life misplaced is a tragedy, we will’t deal with all deaths by bullet the identical method if we wish to productively resolve the issue. Legal guidelines that may stop suicide differ from legal guidelines that may dissuade criminals and legal guidelines that might dissuade a suicidal mass shooter. After we attempt to “one dimension suits all” the issue, we don’t arrive at helpful conclusions.

However, as we all know, the anti-gun motion isn’t after options. They’re after weapons. To confess that the capturing in Kansas Metropolis was a gang combat and never a mass homicide state of affairs would tip the viewers off. Anyone with even half a lick of frequent sense is aware of that gang members who had been already carrying weapons illegally aren’t going to be stopped by any new anti-gun legal guidelines. All that might accomplish can be to burden good individuals whereas leaving gang members’ weapons alone.

So, to keep away from this awkwardness and maintain individuals from seeing that they’d made a class error (aka a “fallacy of composition”), these celebs go straight to issues like this:

This 🤬 is SAD man! Children are being shot and someone didn’t come dwelling tonight. We can’t permit this to be regular. We can’t ourselves to develop into numb and chalk it as much as “simply one other capturing in America” and scale back individuals in statistics after which transfer on tmrw.

It is a SERIOUS…

— Justin Reid (@JustinqReid) February 15, 2024

To categorize an issue correctly and give you an actual answer, we first have to take a look at the entire drawback. We are able to’t have a look at it from one angle by someone else’s glasses if we wish to see clearly sufficient to know what’s even occurring. However, we will’t count on a man who mentioned “I hate weapons dawg” up to now to present us an trustworthy opinion on the answer. The hate is all he is aware of, and it’s all he needs followers to know.

Blinding us to the true state of affairs with ideas about youngsters and victims would possibly appear to be the empathetic factor to do on the floor, however stopping there retains our minds on the floor as an alternative of digging deeper.