Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
I got up this morning and told myself that today would be the first day all week that I don’t write about gun control or anything related to the Orlando terror attack last weekend. As is my morning ritual, I sat down with a Clif bar and my iPhone to scroll through the news headlines and look for something interesting. It became quickly apparent that no one else has decided they’re tired of writing about guns and Orlando. Resigned, I clicked on a piece by CNN White House Producer Kevin Liptak about Obama’s visit to Orlando yesterday. Reading the piece told me that today was a good day to discuss logical fallacies.
At the risk of sounding unforgivably pedantic, a logical fallacy is an argument that violates one or more of the various ancient rules of logic and rhetoric.
“Obama said politicians who oppose strengthen (sic) gun control laws should meet with families of gun violence victims.
‘Those who defend the easy accessibility of assault weapons should meet these families,’ said Obama,” reads a portion of Liptak’s piece.
Let’s look at the president’s comment. Naturally, meeting someone who is grieving a personal loss is going to tug at a person’s heartstrings, as would, say, the president recounting his personal meetings with grieving people. Their grief, however, and the emotional response it elicits, does not change the fact that “assault weapons” have been heavily restricted since 1934 and the rifle that was actually used in Orlando is neither an “assault rifle,” nor “extraordinarily powerful,” as Obama claimed. So, the only thing even remotely compelling about his statement is the emotional response it is intended to elicit. This is because the president was engaging in the “appeal-to-emotion,” or “argumentum ad passions” logical fallacy, where one seeks to “win” a debate by playing on the emotions of people without actually presenting any objective facts. Or, indeed even making a point.
Much of the Left, and particularly the anti-gun Left use logical fallacies in their debates, some almost exclusively so. Obama’s comments earlier in the speech just drip with emotionalism.
“Our politics have conspired to make it as easy as possible for a terrorist or even just a disturbed individual to buy extraordinarily powerful weapons, and they can do so legally. I held and hugged grieving family members and parents and they asked, ‘Why does this keep happening?’ And they pleaded that we do more to stop the carnage. They don’t care about the politics. Neither do I,” Liptak quoted Obama as saying.
The first sentence is a lie, there is no conspiracy and it is absolutely not “as easy as possible” to buy any firearm legally; although illegally is another matter and one the President doesn’t like to discuss. The rest of the quote is just more argumentum ad passions.
“If there was ever a moment for all of us to reflect and reaffirm our most basic beliefs that everybody counts and everybody has dignity, now’s the time. It’s a good time for all of to us reflect on how we treat each other and to insist on respect and equality for every human being.” Liptak quoted Obama as saying.
More empty words, intended to elicit an emotional response. Odd, that in calling for “respect and equality for every human being” he’s attempting to excoriate those opposed to denying due-process rights to everyone the FBI thinks might be yucky. But, as he’s masterfully couched all his words in sensational and emotional terms, the actual content of the statement gets muted by the emotional response it garners.
“We should not be selling automatic weapons which are designed to kill people,” Senator Bernie Sanders said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “We have got to do everything that we can on top of that to make sure that guns do not fall into the hands of people who should not have them, criminals, people who are mentally ill. So that struggle continues.”
Here Bernie is engaging in something of an A Priori fallacious argument; which is where the speaker begins with a spurious “fact” or claim given authoritatively, and then searches for any reasonable-sounding argument to rationalize it.
The fact is nobody is selling automatic weapons “which are designed to kill people,” as automatic weapons have been heavily restricted since 1934. Military issue M-16s are “designed to kill people,” civilian AR-15s are designed to kill paper and varmints.
Democrat senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, whose “expertise” on gun control is entirely related to the fact he hails from the same state where the Newtown mass shooting took place in back in 2012, spat out a mouthful of fallacy in the wake of the shooting.
“Congress has become complicit in these murders by its total, unconscionable deafening silence,” he said in a statement. “This doesn’t have to happen, but this epidemic will continue without end if Congress continues to sit on its hands and do nothing — again.”
Murphy mixes a bit of the placebo effect fallacy with some false dichotomy and zero tolerance.
The placebo effect fallacy is a common one for politicians to use after any tragedy, as it is the idea that something, anything simply MUST be done, and now, to prevent said tragedy’s reoccurrence. The placebo effect fallacy is the reason the Transportation Safety Administration exists and is why we have to take off our shoes before getting on an airplane. Here, Murphy is calling for pointless, feel-good legislation that won’t prevent another mass-shooting.
He’s also suggesting that congress has but two options – pass absurd and meaningless laws, or watch more mass-shootings happen – which is a classic example of the false dichotomy logical fallacy, where one falsely boils down a complex matter to two possible choices. His statement rules out any other possible course of action, when there are, of course, many other possible courses of action and all of them are better than what he proposes.
Zero tolerance – also known as zero risk bias or disproportionate response – is the logical fallacy that something awful happening even once is “too much” and therefore “must be stopped by all means necessary.” Mass shootings of any sort are comparatively rare events, even though they are made to seem like daily occurrences. Why is that?
The availability bias is a fallacious form of reasoning that puts undue attention on the most recent or most available information. Since the mainstream media hypes the ever-loving hell out of every shooting incident in the USA, and doubly so any sort of “mass-shooting,” it’s easy for one to feel they are awash in “gun violence” when, statistically, they’re far, far more likely to die in a car wreck than in a random mass-shooting; and exponentially more likely to die of heart disease than of any violent cause.
I could go on as American politicians of all stripes provide a wealth of examples of fallacious reasoning and argument, to say nothing of pundits, talking heads, columnists and other opinion leaders. To my knowledge, there is almost no emphasis put on learning the rules of logic and rhetoric in public schools, or even in academia today. It feels a bit too tinfoil hat to say this is done intentionally so kids won’t know how to think and can therefore be taught more easily what to think; but we certainly do have a nation full of people who are blissfully unaware they’re being cynically manipulated at every level by politicians and others who are intentionally abusing logic and language.
Except for you, dear reader, as now you’ve been warned.
Have a nice weekend.
Leave a Reply