Namely that you're completely unwilling to so much as entertain counter-arguments to your points, since all of them have been addressed in this forum before, many in the past few days.
One definition of "analogous" is "similar or equivalent in some respects though otherwise dissimilar." Whether or not an analogy is apt depends on whether the aspects in which the two things are similar is relevant within the context of the discussion. Since this particular discussion was presumably prompted by last Saturday's shooting of Rep. Giffords and various others, the question has to be whether an attack by one armed amok individual on a group of unarmed, unsuspecting and thus unprepared and defenseless victims can be prevented--or if not, whether the harm done can at least be minimized--by restricting private possession of firearms. That is presumably your objective.
When we're talking about a mass/spree killing like this, it is entirely irrelevant to point out that armed forces (whether regular or irregular) use firearms as their primary weapon rather than blades and bludgeons, since armed forces aren't expecting to go up against
unarmed, defenseless opponents (not without knowingly committing a major war crime, anyway). This isn't about "bringing a knife to a gunfight," it's about whether using a gun to commit mass murder is significantly more lethal than using a knife.
Historical examples abound illustrating that this is generally not the case, with mass knifings producing numbers of dead and wounded victims comparable to Loughner's. There's really only one measure of time that counts in these incidents, and that is "until the assailant could be overpowered"; it doesn't matter how quickly you can pull the trigger on this or that pistol, or how quickly you can stab people with this or that knife, because as a rule of thumb, the number of victims primarily depends on the amount of time "until the assailant could be overpowered." Yes, I acknowledge that there are a handful of incidents with especially severe body counts that could only have been committed with firearms--Virginia Tech, Port Arthur, Luby's, Gyeongsangnam-do--but those are atypical even for mass/spree shootings.
In short, it cannot be plausibly argued that stricter controls on privately owned firearms will definitely prevent mass/spree killings; you cannot say with any degree of certainty that "if only we prohibited
X, the Giffords shooting wouldn't have happened." There are places with much stricter guns laws than the US--such as Germany and the UK--where mass/spree shootings have taken place, despite those countries having much stricter gun laws than the US, even at the time, and there are places with less strict gun laws than that where mass/spree shootings have not taken place.
If we want to address the problem of mass/spree shootings, we would do better to focus on the mindset that drives a person to kill a bunch of people more or less at random than on whatever particular objects they use to do it.
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The analogy with motor vehicles applies to a different aspect, namely the number of casualties inflicted every year with the class of devices. The context in which this is relevant is when some gun control/prohibition proponent brings up the fact that there are around 30,000 gun deaths annually in the United States, implying that this statistic
in and of itself forms all the justification needed to restrict or prohibit certain aspects of private firearms ownership. To this particular argument, it is
highly relevant to bring up the fact that motor vehicle collisions claim half again as many lives every year. If we define an object as a social ill
solely on the basis of the number of casualties inflicted by it (which is an implicit assumption in the "30,000 gun deaths" argument if no further context is provided), then motor vehicles are indisputably a greater ill than firearms.
If this response seems facile, that's because the "30,000 gun deaths" argument is facile, and frankly, does not merit a more sophisticated response. Going on to argue that motor vehicles are "not created to kill" doesn't cut it, for the simple reason that in a very real sense,
they are. Even the humble Honda Civic is a two-ton bludgeon, typically traveling at dozens of miles an hour; that aspect of its design, by simple dint of physics, makes it potentially lethal to any creature that strays into its path. This effect is not ameliorated in any way by the fact that the driver didn't
intend to inflict injury.
What you
can legitimately argue is that we should engage in a cost/benefit analysis, weighing the annual cost in dead and injured against the benefits granted by readily available individual mobility, especially in a society like the United States, where the distances involved and the lack of public transport, particularly outside the north-east, make motor vehicles a necessity rather than a luxury. And you can argue that, on aggregate, the benefits provided by having motor vehicles outweigh the costs. We should, of course, seek to lower those costs, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
That's fair enough, but that being the case, it follows that a cost/benefit analysis should similarly be applied to privately owned firearms, and in particular, we should look whether proposed policy measures risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater, or possibly even throwing out the baby while leaving the bathwater behind!
For starters, on average, something in the order of 55% of those "30,000 gun deaths" are suicides; given that the American suicide rate is unremarkable compared to that of other rich industrialized nations in spite of the more ready availability of firearms to private citizens here, there is absolutely no reason to assume that tightening restrictions on private firearm ownership would prevent any significant loss of life to suicides, as opposed to leading at best to method substitution (e.g. any reduction in suicides by firearm would be compensated for by an increase of suicides by hanging).
Another 40% of those gun deaths are criminal homicides. Now, criminological evidence indicates that an overwhelming majority of perpetrators of homicides--something in the order of 90%--are individuals who are either legally prohibited from possessing firearms, or would be if their prior activities had resulted in capture and conviction; in other words, we're talking about the kind of people with a history of breaking the law, who are not, or would not be, deterred from acquiring a firearm by the fact that there's a law prohibiting them from doing so. You might argue that they'd be less likely to be able to acquire a firearm if restrictions on private gun ownership were tighter, but there is very little evidence to support such a contention. Firearms trafficking is a demand-driven business: it's not that criminals resort to guns because someone's shipping them into the city; someone's shipping them into the city because there are people eager to buy them.
Moreover, a very large percentage of homicide
victims meet the same description as their killers. Bluntly put, an awful lot of American homicides are cases of thugs killing other thugs*, but those aren't the homicides the news media focus on, because the news media's objective is to keep you scared so that you'll keep watching, so they spend an inordinate amount of attention to spousal killings, mass shootings, etc. because you're more likely to identify with the victims. We're hard-wired by evolution to want to gain as much information as we can to things that threaten us personally, and the news media play into that by working the "it could happen to
you" angle for all it's worth. As a result, basing one's perception of homicide in America on what what sees on the news will result in a skewed perception.
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Why can’t gun advocates admit that guns were created to kill? Isn’t that the point of a gun, to kill or wound an intruder or take down your dinner, deer, rabbit, quail or other game animal? That is the primary function of a gun. I don’t see a problem with that fact or admitting that fact.
Well, you've gone a large part of the way to answering your own question in very next sentence. By acknowledging that "the point of a gun" is "to kill
or wound an intruder" (to which I would add "or assailant" if outside one's residence) you've added a purpose for a defensive firearm
that does not consist of killing. Now, if take into account that, according to the best available evidence, over 90% of defensive gun uses (DGUs) take place without a shot being fired (and that the military doctrine for most personnel issued handguns is to make the enemy take cover while you book it towards the nearest friendlies with decent firepower), you will understand that "to deter an assailant" (without necessarily inflicting injury on him) should also be added to the purposes of a defensive firearm.
Let's be honest: the "guns are created to kill" argument is a setup for a mishmash of logical fallacies, not least in that it's an affirmative form of the loaded question (aka "Have you stopped beating your wife?"
http://fallacyfiles.org/loadques.html). If the respondent agrees, that statement is (willfully mis)interpreted to be an admission that guns are
only good for killing, whereas if the respondent denies it, he is accused of dishonestly refusing to acknowledge that killing is
a purpose of firearms (even though what he's
actually denying is that killing is the
only purpose of firearms). Heads I win, tails you lose. The very statement (in all its variations) is evidence of intellectual dishonesty, as is rhetorically asking why nobody will give a straight answer to a loaded question.
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We can start by questioning who can get a gun and how many bullets we really need to hunt or protect our home and what type of guns we need for those purposes. The NRA, gun and bullet manufacturers, and other guns first people don’t want you to ask those question <sic> <...>
When all else fails, invoke a conspiracy: "they" don't want you to ask those questions, "they" don't want you to know those answers. Who are you, Kevin Trudeau (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Cures_%22They%22_Don%27t_Want_You_to_Know_About)?
You're more than welcome to ask the questions, just don't expect whatever answers you come up with to be taken as gospel, especially if there's so much as a hint that you skewed the research to support a predetermined conclusion. We know that cops tend to carry 15+1 rounds in their sidearm (assuming they're carrying a Glock 22, which is the most popular police handgun in the U.S.), plus two spare mags, plus whatever they've got in the cruiser (assault weapon--excuse me "patrol rifle", shotgun, or both) if things get ugly, plus the rest of the department (and neighboring agencies) on call, and they're wearing at least level II body armor. So if you produce some finding that, no really, all you need is one mag with a maximum capacity of ten rounds, you're going to meet with a lot of entirely justified skepticism.
* - Which is, admittedly, a symptom of a societal problem, but it has less to do with the availability of firearms, and more with the fact that the best option for a lower-class inner-city youth, especially one from an ethnic minority, to gain upward socio-economic mobility is to go into the illicit drugs trade, and that is an
extremely homicidal subculture.
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