The knife myth

So following the recent Empire State Building shooting, one of my FB friends posted the inevitable, supposedly crushing anti-gun control putdown: If he’d killed people with a knife, would they ban knives?
It never occurs to anyone that they might be arguing from a false premise: It’s a lot harder to kill two and wound nine (I think that’s the most recent number cited) with a knife than a gun. That’s why people use guns.
Seriously. They’re better weapons. They do more damage, they kill from a distance, you can shoot a dozen people from one spot without running from one to the other … I mean, come on, did the police rush up and charge the shooter with knives? No! They used guns! Because guns are more fricking dangerous!
Arguing that “Well, if we take away guns, they’ll just use knives” is ridiculous because if sociopaths had to rely on knives, that would be a good thing. We’d be safer, even if they were still trying to kill us.
In other news of the stupid (yeah, I’m feeling mean today. I have a 24-hour bug and it’s making me cranky):
•Rush Limbaugh explains all these predictions Hurricane Isaac would hit Tampa were just Obama using the weather service to disturb the Republican Convention. Besides, it’s a waste of money because real Floridians like him don’t need no stinking weather service to know where it’s going to hit!
•Having your daughter get pregnant when she’s not married is just as horrifying as having her raped!
•Another example of white right-wing terrorism, much as right-wingers like to pretend it doesn’t exist.
•More speculation that this is the last time the Republicans can possibly win relying on the angry white male vote (past thoughts from me here).
•Unsurprisingly, some Republicans are standing by Todd Akin, the man who says rapists can’t get women pregnant. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson meanwhile insists the Republicans don’t have a woman problem because the real concerns are jobs and the economy, not culture-war issues.
Two obvious flaws in this argument: First, as 2001-2008 showed, the Repubs do a crappy job managing the economy. And Romney/Ryan have made it clear we’ll get more of the same: More tax cuts for the rich, more slashing spending on everything except defense.
Second, the issues are not just jobs and the economy. “Culture war” questions—gay marriage, women’s rights, abortion, birth control, Christian dominance, anti-Muslim bigotry—are front-and-center for large numbers of Republicans. Of course, they’re wildly out of step with the majority of Americans so I can understand why they’d rather not make those issues the core of the platform … but they are. The problem with Todd Akins isn’t that he’s out of step, it’s that he’s airing their extreme views in public.
Case in point: Arizona’s trying to tighten abortion restrictions further by counting the age of the fetus from the woman’s last missed period rather than actual conception. So restrictions regarding viability and fetal age can kick in two weeks sooner.
•And speaking of bigoted white people, Pat Rogers of the Republican National Committee has informed Governor Susanna Martinez that she dishonored General Custer by meeting with state tribal leaders.
•A man claims a grocery store violated his religious freedom by having a black worker bag his groceries.
•Bryan Fischer, the man who thinks Christians should kidnap children of gay couples (I’m sorely tempted to make an acronym of that because I intend to keep referring to it) joins the list of right-wingers who think women’s suffrage is a bad thing.
•A lot of organizations horrified by the idea of covering birth control under insurance were doing it well before Obama’s mandate.