alt Hacker NewsWould you say, “Automobile run amok in crowd, killing 22”? I think you’d say, “Person drives car into crowd, killing 12” instead. This is a similar case. Also, you don’t blame a gun for killing, but the person who pulled the trigger. The question is still out as to whether we as humans should wield any of those three things.
Edit: let’s not get into ideological arguments about gun control, automobiles, etc here; I meant that you can’t blame an object when a human has to take an action, not get into a political battle.
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Neither the automobile nor a gun can operate without a human. You could say “bull runs amok in a market” after it was released intentionally.
There's a difference between the driver intentionally driving into crowd, and not intentionally but possibly still recklessly (drifting and losing control, falling asleep, etc). In those cases I would probably use "car hits the crowd", at least in my language
>Would you say, “Automobile run amok in crowd, killing 22”? I think you’d say, “Person drives car into crowd, killing 12” instead.
If the automobile was "self driving" I would.
>Also, you don’t blame a gun for killing, but the person who pulled the trigger.
Nah, I also blame guns and appreciate gun control laws.
Unfortunately the news commonly do put the automobile as the subject when the driver is of a class politically protected from blame. Just like with people anthropomorphizing AI, it serves to deflect blame from the real culprit.
Ironically news outlets like to use the phrasing you rightfully point out as absurd. Not sure if they just do it randomly or only when they get orders to push a certain narrative.
>Car plows into Christmas market in Germany, killing at least 5 and injuring 200
Newspaper articles generally do say things like "a car struck pedestrians". I agree with your point though.
> you don’t blame a gun for killing, but the person who pulled the trigger
This is famously the slogan of the pro-gun lobby (funded by gun manufacturers and merchants), who want the society to be awash with guns because they're profiting from it but don't want to be blamed for the consequences.
The counterpoint is that when we get rid of most of the guns we also end up substantially eliminating the killings.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_don't_kill_people%2C_peop...