A phrase like "who hasn't been driven mad by propaganda" doesn't exactly sound like impationately discussing the issue either.

Well done avoiding the counterpoint and setting plenty of distraction traps along the way. Classic.

> even remotely plausible to blame cars for killing cyclists

Car design has significant influence on pedestrian survivability of accidents. This is why hood ornaments were largely abolished, and also why casualties have gone up as SUVs with poor lower forwards visibility have become popular.

If we really want to go off topic, we should drag in the use of technological protection methods: what is the equivalent of ADAS for guns? Maybe as a baseline the US government should mandate geofencing for guns as it has for drones. Put a phone level computer with GPS in the lower receiver with a trigger interlock. It would then disable when within 100m of a school, or during periods of rioting. That could also provide a live feed to the government of every round fired.

> Regardless of your political views a tool is a tool at the end of the day. Attempting to anthropomorphize a category of objects in order to shift blame all for the sake of furthering an agenda is plainly bad faith behavior.

Guns are literally made for killing people. That's their only reason for existence. They are a weapon. This makes them qualitatively different from cars, which only incidentally kill people (and the vast majority of time, not on purpose).

To me, trying to equate deaths caused by purpose-made killing tools with those caused by generic tools is arguing in bad faith.

Blindly repeating superficial slogans seems like a good candidate for “driven mad by propaganda.” At the very least, it’s what people do when they are amplifying a position for ideological reasons, not contributing in good faith.

People without guns kill a lot fewer people than people with guns. Claiming that acknowledging this fact means you’ve been “driven mad by propaganda” is dumb.