Figliuzzi Faults Permitless Concealed-Carry Law for Firearm Homicides
Analyzing the article
MSNBC
Our Analysis: 4 Fallacies
Three people were detained by police in Kansas City, Missouri, in connection with a mass shooting of 22 people on Wednesday... on a day when Kansas City Chiefs fans turned out in droves to attend a celebratory parade...
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...certain American politicians' love affair with guns seems unconstrained, especially in Missouri, where a law adopted in 2017 permits people to carry concealed guns without needing any background check or permit. 1 The result has been 2 dozens more deaths from firearms every year.
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...if Donald Trump again wins the presidency or the GOP maintains control of the House, even less will be done to enforce the laws already on the books and keep us safe. 3 Trump told us his stance against gun reform Friday at the NRA's Great American Outdoor Show in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. "No one will lay a finger on your firearms,"
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...the combination of unfettered gun possession, unenforced gun safety laws and the number of stolen guns on the streets are inconsistent with securing a major public special event. No police chief can credibly guarantee the absence of gun violence at a massive event unless everyone passes through a magnetometer... ... For those who want 4 to return to a time when parades and schools and churches and synagogues weren't killing fields... vote for candidates at all levels who are ready to break off the love affair with unrestricted guns. 4 It's a toxic romance that's headed over a cliff.
- Figliuzzi makes some reasonable points about the potential relevance of Missouri's 2017 change in gun laws to firearm homicides in the state, and the difficulty of law enforcement "guaranteeing" safety at a public event without scanning every person for guns. However, he puts up a straw man and makes a false attribution of authority, in ways that are misleading to the reader.
- Post hoc ergo propter hoc • While it's plausible that weaker gun laws could enable easier access to firearms, which could contribute to higher gun violence rates, there are likely many complex socioeconomic, cultural, and demographic factors that also influence crime and murder rates. Teasing out the true causal relationships requires rigorous statistical analysis controlling for potential confounding variables. There is reason to be cautious in inferring causality from correlation here, in that numerous other states also have enacted permitless concealed-carry laws, without all of them having a significant increase in homicides. Some studies find that evidence for the effect of permitless-carry laws on total homicides is inconclusive.
- False attribution to authority • This sentence includes a hyperlink to an article about a John Hopkins study which found an increase of gun homicides in Missouri after a 2007 law on permitless handgun purchase -- not the 2017 law about permitless concealed carry. Citing research that examined the impacts of a completely different law from 10 years prior, and presenting it as evidence for the effects of the 2017 concealed carry legislation, is highly misleading and represents a misuse of that source material. Misrepresenting the connection between a piece of evidence and the claim it's being used to bolster is a form of the false attribution to authority fallacy. The author is inappropriately leveraging the credibility of the cited study to make it appear to substantiate claims it does not truly back up.
- Straw man • While Trump did make that specific rhetorical statement to the NRA, portraying it as his entire position on guns oversimplifies and misrepresents his actual track record and policies regarding gun regulation. The Trump administration did ban bump stocks in 2018 after the Las Vegas mass shooting, demonstrating they were willing to impose at least some restrictions on certain firearm accessories. By selectively quoting the "no one will lay a finger" line without fuller context, the text sets up a caricatured version of Trump's stance that is easier to knock down. A more intellectually honest representation would acknowledge the areas where his administration did attempt to implement some new firearm regulations, limited as they may have been.
- Appeal to emotion • In closing, the author uses emotionally charged language to evoke sympathy and outrage, rather than relying solely on logical reasoning. For example, referring to "killing fields" and using phrases like "toxic romance" and "headed over a cliff" to describe the relationship of certain politicians with guns.
References
- Frank Figliuzzi (2024, Feb 15). Lots of guns and few gun restrictions make securing open-air events near impossible.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/kansas-city-chiefs-parade-shooting-gun-laws-rcna138918
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