baseball bats vs. guns

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Friday November 06, 2015 · 1:51 PM PST

2015/11/06 · 13:51

So, today a guy was working in our house. Friendly, chatty guy. Starts talking to me about all kinds of things, gets to Chicago/gun violence and I say, "You know what the problem is, right? It's the guns."

Turns out that is not the problem, according to him. He tells me that a friend sent him something from the FBI that says that the most used murder weapon in the US is baseball bats and "we're not going to take away baseball bats, are we?"

Doesn't sound right, so I say, "Let's look this up." I go to Google, type in "most used murder weapon in America" and you know what comes up, right? It's guns. But, he says, "That's not according to the FBI. So, I modify the search, to read: Most used murder weapon in America according to the FBI and here's what I find:

https://www.fbi.gov/...

And even when he and I are looking at this together, he still doesn't believe it. Guns are 69% and "Blunt Objects" are 3.5% and since I'm guessing bats are lumped in with other 'blunt objects,' I'm sure that baseball bats are even lower than 3.5%.

This guy was just so full of irrational rhetoric that it was painful for me to talk to him. He tells me that he doesn't even have bullets in his gun, but is convinced "they" will take away his gun.

He seemed so confident in his irrational beliefs and that is what is baffling. I am not confident these kinds of beliefs can be successfully challenged because no matter what rational thing I said, it made no difference.

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