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@saxnot The nice thing about stuff like this is **everything** has a name. But yea its super annoying.
@saxnot It takes a form that is particularly annoying.. Something like this:
"I dont think we should need licenses for guns because then the government can arbitrarily take away guns by use of a stringent qualification test".
"But the government requires licenses for cars, this is no different"
Despite where you may fall on the opinion of guns this sort of argument, a Tu quoque fallacy, is particularly annoying.
@freemo @saxnot I expect that the other person in this conversation is using a shortcut to say "I think that access to guns and access to cars are important in the same way. We are doing this to cars. Do you think we shouldn't be doing it to cars, do you think that there's some important in this context difference between cars and guns, or am I mistaken someplace else?"
Do you think this response also invokes a fallacy, that this is not actually what they mean, or something else?
No that wont necceseraly induce a fallacy. The issue is by invoking the need for a license for a car you would have to 1) justify that licenses for cars are indeed necessary and valid and 2) justify why this necessity also applies to guns.
Thats all well and good but you can just skip the middle man and directly explain the necessity for a license for a gun since the need for a license for a car in no way infers anything on its own without that component anyway.
Its not that talking about cars can get you to an answer and provide something. Its just that its a convoluted way to get there. Instead of debating the pros and cons of a license for guns, now we are lost first arguing if a license for a car is a good idea at all, derailing the whole conversation, and once we agree at all that cars should be licensed now we need to figure out why and if its similar and apply that over to guns... sure it works, but what is it bringing to the conversation since we cant assume licenses for cars are good as an axiom just because it is the way it is.
Usually the intent of invoking the comparison to car licenses is that there is an assumption someone will just agree they are good because we have them, but that isnt really the case.
In short, it now leads us into a totally seperate debate about car licenses that we must get through before we can even bring value over to the gun debate.
A libertarian for example may be very likely to feel the reverse is true from any such comparison. That because guns arent licensed, that licenses for cars should be abolished too.
@freemo @saxnot
I see what you mean (and how the original phrasing hides details[1]), but I disagree about talking about cars not bringing anything in. If someone proposes an argument for X that makes use of properties that are shared between X and Y, then it might be useful to figure out whether they think Y or not-Y. If they think not-Y, then probably the argument got miscommunicated somehow.
[1] which I do understand is very annoying; after all, I'm the guy who often has to tell people that they only know that _this_ zebra has stripes on this side only at work; arguments with hidden detail make it harder for people to notice such subtleties.