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Name this fallacy

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Original Question

Advocates of gun control often note how certain nations with strict gun laws have low incidences of "gun violence". However, often times the nations that they reference have never had/don't have a high rate of violent crime in general to begin with. What fallacy are they committing?

Comments on Question

I'm not seeing the argument. They're simply noting that nations with strict gun laws often have low rates of gun violence. If this is correct, it's just a (true) factual statement.

Thank you.

Answers

3

Noting that certain nations with strict gun laws have low incidences of gun violence is just a statement of fact.


The conversation might evolve to expose some fallacies such as 'the base rate fallacy', 'causal reductionism', 'cherry picking' or 'jumping to conclusions' but they are not evident in the initial statement.

Germany had gun laws so strict it disallowed a race from owning them. 


Prove gun laws caused a reduction in gun violence or confusing cause and effect fsllacy

The subject line implies there's a fallacy present and the post goes on to ask for a name for the fallacy.  As with many discussions or disagreements, the meaning of the term(s) is important.


In this case, if "fallacy" is used in the general sense, we'd have to look for a mistaken belief.  The "belief" in this case isn't clearly stated ... it seems that on one hand, gun violence (another undefined term) is related to strict gun laws while the alternate position seems to relate gun violence to violent crime in general.  If the implication is that gun violence is related to one and only one of gun laws or violent crime rates, that implication would lead to a false dilemma .


However, if "fallacy" is used in the sense of faulty or misleading reasoning invalid argument ... I don't see any reasoning or argument.  The understanding of "logical fallacy" on which this site is based relates to arguments or reasoning with either some non-factual errors that lead to deceptive arguments, incorrect reasoning, and faulty conclusions.  Since I don't see an actual argument for a conclusion, I'm having a hard time classifying it as a logical fallacy.


Intuitively, it seems reasonable to believe that some nation with strict gun laws might have a little gun violence.  At the same time, it's seems equally reasonable to believe that some nation with more lax gun laws might also have little gun violence.  (Also intuitively, I suspect somewhere, there's a nation with strict gun laws and lots of gun violence and a nation with few gun laws and little gun violence.) Determining whether those relationships are correlative or causal will take more digging.


The most I can see here are unsupported claims connected only because of a connection to violent crime.


P-1: Country X has strict gun laws.


P-2: Country X has little gun violence.


P-3: Country X has a high rate of violent crime overall. 


Therefore: C: - ???

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