Do guns kill or do people kill people?

Elected officials are responsible for deaths

Question: Do guns kill or do people kill people?
Position‹2 of 2: People kill people
Argument‹3 of 4›: Elected officials are responsible for deaths

At what point do the elected officials who have the power to stop gun violence become to blame? How many deaths at the hands of gun violence will it take for lawmakers to make laws that stop people from killing other people?

The argument

People who have the power to do something about gun violence and choose not to are responsible for killing people. People like to argue that guns kill, but really, the blame should shift to politicians, lawmakers, and legislatures from state to federal governments. The public elects officials into office because officials make promises about what they are going to do to keep their constituents safe. They run on campaigns of promises for a better tomorrow, on vows to pass legislation that will ensure safer futures. If elected officials choose to not pass gun legislation that can prevent the hundreds of shootings that countries like the US see every day, maybe we should shift the blame to them. Maybe the blame should be shifted to the politicians of the Republican Party who refuse to pass common-sense gun laws that could save lives. Vice President Joe Biden says that Republican lawmakers “should be exposed for what they refuse to do because they’re being intimidated.” Republicans who refuse to pass gun control legislation because they are intimated by people within their own party perpetuate gun violence. People kill people because it is people who have the authority to put an end to gun violence.

Premises

[P1]Elected officials campaign on promises to keep their constituents safe by passing legislation for a safer future. [P2] When lawmakers who have the authority to reduce gun violence choose not to pass preventive legislation — as the argument charges Republican lawmakers do out of intra-party intimidation — they bear responsibility for the shootings that continue. [C] Because it is people in power who could end gun violence and don't, people, not guns, kill people.

Counter-arguments

The argument that elected officials are responsible for the actual acts of killing and murder is not true. Elected officials can’t cause countless deaths in a span of seconds. They are not the objects that fire bullets into bodies. Guns are the weapons of destruction, and guns are instruments that kill people. It is true that when common-sense gun laws don’t get passed, it makes it easier for gun violence to continue to be perpetuated. But, elected officials and politicians do not directly cause death. They are indirectly related to the prevailing causes, which are bad people with guns and guns themselves. Guns kill people.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise states a campaign convention. That candidates promise safety establishes what they say when seeking office, not a duty of the kind the conclusion needs, and legislatures are built so that no individual member can deliver a law alone. [Rejecting P2] Responsibility for failing to prevent a harm is not responsibility for causing it, and the premise moves between the two without argument. The motive attributed — intra-party intimidation — is asserted of one party, and the claim further assumes that the legislation in question would have prevented the specific shootings, which is a separate empirical matter. [Rejecting C] The conclusion then lands somewhere the position did not intend. "People kill people" is normally the claim that the shooter rather than the weapon bears responsibility, and relocating it to legislators shifts blame away from the person who fired — while resting the case on gun legislation concedes that the availability of the weapon is part of the explanation, which is the opposing position.