https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/
"I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall
this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2025
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This is like saying guns don't kill people
The tool you use to kill is irrelevant, because the tool has no intent. Mens rea is, with the exception of a very, very few strict liability crimes, a requirement for an action to be criminal. A tool can not have intent.
Setting aside that the discussion was never a legal one (and either way, what is legal does not mean is moral);
The tool is still very relevant. If you have the intent to kill many but only a stick, you probably won't get as far because sticks are not as dangerous as guns, or even words for that matter, when used.
I see you haven't been paying a lot of attention to the news.
Thanks for the strawman, I see now you're arguing in bad faith (or are one of those Americans hyper focused on guns)
Oh, look, an ad hominem. Cool.
Firearms are not, themselves, the problem, despite however much people want to treat them as though they are. Likewise, in the UK, kitchen knives and scissors are not the problem, although the gov't treats them as though they are.
Guns, knives, sticks, cars, and yes, even explosives, are tools. If you eliminate the causes that turn people to violence, you eliminate the use of the tools to commit violent acts. But no one is willing to discuss violence as a result of things like economic warfare or systemic racism; they insist that violence exists because the tools used in violent acts exist.
The discussion was never about the guns, dumdum (this, btw, is an ad hominem)
This you?
Still missing the point.
The criticism was on your "words don't kill people" part.
Neither guns nor words spawn out of nothing.
Automatic sentient guns, that's what kills people.
Oh and people who happen to use guns to kill others
Pull a trigger in the air without a gun, and see how many you kill.
The gun is an extension of the user - without the gun, you cannot shoot, just as without a person the gun won't shoot.
Same is the case for words. They didn't come out of the aether into existence, and when spoken carry the will of the speaker inherently.
It's not "just words", it can be malice or hate given form - that is, after all, the point of communication; to give form of what you desire or think to others.