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it might be more like saying "but look how many people guns have saved!" - a transparent attempt to shift the narrative away from the harm in the first place


Considering the balance of harm caused vs prevented seems like a very reasonable way of looking at just about every single topic in existence.


deflecting from the harm to the benefits does not strike me as a balanced discussion of both


You can talk about literally anything that way, as long as you've already made up your mind. Here watch:

Everyone's always talking about the benefits of seatbelts, but it's just a distraction by big seatbelt to deflect from the harm seatbelts cause. All these "statistics" and "studies" about people surviving maybe because they were restrained are just to cover up the fact that some people are burned alive in crashes because they can't get out of these aforementioned restraints! Any discussion of the benefits of seatbelts exists only to spit on their graves.


I mean, you're the one talking about things that way, but it's only true if you ignore reality:

in reality, people AREN'T all talking about the benefits or costs of seatbelts, because there's been virtually universal agreement on both as of decades ago

in reality, people ARE talking about the harms of drones and guns, and dismissing such harms by deflecting to unrelated benefits rather than directly addressing the harms seems disingenuous, and not a balanced discussion, much less one around what people are actually discussing: the harms

there could be a million benefits of something, but none of them presented is a direct addressing of any given harm of that thing




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