And I'm tired of the notion that arguments are based on points, and that calling out rhetorical fallacies somehow makes an argument "invalid" in its entirety when arguments are actually based on 3 pillars and the invalidation of one does not defeat the argument as a whole. I don't know why it became such a big thing on the internet to call out fallacies as if it's a game of soccer and people get yellow cards over them; they're perfectly valid rhetorical tools, albeit risky ones.
Can't really argue with this.
For reasons of explanation, "No True Scotsman" accusations really, really tick me off, because the only real use for them is tarring a large group with the misdeeds of a smaller one. That made me far testier than I should have been, and this particular derail was already irritating me quite a bit. That may have caused me to fly off the handle a bit.
(THIS POST WAS EDITED FOR CLARITY)
See, I get where you're coming from, but I'd argue they're valid tools in a statistical sense; if X% of group Y do thing Z, then it's valid in the absence of better data to assume that every Y has an X% chance of doing so -- although that's a terrible basis for policy decisions and I'm actually arguing against doing so. There are valid ways to shift people in and out of groups, but just declaring "Y by definition do not ever Z" is unhelpful, because it doesn't tell us anything about how to redefine Y with what we know now. Thus the No True Scotsman -- it is, in a sense, tarring a big group with a little group, but only insofar as it points out that the tar exists and we need a better definition of the groups.
Or, in this particular case, we already have an implicit definition of people who should have guns, at least in theory, in the form of gun license holders, and it's clear that definition includes people who we end up wishing would not (or, often, did not) have guns. Unfortunately, any attempt to improve that comes off as offensively punitive to a vocal subset of the gun enthusiast community, even when it's intended to reduce the risk that people will later decide to take their guns because we can't tell who should have them. That's what annoys me, and why I came off more abrasively than even I intended. Yes, millions of responsible gun owners exist. So do a small fraction of people who pass background checks and have licenses and end up killing loads of people anyway. Separating the two need not be punitive, and it is, in my view, the most workable alternative to punitive measures that might otherwise be insisted upon, so it's a pity that people (Shazbot, in this case) approach it with such hostility. Unfortunately, research into what correlates with gun misuse that might inform a better approach to background checks -- which, to be clear, is as much about reducing unfounded denials of licenses to people who should them as the inverse -- is in short supply right now, and any attempt to reverse the amendment that made it hard to fund tends to also get a lot of pushback.
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