Would you say, “Automobile run amok in crowd, killing 22”? I think you’d say, “Person drives car into crowd, killing 12” instead. This is a similar case. Also, you don’t blame a gun for killing, but the person who pulled the trigger. The question is still out as to whether we as humans should wield any of those three things.
Edit: let’s not get into ideological arguments about gun control, automobiles, etc here; I meant that you can’t blame an object when a human has to take an action, not get into a political battle.
So the agent is exhibiting an unknown amount of autonomy thus we can't be certain whether "running amok" carries the correct connotation.
However that phrasing is also commonly used when a person or group wreaks havoc in a seemingly unpredictable manner. So I think the appropriateness comes down to how much chaos it has created and the level of apparent confusion on the ground.
There's a difference between the driver intentionally driving into crowd, and not intentionally but possibly still recklessly (drifting and losing control, falling asleep, etc). In those cases I would probably use "car hits the crowd", at least in my language
There may be a difference in degree of the crime but the driver is still responsible in both cases and should be the primary subject of any reporting.
Let's reserve "car hits the crowd" for situations where no driver was involved like a break failure on a car parked on a slope or a self-driving car bug.
Ironically news outlets like to use the phrasing you rightfully point out as absurd. Not sure if they just do it randomly or only when they get orders to push a certain narrative.
>Car plows into Christmas market in Germany, killing at least 5 and injuring 200
It's very simply explained by this being the most succinct way of wording it. Some methods of killing have verbs that suit mentioning the attacker - shoots, stabs. Some don't. "Rammed" or "runs over" isn't as precise as mentioning that a car was used, and adding "with car" makes it more awkward than it's felt to be worth.
Compare bombs. Very typical for a bomb attack to be "bomb goes off in crowd" or similar, rare for headlines to contort themselves with "terrorist plants bomb near crowd and triggers it to explode". But nobody worries about how such a construction assigns undue agency to the bomb and acquits the bomber; it's just linguistically awkward to mention him within the confines of a newspaper headline.
Unfortunately the news commonly do put the automobile as the subject when the driver is of a class politically protected from blame. Just like with people anthropomorphizing AI, it serves to deflect blame from the real culprit.
Calling a zealot a zealot does not mean that one is incapable of discussing the underlying topic. We must not let the desire to converse intelligently hamstring our ability to call out obviously corrupt patterns of thought for what they are.
Anyway my above reply was hardly the appropriate venue to engage in a genuine manner on that topic. The parent was blatantly derailing things by inserting his pet political issue. That sort of behavior undermines the community and so (IMO) should not be indulged.
> even remotely plausible to blame cars for killing cyclists
Car design has significant influence on pedestrian survivability of accidents. This is why hood ornaments were largely abolished, and also why casualties have gone up as SUVs with poor lower forwards visibility have become popular.
If we really want to go off topic, we should drag in the use of technological protection methods: what is the equivalent of ADAS for guns? Maybe as a baseline the US government should mandate geofencing for guns as it has for drones. Put a phone level computer with GPS in the lower receiver with a trigger interlock. It would then disable when within 100m of a school, or during periods of rioting. That could also provide a live feed to the government of every round fired.
> Regardless of your political views a tool is a tool at the end of the day. Attempting to anthropomorphize a category of objects in order to shift blame all for the sake of furthering an agenda is plainly bad faith behavior.
Guns are literally made for killing people. That's their only reason for existence. They are a weapon. This makes them qualitatively different from cars, which only incidentally kill people (and the vast majority of time, not on purpose).
To me, trying to equate deaths caused by purpose-made killing tools with those caused by generic tools is arguing in bad faith.
Blindly repeating superficial slogans seems like a good candidate for “driven mad by propaganda.” At the very least, it’s what people do when they are amplifying a position for ideological reasons, not contributing in good faith.
People without guns kill a lot fewer people than people with guns. Claiming that acknowledging this fact means you’ve been “driven mad by propaganda” is dumb.
This is not true; there are quite a few people with guns who have never killed anyone, and quite a few people without guns who found a way to kill someone anyway. Poison, knives, hammers, rocks, windows, their bare hands. You name it someone has killed someone with it.
No I think we should definitely find a creative way to drag at least abortion and freedom of speech into this "conversation". Fight fire with fire so to speak.
Edit: let’s not get into ideological arguments about gun control, automobiles, etc here; I meant that you can’t blame an object when a human has to take an action, not get into a political battle.