But cars kill more people than guns

...so why don't we ban cars?

This is either a terrible argument for not banning guns, or a fantastic argument for banning cars.

Almost every American I know knows someone who died in a car accident, and almost every one of them has been in a car accident themselves. In the 20 years I've lived in the US, I have had three car accidents. I was at fault for one of them, and I could have easily been killed in one of them.

Cars cause about 100 deaths a day in the US. It is one of the leading causes of death for people with no underlying medical conditions. This number is on par with suicide deaths, and was on par with drug overdose deaths until the opioid crisis blew up. 100 deaths a day is about 1 death per 3 million people. About 3 million people take the New York Subway every day. Imagine if the New York Subway has an accident every month and kills 30 people--will you take the subway?

But people drive everywhere every day. The risk has been normalized. So much of America has been indoctrinated into thinking that there is no alternative, and this belief has manifested itself thru city design, reinforcing and justifying itself in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Gun control advocates want to ban guns because they see guns as an unnecessary evil. They argue that, unlike cars, guns are designed for killing. But cars? Surely they are a necessary evil. We need them to get to places, and we just have to tolerate the collateral deaths.

Are they necessary though? Or did we make them necessary?

Since the 1950s, the number of vehicle-related death in the US has averaged between 100 to 150 a day. Although the number of death per passenger mile has gone down, the average number of miles driven has gone up over the same time period. Cities have become more spread out and certain types of neighborhoods were bulldozed for highways. To paraphrase a popular saying from the urban planning community, American cities weren't built for cars, they were demolished for cars. So, even though cars have become safer, American cities have become more spread out, requiring Americans to drive more and maintain the steady flow of blood sacrifice.

Why would a teenager turn on the TV to watch the terror of another school shooting when they can go to the funeral of a classmate who died in a car accident, and accept death by cars to be as unpreventable as an act of god? At least you can have a rally for gun control, but an America without cars? Unthinkable!