I carry a Swiss Army Knife. I always check a bag so I can have it with me when I am traveling. The one above is kind of grotty from living at the bottom of my bag.

I use the knife blades to slice open that ridiculously tough plastic packaging that almost every thing comes in, or as a letter opener, or (after washing) to cut cheese, fruit and other snacks. My second most common use is as a can or bottle opener. Followed by the screw driver…then the corkscrew. Sometimes the tweezers come in handy.

One does not use a semi-automatic machine gun to open a letter, slice an apple, open a can, tighten a screw , uncork a wine bottle, or take out a splinter. Most importantly: No one has ever shot up an elementary school with a Swiss army knife. To compare an AR-15 to a Swiss army knife is a false equivalence.

The federal judge who made that statement is both irresponsible and dangerously wrong.

This is the second time this week that a ridiculous false equivalence about guns has crossed my path. The first was in the comments of a thoughtful post by Fandango: Second Amendment Thoughts.

That one bothered me even more: the person compared owning a gun, favoring the AR-15, to having a smoke detector. Excuse me?

The same person said that more people are killed with knives than rifles. I looked it up. If you are talking about gun homicides, the number was 10, 372 of 15,318 homicides total in 2016, the year that Breitbart’s bad faith narrative is based on. A far cry from the 374 deaths stated to be from rifles that year. It needs to be noted that, in many cases, the type of gun is not specified in police reports so the 374 number is not accurate. That year the number of deaths from knives was 1500 or so (10% of the firearm homicides). Fact check by Snopes. The beloved AR-15 is sometimes counted as a rifle, but not always, it is often classed as a pistol. The harping on this incomplete data is a bad faith, diversionary tactic.

The ridiculous analogies and harping on a single incomplete data point are a deliberate deflection from the serious discussion that needs to occur about firearms. People who do this are manipulative, evil and immoral. You cannot trust what they say.

The culture of video games and TV programs is a player in this mythology as well. Guns are often portrayed as sexy and cool. They are not.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t have a problem with people who own a gun, learn how to use it, store it safely, teach their kids that it is very dangerous and not a toy, then hunt deer, or ducks, or something-so long as they eat what they kill. I grew up in a rural area and learned to use a firearm, but that was long ago. These days, if I were to shoot at a squirrel, crow or rabbit I might hit a neighbor. A risk I am not willing to take. We chose to not have firearms in the house when blessed with a mechanically adept child.

These false equivalences, comparing guns to useful things and safety measures, are extremely dangerous. They encourage people who aren’t going to bother to learn how to use the guns safely, or store them safely, to buy one without taking adequate safety measures. A gun is as far from a safety device as you can get.

A gun is dangerous and children are often victims: Thousands of children, teens killed by guns annually in the US.

Owning a gun is a responsibility.

Anyone who can seriously compare owning a gun to having a smoke detector, a dog, or a Swiss army knife clearly does not get it…or worse, gets it and doesn’t care how many people die (the definition of a sociopath).