The difference between the office example and the gun example is that the generalized version would actually make sense in the office example (for example, here is Derek Sivers bringing a similar argument up: https://sivers.org/punish ). If you were my coworker saying the generalized version to me in an office, I would have interpreted you as having the generalized opinion. Of course, since I agree, I wouldn't have raised a counterexample, and you would have walked away thinking I agreed with what you meant instead of what you said. Language is tricky like that.