A very simple - perhaps oversimplified - question: let's pretend there were in the united states a fraction - say one half (1/10th even?) - of the guns currently present - how would that have prevented any of the recent shooting tragedies, all other factors remaining exactly the same? I am not saying it can't be so but I must confess that I am skeptical and I would like to know how that would work.
it really seems like you (Wojtek, but not him alone) are suggesting that the simple possession of firearms somehow changes a person...no?
I am genuinely curious and trying to sort my thoughts out on the matter. I have owned guns since I was a child (I bought my first gun, a semiautomatic .22, when I was 13) and I use them a lot (exclusively for hunting, to be clear), but I guess I am not seeing how this makes me more likely to go on a shooting spree than anybody else on the lbo list. Granted, this is a dreaded anecdote, but I am struggling to understand how a gun, through any inherent quality it possesses, makes me characteristically more likely to kill somebody than I would be if I did not have a gun*; it seems to me that the relative potential to kill is cultivated by other factors. But I am far from settled on the matter, I recognize the limitations of anecdotal data, and I have appreciated the debate.
*god forbid, it seems to me that if I (or anybody else) were to kill somebody, it would most likely be with a vehicle in an accident (the US murder rate - by all means - was apprx 4.7/100,000 [low relative to historical data from the US] in 2011 while the vehicle death rate was 1/10,000). Furthermore, and I think we all can agree on this (maybe), it would be much easier to take the sanctimonious cries for gun control more seriously if those demanding it would weep as bitterly for Afghan, Palestinian, or Iraqi children killed by our own public institutions (or with their complicity) as they did for the children in CT. Okay, maybe that was harsh...