[WS:] I think that the main problem here is that homicide and violence result from many factors and at the same time they are sufficiently rare events - which makes it virtually impossible to analytically separate the effect of gun ownership from all other factors. So all we can do is to repeat ad nauseam anecdotal evidence supporting our positions on the issue.
The reason that I take the no effect position is that it is really easy to kill a person or even a number of people with a wide range of implements, guns, knives, bombs, vehicles, baseball bats, chain saws, pushing of the cliff or into the metro tracks, and so on - and the main factor is the determination to kill rather than mere access to the potentially lethal implements.
There is a related issue of substitution - i.e whether the limits on access to one lethal means would result in finding an alternative means or abandoning the original intent to kill altogether. Based on the literature I am familiar with, I think the latter is rather unlikely, which leads me to believe that restricting access to one type of lethal implements would, ceteris paribus, result in using alternative implements rather than reduction in homicide and violence.
Again, these are relatively rare events resulting from a wide range circumstances, so you can probably find both supporting cases and exceptions to my interpretation. But I think it is just plain wrong to claim an effect when it is virtually impossible to assemble convincing evidence of that effect, by which I mean evidence that rules out other possible effects.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."