Storch,
I have been debating this topic on this board for months. Looks like you've only just started, and need filling in with the background. Let me help you out.
Look at the Swiss, they are fully armed, fully free and have avoided involvement in all 20th century conflicts, any gun related homicides in switzerland, never read about them. Hmmmm.
Many if not most gun homicides occur where there is social depreivation/ethnic unrest/drug dealing/drug related turf wars. NONE of those traits applies to Switzerland. I've never been there, but I understand it's mainly white, wealthy, high standard of living, and does not need to sully itself by becoming part of the European Community, adopting the European currency, or by participating in any armed conflicts. I think these factors might have some bearing on the situation in Switzerland, especially the absence of racial tensions and drugs.
You also should consider the per capita rate, not the 5000 vs 750 homicide numbers, I'm not sure but i believe the US might possibly have a larger population than the whole of the UK, Canada and Australia combined.
That 750 is for ALL homicides, of which only about 60 are gun related in a typical year. In the US, MOST homicides involve guns, and handguns at that. The figure just for gun homicides in the US is some years has been as high as 13,000. So we're not comparing 5000 with 750 on a per capita basis, we're comparing 13,000 with 60 on a per capita basis.
The very fact that in addition to the 60 gun homicides we have each year there are about 690 homicides committed by other means demonstrates that people are having to go to great lengths to commit their wrongdoings by other methods, and that if guns were freely available, our annual tally of homicides would rise from 750 to perhaps as many as 3000. But those other methods are much less efficient than guns. You have to get close to wound or kill with a sharp object; a gun can kill at long range. Just last month I fired Lazs's .44 Magnum - a weapon of awesome power. I can only imagine that a single shot to any location of a human torso would be sufficient to cause death. The killing process is made so much easier and more efficient by the use of a gun, hence the handgun being a killer's chosen instrument where available.
But you made some good points. Away from high risk areas in America, I feel completely safe. In California last month, we never felt threatened or at risk.
I mean please send any available weapons to help our allies blah blah blah, who were so sheepish as to allow their gov't (more people have been killed by their own gov't than by virus or bacteria) to disarm them without so much as a muted complaint.
That situation predates me, but I don't recall my grandparents (all of whom were born in the Victorian era) lamenting the absence of guns. My guess is that there were never many guns in the first place, and that regulating the supply of guns was to avoid a disaster which was only too apparent in America - the wild west of the 1800s, followed by the gangster years of the 1920s.
