The ban of all automatic and semi-automatic firearms

Wow, I messed up badly attributing that quote. It's actually the beginning of the Declaration of Independence. The reason I cited it is that it was signed by basically the same people who wrote the Constitution, so I think it's fair to bring it up if Founders' intent is what we're talking about here. The point is that our country was founded based on the idea that when no other recourse is available, citizens living under a tyrannical government ought to overthrow it, and even in 1776 that would be impossible if the government had guns but the citizens didn't. Do you think the American Revolution was immoral? I'm guessing you think it was a good thing, and it never would have happened if people didn't have guns. Obviously we live in a very different world today, but the fundamental facts remain the same. A disarmed populace is incapable of resisting the whims of a tyrannical government. And as I said in my previous argument, we oughtn't be complacent. History repeats itself, and things always are all right until they aren't. As for the swimming pool vs. gun argument- my argument was that when it comes to deciding whether or not to permit people to have swimming pools, there's a tradeoff. If you let people have swimming pools, they'll kill children at 100 times the rate of guns, but most of the time this won't happen, and pools are fun. So in a very real way, if you believe that people ought to be permitted to have swimming pools, you have to agree it's worth the deaths that result. There's the same tradeoff with guns. Some people will be hurt due to carelessness, but most aren't, and many people really enjoy hunting/target practice/etc., it's a very popular hobby. As said before, I think it's important to discount any personal bias against guns when weighing this issue. I have no interest in them. So if you go by accidental death rate, you need to ban swimming pools before you ban guns. As for non-accidental shootings, you need to ask yourself firstly, how many of those murderers get their guns legally? If they don't get them legally, those murders will still occur. With a gun ban, it's certain the rate of those murders would rise because there would be a vanishingly low chance of retaliation, and some law-abiding citizens who would have consented to background checks, etc. would be forced to acquire guns illicitly. For those who get their firearms legally, how many of those murders are premeditated? If they're premeditated, it's hard to see why a hunting rifle wouldn't do the trick. Let's look at the demographic that would be most affected by a gun ban: second degree murder, in the heat of the moment, with legally obtained handguns. These would clearly go down. I would bet also, though, that you'll see lots more stabbings-to-death and beatings-to-death. A murderous rage is a murderous rage. While some murders without a gun ban would instead, under a gun ban, become severe maulings. So the deaths here would decrease. However, that alone is not enough to recommend a gun ban. First, you'd need to factor in the increase in deaths I pointed out in the above paragraph. Then with that considered, it'd still be illogical to ban them unless they're deadlier than swimming pools. Or you could ban both, but then you've have a bunch of wet, gun-toting people pissed off at you. As for the UK, I don't think you can do the same cost-benefit analysis there as here, and it should involve a different statistic. There's nothing surprising about a country that bans guns having a low gun murder rate. But the real statistic of interest is overall murder rate. Side note: you need to use murder rates, not overall murders to compare countries. Another important thing to take into account is that the UK is a lot more racially homogeneous and integrated than the US. Blacks and, to a lesser degree, hispanics, are poorer and less integrated into society than others. Crime rates for most crimes are higher among poor people, but especially when they're members of a race that has been repeatedly subjected to discrimination and oppression. It's only natural. In addition, enough crimes are racially motivated that Congress passed hate crime laws. The UK is lily white by comparison and, in fact, as a metric of how different our countries are, there's a minor British political party called the British National Party whose website states: "we call for an immediate halt to all further immigration, the immediate deportation of criminal and illegal immigrants, and the introduction of a system of voluntary resettlement whereby those immigrants who are legally here will be afforded the opportunity to return to their lands of ethnic origin assisted by a generous financial incentives both for individuals and for the countries in question. We will abolish the ‘positive discrimination' schemes that have made white Britons second-class citizens. We will also clamp down on the flood of ‘asylum seekers', all of whom are either bogus or can find refuge much nearer their home countries." The US is sufficiently integrated so that a political party of this sort would never exist.