Guns kill people!

Frithaes. I suppose my goal here is to prove that my argument is not as "flaw full and pointless" as you suggest. Shall I? And for the record, guns /do/ kill people. They don't necessarily have to be shot by someone to do so. They can misfire or be dropped or some other such thing. But exploding aerosol cans kill people too, so by that logic we should start banning hairspray. But that's rather beside the point because I assume the argument is about gun control and not whether or not guns kill people. Although by the way you're talking, I really can't be sure. So, to start, nobody wants to completely ban guns. There may be a few wing nuts out there that want to make it illegal to own any sort of gun, but the vast majority of people that want gun bans only want to ban handguns and prevent civilians from owning automatic or semi-automatic guns. Your precious hunting rifles and such are safe. The main point is to get rid of guns that kill people. Handguns are small and easy to hide. It's pretty easy for someone to carry a concealed handgun, corner you in a dark alley and rob you. It's much harder to do so with a hunting rifle. Handguns are designed to kill people at a fairly close range. As for the automatic and semi-automatic guns, there is absolutely no good reason for anyone to own a gun designed for war. Those guns are not made to hunt deer, they're not made for target practice, they are made solely for murder. There is therefore no logical reason why a civilian should need one. So the point isn't to ruin your target practice and hunting, it's just to take guns specifically designed to kill people (i.e. handguns and automatic/semi-automatic weapons) away from civilians. And you're probably going to argue that we need handguns to defend ourselves against other people with guns. But the goal here is to totally eliminate these types of guns. All guns owned by the thugs and robbers you imagine are out to get you were bought or stolen. They didn't materialize out of thin air. So if you ban gun sales, and collect civilians' guns, for a while, admittedly, the criminals will have guns while civilians do not. But after a relatively short amount of time, they will be caught by the police and their guns will be destroyed, or they will run out of ammunition or some other such thing. And since there will be a finite number of guns and ammunition left, they'll eventually run out. And if the criminals don't have guns, everyone's a whole lot safer. And no one believes that without guns people will be nicer and that murder and suicide rates will plummet. But it will make it much harder to commit murder. It's a whole lot easier to threaten someone with a gun than it is with a knife. Other weapons are a lot less dangerous, so it would certainly cut down on crime rate. If someone's after you with a knife, all you have to do is run. And the police will still have guns. How long would a stand-off last if one party has a handgun and the other has a knife? And for that matter, you can still keep your hunting rifles anyway, so while you probably wouldn't ride in around in your car with one, you're certainly able to defend yourself at home. Everyone knows what the clicking sound a rifle makes means. The sound alone would cause potential burglars to scatter. So all in all, you're still pretty safe. And suicide rates will probably drop off somewhat, even if suicide attempts probably will not. If someone has a gun, there's no time for second thoughts. You pull the trigger and you're dead. The vast majority of people who commit suicide by gun are teenaged boys, who are incredibly impulsive to begin with. They often don't think things through. Other ways to commit suicide, leave much more time for the victim to give up or be found by someone. A lot of kids that kill themselves don't really want to die, they're just desperate. Given more time they may attempt suicide and then realize their heart's not in it. That's a huge plus to gun control, by the way. Getting guns away from impulsive teenaged boys. There can't be school shootings without guns. And there have been cases where kids as young as eleven have found guns and shot their classmates. Not having guns around would prevent repeats of things like the Columbine or Virginia Tech shootings, as well as a lot of accidental gun deaths where kids that were goofing off with a parent's gun accidentally shot themselves or someone else. So all in all, gun control's a pretty good thing.