I'm still glad there wasn't a gun in our house, though.
And I am infinitely glad that we have multiple guns in our home. We have had thousands of dollars stolen from us (electrical equipment stored in a trailer that was stolen during the night), our well water was meant to be poisoned (but the person attempting to do so did not understand that the chemicals in ballasts do not seep out by themselves over time) and we had someone come up to our house during the day when everyone was away, save for a family friend staying with us, with the intent to break in and steal even more stuff only to be thwarted when threatened by a firearm. The only reason more shit doesn't happen to us is the criminals - the stupid, redneck, career criminals that lie, cheat, steal, get caught, go to jail, get right back out - know that we have guns and that we will use them should they threaten our safety.
And they don't mess with anyone else that also has guns, unless they can get away with things while those people are away. Guns are a deterrent, just as much as they are an actual weapon. There's a saying that the most polite conversation is one in which all participants are armed. It's a Mutually Assured Destruction scenario that no one wants to kick off. That's not the ideal way to live, but it's pretty much the only way its going to work unless you stack the deck in favor of people who aren't going to listen to you when you tell them they can't have guns.
As for your attitude that apparently the only criminals anyone is talking about are those in organized crime because no one knows what they're talking about, I'm not talking about organized criminals. I'm talking about Joe Blow down the street who owns an illegally modified fully automatic rifle. I'm talking about someone that would break into a construction yard to steal and pawn off all the copper as scrap. I'm talking about people who give their kids drugs to peddle in the schools. I'm talking about people who give their kids drugs
for their birthday. Those are the people who are going to do whatever they want and don't give a damn about the rules if they don't get caught breaking them, and they don't get caught pretty fucking often. Therefore, you can never sell me on any idea pertaining to trusting such people that they will listen when you tell them they can't have guns, because they already have guns they can't have. Maybe they won't shoot me or my family, but they'll definitely steal everything they can. But me, being a law-abiding and upstanding citizen, would then be motivated to no longer be law-abiding and upstanding just so I can feel safe in my own home. Anything less than an absolutely despotic ban and top-to-bottom search and massive amounts of funding into constant vigilance to ensure that no one has guns ever isn't going to cut it, and we will never go that far, so its a moot point. It can never be considered by anyone to be a good idea until that happens, because anything less is wrongfully giving the bad elements of society the benefit of the doubt. You might stop the "disappointed husbands/wives" or the "kiddies going through a phase", yes, but you're giving free reign to all of the actually bad people to do worse things than they already are because there's not a damn thing stopping them, and from all of the data on gun control, that's the worse option.
Suicide, compared to that, is a relativvely minor point - statistics show that people will usually just switch to a different method.
Pretty sure statistics also show that people will switch to another method to murder people. There have been serial stabbings in countries that have firearms bans, after all. I'll need to do some digging when I'm not so tired.
Glyph, see above. That's why I disagree with the handgun ban, because perfection is unattainable and anything less is unacceptable because it puts more people into danger than it might otherwise help (and I have all the gun control law statistics to back that statement up, including the handgun ban in Chicago), which eliminates your opportunity argument. Better regulation, absolutely. Better tracking, absolutely. More law enforcement dedicated to keeping track of registered weapons and helping make sure that unregistered weapons no longer exist, absolutely. Declaring that no guns are allowed? No, sorry, there simply isn't enough that can be done to otherwise guarantee safety, even if it means that lawfully-obtained guns might be used to harm other people.
I've done all the research for this. I've looked at the effects of gun bans in the States. I've looked at the effects of concealed carrying licenses. I've looked at the extreme cases of gun control, where a government intoxicated with the power of its exclusive weaponry murders its civilians. I've looked at much more regulated forms of gun control, such as in Switzerland. For the United States, the only thing that can work is simply a better system of pretty much what we've got. I'd like to think if we went full despotism on the matter that events like the
massacre at Kent State wouldn't happen, but I simply can't see us going that far regardless. I can't see us going for a standing militia and hand every able-bodied citizen a gun, there's too much invested in how our military operates and how people respond to things such as drafts. Aiming for the perfection of a reality without the threat of mutually assured destruction and without the threat that anyone can end another's life when they feel like it is a noble undertaking. Anything less than actual perfection isn't getting close to it, though, it's just half-assing it and causing more problems than it solves. It goes too far against our culture to reach that perfection, and its either that perfection or its nothing at all, because everything but that is worse than what we have.
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