Quote Originally Posted by shipwreked View Post
It would be unfortunate to bring a crowbar to a gun fight.

I would not argue that guns are equally lethal. They are ranged weapons and reload automatically. My point is that eliminating guns from society does not eliminate the problem of psycopaths succeeding in killing dozens of people in a very short amount of time, which is the problem. Not law abiding citizens owning guns, which is what the administration is currently focused on.
Setting aside the fact that while mass shootings are very visible and increasing and should be addressed, they actually are not the primary problem. That, I think, is the 30,000 people killed annually by gunfire in the US.

However, let's circle back to "psychopaths succeeding in killing dozens of people in a very short amount of time." I just gave you an extremely appropriate example of the Chinese knife attack in which several students were wounded, but no one was killed. That is not an outlier, either. China (for some reason) seems to have a mass knife attack issue, and that outcome is fairly typical. Knife (and other) weapon attacks simply aren't as lethal as gun attacks, especially when the guns in question are semiautomatic rifles with large clips, especially against multiple victims. Reducing access to guns does, in fact, reduce the ability of people to inflict death on others.

Guns are more lethal than any other commonly available weapon intended for person-on-person use. Guns are used for two-thirds of the homicides committed in the US even though other weapons (knives, ropes, cords, poison) are more widely available. Similarly affluent countries with more regulated access to guns have a similar *crime rate* overall to the US, but a much, much, much lower incidence of homicides because of the lack of weapons.