There are two things that make me think that less access to guns would be a good thing:
- look at information from other countries, see how they have less guns, and less suicide/homicide
- consider what percentage of suicide and homicide is related to heat of the moment decisions. If you slow down that persons access to a gun by even 10 minutes, how many of those decisions would not be made?
Is that correlational or causational? Is it because of cultural differences? Population differences? Is it just because they have fewer guns? Better access to healthcare or mental healthcare? Better laws regarding domestic violence? Less gang violence? Less racism? Less poverty? More? There’s a lot to consider when comparing two countries that feed into suicide and homicide rates than just “they have fewer guns and therefore fewer deaths.” I also want to point out that I’m not arguing that less guns here wouldn’t equal less deaths because that’d be stupid. If we could completely ban driving and alcohol and drugs, we’d see less deaths there, too (and there’d be a much bigger impact than banning guns as well!).
You definitely would see fewer crimes of passion and spur-of-the-moment suicides, I won’t deny that at all. But when someone really wants to kill another person, or when someone is really sure they don’t want to live anymore… that’s not something that can be stopped by less access to a given implement. That’s the real problem I’m looking at here: how do we keep it from getting to the point where a certain tool is the issue?
you raise excellent points. but isn’t it worth trying out the premise that less guns means less violence? That is the part that i never understand. there is such a strong desire to keep guns in america… that it seems to make it impossible to try solutions.