Of course not. I never tried to make that case. But suicide massacres are a small fraction of gun violence. The big fantasy (I think) is the idea that you could make a significant impact on the number of guns already out there. But if you could ban and actually remove all the easily concealable weapons, I think that would have a dramatic impact on gun homicides. It would be far more effective than an assault weapons ban. For some reason we focus on assault weapons and ignore handguns, but if you wanted to make a practical difference, you should do the opposite. Ban handguns and allow assault weapon.
Plus, if the argument has something to do with being armed to influence the degree to which our government (or these days, our corporations) can oppress us, then again, allow assault weapons.
Need to separate issues here. There is the issue of the availability of "weapons" (including firearms), and the issue of curbing violence against human beings - but while there is an indirect causal relationship between the two, it sounds like what you're really after is a way to deal with the advance of technology and the increased efficiency of the abilty to kill someone.
In an ideal world what are you after? We are working in reasonably far-fetched hypotheticals, right? You don't think it would be possible to advance technology in some other weapon area that didn't include an explosion to propel a projectile? I could envision a weapon system designed to administer a deadly poison from a range equivalent to a gun without any projectile at all. What if we can now make them that much easier and cheaper than guns. To me that is as likely as your ban on any gun longer than x-inches. So should we preemptively ban the development of any such weapon? Maybe your answer is yes. So my question is - is it specifically guns, or just the current target of today?
Yes a real analogy that you can attack all you want:
Sure - make cars less available and we would have far less deaths due to accidents. Take cigarettes away, and we would have far less deaths due to lung cancer. Take asbestos away and we would have far less deaths due to mesothelioma.
Note that efforts of all kinds have taken place in an attempt to reduce the "killer" to varying degrees. The varying degree aspect may be the key question, or is it something else?
The analogies are only bad for one reason, they don't deal with the ethical problem of deliberately killing someone. Are you willing to separate that question from just "owning a handgun"? If not, then I guess the argument is over, we will just have to agree to disagree.
Is it sheer numbers? 650 million guns, but far less . . . say . . . bazookas? To me that is a heuristic - society's technological ability to kill their fellow human beings will evolve to have as many "weapons of choice" as the "market" will bear.
Guess what . . . it really does boil down to a philosophical and ethical question.
As I said, I won't stop anyone from banning a weapon. Whatever it provides for you (or society for that matter), it is probably a good thing.
. . . but don't think for a minute that one of those things will be to actually reduce the number of people who want to find a way to kill their fellow man.
It won't even reduce the number of people who will kill someone who wants to do them harm.
Sure reduce their number, but without any other measures to attack the real problems, I personally don't think it has a real lasting effect. At least it hasn't to date.
