[Armistead]

Originally Posted by CCIP

And yet another side to it is the fact that lack of guns does not mean lack of violent crime. Some parts of Britain for example are having a pretty serious problem with knife crime, something that is ultimately very difficult to regulate. Most of my own experience with violent crime was in Russia where despite guns being illegal and rarely used outside in crime of gang warfare, the murder rate was through the roof during the 90s, and most of said murders were committed with knives or blunt objects. Like gun crime in America, I think those things reflect cultural and social problems more than they do attitude to weapons.

While I have no principled connection between guns and freedom like some US citizens do, I do see how the idea of taking guns away from, say, your average guy who lives up in the hills of Tennessee is pretty absurd. It's almost like taking knives away from housewives or hunters - all it is is just another tool in the shed, one that they might be just a little attached to culturally, but honestly it's not the insane thing that some people seem to take it for. Handgun bans in DC or Chicago may make some sense, but at the same time, whether/how well they worked is still pretty difficult to say. The US is a big and complex country, culturally-speaking. No single solution to crime problems is ever going to work on a federal, or even state level. I think people need to pay less attention to guns, though, and more to what causes violent crime and how it can be dealt with better on a community level.

Some good points! Guns are much more humane than being gutted with a knife or battered to death with a club. Imagine a world without guns, even knives, where people would have to resort to forks and spoons to kill.