You make some excellent points, Jeff. To add to your comment: Simon, you're point about Canada having lots of guns and far fewer deaths actually proves the point a lot of us are trying to make. Its not the guns, its the people.
In 10 states, more than 8 percent of adults hold concealed carry permits, and all are among the states with the lowest crime rates... We found that the size of the drop [in crime] is directly related to the percentage of the population with permits,"
... A 2007 Harvard Study entitled "Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?" looks at figures for "intentional deaths" throughout continental Europe and compares them with the United States to show that more gun control does not necessarily lead to lower death rates or violent crime. The study concludes that the "the mantra that more guns mean more deaths and that fewer guns, therefore, mean fewer deaths" is wrong.
... The study then examined instances of intentional deaths by looking at the U.S. and comparing them to Continental Europe. Despite assertions that the United States is the most violent nation in the world by anti-gun groups, the U.S. came in seventh behind Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, and the Ukraine in murders. In suicides, the U.S. ranked 22.
The authors of the study concluded that gun opponents should "at the very least [be able] to show a large number of nations with more guns have more death and that nations that impose stringent gun controls have achieved substantial reductions in criminal violence (or suicide)." But noted in its intense study, "those correlations are not observed when a large number of nations are compared around the world."
... In light of all this information, if government officials truly desire to reduce murder rates and keep the population, especially children, safer, they should encourage gun ownership by responsible, law abiding citizens rather than try to restrict access to firearms. After all, making something illegal doesn't make it go away, but simply drives it into the hands of criminals. Such is the case with drugs in this country currently, and was the case with alcohol during Prohibition.
Governments throughout history have restricted people's access to weapons for the primary purpose of controlling the population. The most oppressive governments are the ones that prevent the "masses" from arming themselves. This is precisely why the Founding Fathers included the Second Amendment in the U.S. Constitution, preventing the federal government from infringing on the people's natural right to defend themselves
