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 Luciferian wrote:
Out of those 30,000 gun deaths each year, nearly ALL of them are committed using standard capacity, small caliber, concealable handguns. And a majority of them are committed by criminals in major urban areas that have restrictive gun laws. Again, facts.

You've got a few things wrong there.

The first mistake is in confusing gun deaths with homicides. Of the 30,000 gun deaths, around 20,000 are suicides. So unless you believe there's a vast, unreported suicide cult among the nation's urban crime gangs, you might want to admit you got your numbers mixed up.

The second mistake is repeating the myth that murders with firearms are mostly crime related. Going by FBI 2013 data, of 12,253 murders, the motive was known in 7,691 instances. Of that 7,691, only 2,631 were motivated by a crime or a gang affiliation. The rest, 5,060 murders, 65%, were caused by arguments, love triangles, bar room fights and all kinds of other nonsense.

So your overall picture of gun deaths in the US is way off. Urban crime is not the major story of US gun deaths. The most common gun death is a man, alone, shooting himself with his own gun. In second place, a long way behind, is an argument with a person you already knew, that escalates to a shooting. Then in third place, a long way after that, you get robberies gone bad. Then in fourth place, just behind the robberies you get family members shooting each other.

But I do agree that it isn't about rifles, pistols do most of the killing.


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 Ouze wrote:
Well, part of the problem from the gun control end of it that it's usually pretty bad. If you look at gun violence as a whole, the great majority of death comes from handguns, but when politicians talk about ways to combat death from firearms it's usually poorly thought out legislation like the most recent Assault Weapons Ban, which banned stuff like bayonet lugs and flash hiders and barrel shrouds and pistol grips and other cosmetic features. It's easy to shoot down the idea of a political response when they keep bringing garbage to the table.

I think one of the issues is that federal research in to gun deaths got nixxed by NRA lobbying in the mid-90s. Since then the US has been largely flying blind in terms of policies to combat gun deaths. And it's a shame, because with a better understanding of both gun use and gun deaths I think it would be possible to build policies that reduce gun deaths without infringing on the rights and enjoyment of guns by the vast majority.

Not that that's all of the perfect solution. Gun research was funded when the Assault Weapons Ban was passed, and it didn't stop that bill being so very stupid.

I think another little piece of it is that some Americans are wary of overreach, that we again will tilt our society strongly in a weird direction as an overreaction to a threat. The US moved the dial several notches towards a police state as a response to terrorism, which has killed less people in the last decade domestically than bee stings. The idea that we must now give up some more liberty doesn't play as well as it used to, and couple that with that loss of perceived liberty in service to some ineffective measures...

You just had a president win an election by reacting against the anti-police brutality movement by promising law & order and promising travel bans, so I don't think I see any kind of shift back towards civil liberties right now. I think its so much more complicated than just liberty vs safety. A large part of the issue is coloured by people wanting to feel that their people are in control of things. If they get that feeling, they get less concerned about losing liberty, because there's an assumption that my people would never take away my freedoms.

It's not the whole answer, but it helps explain why the liberal response to Obama's massive expansion of the drone strike program was so muted, and why so many conservatives happily went along with Trump's American carnage myth.

It was going to be about politics and such quickly anyway. If he would have been brown it would be all about Islam before the bodies were cold. Both sides have their talking points lined up and ready to pull the trigger.

“Do something” as a response to terrrism is the reason we have locked cockpit doors on airplanes, one good idea quickly followed by a ton of stupid ideas resulting in security theater and people letting the TSA feel their nuts because “it keeps us safe”.

The doors, and passengers now fighting back, are the only really effective things that came out of 9/11. I don’t think there has been a single Air Marshal that has actually stopped anything or do anything more than handcuff someone already subdued by passengers.

I think we as as nation should stop resorting to knee jerk responses every time a bunch of people get shot and pass half baked gun control policies that do nothing to stop the problem. I mean, really, how is forbidding a pistol grip or magazine releases on rifles going to help anything? We should start a comprehensive research program to investigate the causes of our gun violence and find a long term solution. We are likely never going to be able to prevent mass shootings but no country is 100% safe. This will likely take decades and cost billions of dollars to do but it's better than just shrugging our shoulders.

But I guess that would require compromise, sober thought and a unified course of action. We just simply can't have that in the United States.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Okay. So ISIS just claimed the attack. Says the killer converted to islam a few months ago and executed the attack on their behalf.
So it seems to have been terrorism after all.
https://www.rt.com/usa/405409-isis-responsibility-vegas-shooting/

Every time somebody slips on a banana skin, Islamic State claims responsibility for it, so I would not read too much into that claim.

Well provided slipper died on the spot. They don't take credit nearly as readily when perpetrator was left alive. Case in point: Finland where islamistic guy went on knifing spree and got caught alive. ISIS been very quiet on that front...

But here perpetrator died so ISIS is free to claim.


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 TheCustomLime wrote:
We are likely never going to be able to prevent mass shootings but no country is 100% safe.

Nope. But then again America has chosen it wants to be one of the most likely western countries to get killed by crime.

Just caught up on this thread and I have two observations:

1) other than a couple of outliers this is the most civil and constructive gun control / US pol-REDACTED- thread I have seen in a long while, so good job everyone.

2) all of the discussion around gun control (here and elsewhere) focuses on the guns themselves, but I think a more practical place to start in tackling this problem would be with ammunition; simply put you can only get a mass shooting if you have hundreds of rounds to fire off. I would throw in the challenge to the legal gun owners here, if you're hunting, or defending your home from robbery or protecting your person, how much ammunition do you need? One magazine? Two? Less than a hundred rounds surely.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
I think we as as nation should stop resorting to knee jerk responses every time a bunch of people get shot and pass half baked gun control policies that do nothing to stop the problem...We should start a comprehensive research program to investigate the causes of our gun violence and find a long term solution.

Reasonable idea - unfortunately one side of the debate tends to paint suggestions of a such studies as knee jerk reactions in and of themselves. You'd think if they're so confident that they'd be proven right, the gun lobby would be 100% behind comprehensive, independent studies. Hell, they could fund a ton of PhDs and post docs and get the bonus throwing-money-into-education plaudits. Gun control advocates have nothing to lose and would completely back it, seems a win-win, no? Well, unless you fear that all the evidence that you've paid to have collected and studied might actually suggest part of the long-term solution to gun violence might involve having fewer guns.

 Jadenim wrote:
Just caught up on this thread and I have two observations:

1) other than a couple of outliers this is the most civil and constructive gun control / US pol-REDACTED- thread I have seen in a long while, so good job everyone.

2) all of the discussion around gun control (here and elsewhere) focuses on the guns themselves, but I think a more practical place to start in tackling this problem would be with ammunition; simply put you can only get a mass shooting if you have hundreds of rounds to fire off. I would throw in the challenge to the legal gun owners here, if you're hunting, or defending your home from robbery or protecting your person, how much ammunition do you need? One magazine? Two? Less than a hundred rounds surely.

I would say more than a hundred and less than 5,000, and admit that it’s not a helpful answer. I don’t think it would be unreasonable to shot a hundred rounds a month just to stay proficient. I am far from an ammo hoarder, and I have somewhere around 500 rounds in 9mm between my self defense load and my range ammo. A box of 100 rounds gets me 6 magazines worth of shooting, and a partial load at the end. For me that’s a minimum load to run through various drills at the range, and takes less than 30 minutes to burn through. If I want to really practice different drills, drawing from holsters, IWB and OWB, reload drills, malfunction drills, different distances, the number quickly goes up.

I can see the appeal of limiting ammo to prevent mass shootings, but I would then worry about an increase in accidents shootings due to gun owners who are not proficient. (That’s not to say that there are more than enough people who carry concealed on a daily basis, but who haven’t pulled that trigger since qualifying many years ago.)

If I were American, I'd be more worried about car accidents, drunk drivers, type 2 diabetes, and obesity, rather than guns.

Why do civilians need full automatic weapons?

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
If I were American, I'd be more worried about car accidents, drunk drivers, type 2 diabetes, and obesity, rather than guns.

A frequent retort, but one that is really pretty vacuous and fatuous.

A - Preventing car accidents, drunk drivers, type 2 diabetes, and obesity is the basis for very heavy regulation and/or massive federal, state, and private level awareness programmes, medical help, and research.
B - Worrying about A, B, C, and D, doesn't preclude you from also worrying about E.
C - You don't have to eradicte problem X before tackling problem Y.

 Freakazoitt wrote:
Why do civilians need full automatic weapons?

It boils down to our a combination of “because we can” and “because they are fun”.

It’s a pain in the rear and expensive to own a full auto weapon, one might add.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
If I were American, I'd be more worried about car accidents, drunk drivers, type 2 diabetes, and obesity, rather than guns.

Why not worry about all of the above? Efforts can be made to prevent all of them.

I still find it baffling that this sort of thing is so commonplace in the leader of the civilized world.

 d-usa wrote:

 Freakazoitt wrote:
Why do civilians need full automatic weapons?

It boils down to our a combination of “because we can” and “because they are fun”.

It’s a pain in the rear and expensive to own a full auto weapon, one might add.

And almost no legal 'full automatic weapons' are available on the market which is a real reason they are so expensive. You are limited to lowers made prior to 1986 I think. Even if you have ridiculous amounts of money it is difficult to find someone willing to sell one now-a-days. Which is why there have been less than a handful of crimes committed in the US with full automatic weapons in the last several decades.

Herzlos wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
If I were American, I'd be more worried about car accidents, drunk drivers, type 2 diabetes, and obesity, rather than guns.

Why not worry about all of the above? Efforts can be made to prevent all of them.

I still find it baffling that this sort of thing is so commonplace in the leader of the civilized world.

As I say often, I'm a student of American history because it's so damn interesting and fascinating.

I like America and I've met a lot of great people from there over the years, but I don't think I'll ever understand the national psyche.

The USA is so full of baffling contradictions.

A land built on liberty and freedom...but some of them were slave owners...

A land that valued individuality and individual freedom...but launched a moral crusade against alcohol and drug use by the individual

A land that sees its bill of rights as a holy text, but stood by after 9/11 as some those freedoms were taken away from them, the 4th amendment being a prime example...

and so on and so on...

In my humble opinion as a neutral observer, the 2nd debate fits the pattern of the national mood and conversation over the years.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Herzlos wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
If I were American, I'd be more worried about car accidents, drunk drivers, type 2 diabetes, and obesity, rather than guns.

Why not worry about all of the above? Efforts can be made to prevent all of them.

I still find it baffling that this sort of thing is so commonplace in the leader of the civilized world.

As I say often, I'm a student of American history because it's so damn interesting and fascinating.

I like America and I've met a lot of great people from there over the years, but I don't think I'll ever understand the national psyche.

The USA is so full of baffling contradictions.

A land built on liberty and freedom...but some of them were slave owners...

A land that valued individuality and individual freedom...but launched a moral crusade against alcohol and drug use by the individual

A land that sees its bill of rights as a holy text, but stood by after 9/11 as some those freedoms were taken away from them, the 4th amendment being a prime example...

and so on and so on...

In my humble opinion as a neutral observer, the 2nd debate fits the pattern of the national mood and conversation over the years.

We as a nation do everything contradictory. A favorite quote of mine, that is aimed at our military, but I think fits our culture.

"A serious problem in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine."

I think it's rooted in the sense that nothing about our nation is... normal? Our background springs from dozens of different cultures. Sure, we were originally British colonies, but lets be honest, so much of our population is more then just Anglo. German, French, Italian, Irish, African, Asian, etc... Throw that in with the concept that all opinions are supposed to be welcome, everyone has their say, it just runs for pure chaos. You reference the slavery thing, an issue that we shed the blood of hundreds of thousands over. We are a nation of extremes, because there is so much going on. We don't do anything middle of the road, no matter how easy that would make it.

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/10/03/las-vegas-shooting-gunman-used-bump-stock-device-to-speed-fire/

According the that he had bump stocks on two of the rifles.

Gun laws won't change in the USA because there is a strong, politically active minority in America who literally love guns more than their own children. They'd rather see the streets run red, with the blood of their fellow citizens, than admit to their addiction, their fetish, their muse. The pro gun rally, at heart, are scared. They're scared of government, of rapists and killers, of muggers and thieves. They're scared of immigrants, muslims and inner city gags. They're scared of urban centers and bears roaming rural retreats. They're homophobic, God fearing scaredy cats who cling to guns because they think they'll offer them some kind of protection when the boogeyman comes.

 CptJake wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 Freakazoitt wrote:
Why do civilians need full automatic weapons?

It boils down to our a combination of “because we can” and “because they are fun”.

It’s a pain in the rear and expensive to own a full auto weapon, one might add.

And almost no legal 'full automatic weapons' are available on the market which is a real reason they are so expensive. You are limited to lowers made prior to 1986 I think. Even if you have ridiculous amounts of money it is difficult to find someone willing to sell one now-a-days. Which is why there have been less than a handful of crimes committed in the US with full automatic weapons in the last several decades.

Very true. This guy seems like he might be one of the few who could have been able to afford a legal full auto. But it likely was the result of after market modification with the bump stock.

 Hollow wrote:
Gun laws won't change in the USA because there is a strong, politically active minority in America who literally love guns more than their own children. They'd rather see the streets run red, with the blood of their fellow citizens, than admit to their addiction, their fetish, their muse. The pro gun rally, at heart, are scared. They're scared of government, of rapists and killers, of muggers and thieves. They're scared of immigrants, muslims and inner city gags. They're scared of urban centers and bears roaming rural retreats. They're homophobic, God fearing scaredy cats who cling to guns because they think they'll offer them some kind of protection when the boogeyman comes.

Good to see such a fact based non-emotional analysis posted here.

Thanks for the info sebster. I also frequently go to the FBI UCR for my figures on homicide, although the last numbers I checked before today were the 2012 numbers. I haven't been keeping up with the issues of murder and firearm violence for the last few years.

I did check the FBI numbers for 2015, and like always they bring up a lot of questions. Here's the table of relationship between victim and offender on their main page for 2015:

The biggest category is "Unknown" at 47.8%, which while it is a minority of the total is big enough to put a significant asterisk next to any conclusions we try to draw from the UCR. It's also worth noting that when we look at the expanded tables "Other - not specified" are some of the larger categories in the table on relationship between victim and offender and the table on circumstances surrounding the crime. The “Other – not specified” categorizes are separate from “Unknown” and I interpret that to mean that the local authorities knew the circumstances surrounding the crime and/or knew that the victim and murderer knew each other, but failed to inform the FBI of those specific details and circumstances. I emailed the FBI to ask for more details on this (among other things) but I'm sure they're probably inundated with questions at the moment.

The other thing that has always driven me crazy about the UCR is the relationship category of “Acquaintance” and the circumstance category of “Other argument”. Both are the largest categories in their respective areas of the tables. Acquaintance does not at first glance appear to include anyone that the person would know well, including relationships like neighbor and employer/employee. This is what I think has lead many pro-gun people to make the argument that “Acquaintance” includes criminals known to their murderers. I don't think the rest of the table bears that out, but it depends on how the FBI defines some of their terms. (I certainly hope I'm not giving the impression that I think people engaged in illegal activity being murdered is acceptable, they are still people and it is not.)

The only clues the FBI seems to give are the footnotes:

NOTE: The relationship categories of husband and wife include both common-law and ex-spouses. The categories of mother, father, sister, brother, son, and daughter include stepparents, stepchildren, and stepsiblings. The category of acquaintance includes homosexual relationships and the composite category of other known to victim.

I included the whole footnote because the first part is significant. The reason I bolded the second part is not because I think homosexuals are crazy murderers, but rather because if they include such a significant relationship under “Acquaintance” it makes me highly suspicious that other things might be hidden behind the label of “Acquaintance”. For example, they list employer and employee, but what about coworkers? They list boyfriend and girlfriend as their own categories, and they categorize ex-husbands and ex-wives as hubsands and wives, but do they categorize ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends as still being boyfriends and girlfriends? What about “friends with benefits”? I would think they would go under “friend” or “boy/girfriend”, but if they consider married homosexuals to be acquaintances who knows what else is in that category. Likewise, I think the “Other arguments” category is too vague. I noticed that they don't have a category for domestic disputes, so I'm assuming they fit under that category. I don't know for sure, but it seems like there would be enough “domestic dispute” murders to warrant their own category, but maybe there is such a confusing variety of domestic disputes that they decided to lump them all under “Other arguments”? There is also a lot of potential for overlap with these categories.

I sent an email to the FBI asking about this, but I'm guessing they're swamped right now and also might requests might have been too broad.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/expanded_homicide_data_table_12_murder_circumstances_2011-2015.xls
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/expanded_homicide_data_table_10_murder_circumstances_by_relationship_2015.xls

Sorry for rambling. I also hope it doesn't seem like I'm attacking you, sebster. I don't think I even disagree with you, and I think the UCR is one of our better sources, but there are some vague parts of it that drive me crazy. It's entirely possible that the answers are right in front of my nose and I'm too dense to see them. It's also possible that details like whether or not ex-boyfriends count as boyfriends doesn't make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things.

 Freakazoitt wrote:
Why do civilians need full automatic weapons?

My parents home has a police response time of about a half an hour, due to cutbacks and reductions in force in the state police in PA. Robberies are pretty common, and some of the local farmers have turned to some pretty extreme solutions. My father's was a 6 pounder, but an 1861 Gatling was not out of the question. Both are legal.


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 Hollow wrote:
They're homophobic, God fearing scaredy cats who cling to guns because they think they'll offer them some kind of protection when the boogeyman comes.

Hardly homophobic, but I am alive right now because we had guns too. Being English, I suppose you've never had the police tell you that 'We just come to collect the bodies'.



BTW: they report having found explosives searching this guy's house, so he really was not adverse to ignoring the law altogether, so how would having tougher laws have stopped him? According to reports, the man had no signs of any past criminal activity or even mental instability. So, by what psychic power would any of the proposed suggestions have stopped him? He was, on the surface, a law abiding citizen, who would easily have passed any background checks to determine if he was a threat.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Hardly homophobic, but I am alive right now because we had guns too. Being English, I suppose you've never had the police tell you that 'We just come to collect the bodies'.
.

I'm not English. I lived in South East Asia for more than a decade. Had police create the bodies.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
BTW: they report having found explosives searching this guy's house, so he really was not adverse to ignoring the law altogether, so how would having tougher laws have stopped him? According to reports, the man had no signs of any past criminal activity or even mental instability. So, by what psychic power would any of the proposed suggestions have stopped him? He was, on the surface, a law abiding citizen, who would easily have passed any background checks to determine if he was a threat.

Would he have been able to have access to that many or any high rate fire weapons if one can't just buy easily without issues one?

Funny enough countries without easy access to those you see more of crimes with knives with maybe pistols neither which is nearly as deadly as dozen high rate rifles...

Or are americans just more nuts than rest of the world so availability has no effect on what kind of weapons are used so it's just unique american psyche that makes them go for high rate of fire guns? Guess that works but I'm not easily putting blame on americans as a people being worse than others so I'm banking on theory of availability affecting weapon of choice.

Do gun advocates think that everyone should be able to own a nuclear warhead? Should every/any body be able to buy a nuke from Walmart for a few hundred bucks?

Change your laws or deal with these kinds of incidents.

"It is a horrible tragedy/pure evil, but I consider it an acceptable price for the country to pay."

That's all there is to it.

Acting as if something called an amendment is not, at least hypothetically, subject to change or revision seems.....odd, to say the least.


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tneva82 wrote:


Or are americans just more nuts than rest of the world so availability has no effect on what kind of weapons are used so it's just unique american psyche that makes them go for high rate of fire guns?

You know who presents that argument?

The National Rifle Association. When a person or organisation says; "Guns don't kill people. People do." they are arguing that, if there were no guns in the US, the American people would still kill each other with the same frequency and enthusiasm.

That is quite an indictment of the American people - presented by people who proclaim themselves to be patriots.

The question I've always asked myself is why is this happening now? What is it about modern American society that makes this tragic events occur with greater frequency?

America has had guns since the 1600s. And yeah, you can't compare a musket to a machine gun, and yeah, there has always been gun muders since the 1600s, but it feels different, more vicious and nacisstic these days.

I don't believe the widespread availability of guns is the main issue either, and I don't buy this national violence myth either i.e because the USA fight abroad, people at home get used to violence.

Switzerland is a prime example of an armed nation that doesn't have half the gun crime of the USA. I'd also like to remind American dakka members about the British Empire:

In the 1890s and the 1900s, British citizens could own and buy any gun they wanted when they wanted. It made Texas look like California. School kids and cadet forces were trained to use machine guns

During the infamous siege of Sydney Street, in the early 1900s, British police were so outgunned by the criminals, they had to ask passing civilians if they could borrow their new Mauser pistols from them.

And this was against backdrop of Imperial wars against the Boers and Sudan, where British victories would see church bells ringing and people celebrating in the streets.

EDIT: forgot to mention that despite this, gun crime was never a major problem in Britain. Yeah, people were killed by guns, but not on the scale of the modern USA.

To cut a long story short, this is not an American problem. I think it's a problem of human nature that needs to be solved.

tneva82 wrote:

Would he have been able to have access to that many or any high rate fire weapons if one can't just buy easily without issues one?

Yes, he definitely seemed to have the money that this would not be an issue.

tneva82 wrote:

Funny enough countries without easy access to those you see more of crimes with knives with maybe pistols neither which is nearly as deadly as dozen high rate rifles...

Good thinking, to leave out out bombings, which are more statistically common outside the US. And much deadlier than automatic weapons. and mortars, which are also much deadlier than automatic weapons. Imagine an IRA style mortar attack on that concert. Please tell me how that would have been less lethal.

tneva82 wrote:

Or are americans just more nuts than rest of the world so availability has no effect on what kind of weapons are used so it's just unique american psyche that makes them go for high rate of fire guns? Guess that works but I'm not easily putting blame on americans as a people being worse than others so I'm banking on theory of availability affecting weapon of choice.

Weapon choice actually does have roots in culture and psychology in things like this.

 CptJake wrote:
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/10/03/las-vegas-shooting-gunman-used-bump-stock-device-to-speed-fire/

According the that he had bump stocks on two of the rifles.

Given his wealth, it's a miracle he never turned up with mortars, machine guns, or a panzer division!

Steelmage99 wrote:
"Guns don't kill people. People do." they are arguing that, if there were no guns in the US, the American people would still kill each other with the same frequency and enthusiasm.

That is quite an indictment of the American people - presented by people who proclaim themselves to be patriots.

Interestingly, in 1790 there were 462 gun deaths (murders, accidents, and suicides) at a time when the majority of the population had a firearm of some type. In 1800 there were 627. This ratio more or less continues as the population expands until about 1920. Then it explodes. Between 1920 and 2010 the number of gun deaths in the US tripled, despite the relative number of guns in the population decreased (ie fewer and fewer people owned guns).

So, here's a question then, what changed?

BaronIveagh wrote:

 Freakazoitt wrote:
Why do civilians need full automatic weapons?

My parents home has a police response time of about a half an hour, due to cutbacks and reductions in force in the state police in PA. Robberies are pretty common, and some of the local farmers have turned to some pretty extreme solutions.

Insurance is a more effective solution.

BTW: they report having found explosives searching this guy's house, so he really was not adverse to ignoring the law altogether, so how would having tougher laws have stopped him? According to reports, the man had no signs of any past criminal activity or even mental instability. So, by what psychic power would any of the proposed suggestions have stopped him? He was, on the surface, a law abiding citizen, who would easily have passed any background checks to determine if he was a threat.

Does anyone, at all, claim that tighter restrictions on guns would stop people who illegally acquire weapons from attempting to illegally acquire them? A striking strawman, that.

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:The question I've always asked myself is why is this happening now? What is it about modern American society that makes this tragic events occur with greater frequency?

America has had guns since the 1600s. And yeah, you can't compare a musket to a machine gun, and yeah, there has always been gun muders since the 1600s, but it feels different, more vicious and nacisstic these days.

I don't believe the widespread availability of guns is the main issue either, and I don't buy this national violence myth either i.e because the USA fight abroad, people at home get used to violence.

Switzerland is a prime example of an armed nation that doesn't have half the gun crime of the USA. I'd also like to remind American dakka members about the British Empire:

In the 1890s and the 1900s, British citizens could own and buy any gun they wanted when they wanted. It made Texas look like California. School kids and cadet forces were trained to use machine guns

During the infamous siege of Sydney Street, in the early 1900s, British police were so outgunned by the criminals, they had to ask passing civilians if they could borrow their new Mauser pistols from them.

And this was against backdrop of Imperial wars against the Boers and Sudan, where British victories would see church bells ringing and people celebrating in the streets.

EDIT: forgot to mention that despite this, gun crime was never a major problem in Britain. Yeah, people were killed by guns, but not on the scale of the modern USA.

To cut a long story short, this is not an American problem. I think it's a problem of human nature that needs to be solved.

Basically everything you've just written says the opposite