You know? You made a respectable amount of sense up until the quoting of figures of people killed. I mean, there is a glaring figure missing here - and this is the number of people killed by America, both domestically and abroad in theaters of war half-way around the planet...

To be clear, I am not fully anti-guns but I do believe that gun-ownership should be more restricted subject to training. The rest of the population can use non-lethals and body armor.

I get that you have been a very responsible gun owner. I am less convinced that you represent the rule rather than the exception - as evidenced by the number of cases involving children or even animals discharging weapons.

Incidentally in Star Trek they prefer to set their phasers to stun. If one in every two individuals in any given room is capable of stunning an assailant, and half of these also wear body armour as a force of habit? Then robberies will grow a lot less common - as would fatalities - since criminals know that they cannot pull some mental ju jitsu to justify pulling that trigger 'because he had a gun'. That - or body armour.

Well... that loses some of its power when some civilians also carry lethals.

Regardless of my reservations I do feel that you have very well stated your points overall - and that in spite of my thoughts on gun ownership there remains scope for such in the American context - although a people who would fear their government so fully as to stow weapons as insurance should really be looking into scaling back the powers of said government.