A gun allows the attacker to avoid a physical confrontation with the victim. If the attacker didnt have a gun and instead had to physically attack someone with a Mont Blonc or even a baseball bat, there'd be less attacks for starters. You are a bit more likely to successfully defend yourself from someone attacking you with a pen or a bat, than you would from someone with a gun. And its easier to run away from an attacker whose weapon of choice is a pen/bat/crowbar than it is to run from someone who is shooting at you.

>>The obvious point that you avoid like the plague is the immediacy of the gun. Some drunken knucklehead with an axe to grind, or someone who's been "dissed", or someone who's been cutoff driving down the road... if a gun is easily available, and they are, they pull out the gun and shoot. They dont go home to buy furtilizer and construct a bomb, they pull out a gun right then and there. This "other weapon" argument is weak.
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>And the point you ignore is that there are other weapons besides guns that are immediately accesible. I could kill you with an ink pen, a steak knife, a stick, or my hands, but I don't hear anyone trying to outlaw any of those. The gun has no intrinsic behavior - IT ISN'T THE GUN! It's the "knucklehead". We need to put the emPHAsis on the right sylLABle.