>>>>Walter,
>>>>So your point is if these perps didn't have a gun, they wouldn't have killed people?
>>>
>>>Yes !!
>>>
>>>>I don't agree with that. I think if they didn't have a gun, they would have found another way to hurt people (homemade bomb, running people down in a vehicle, etc.).
>>>
>>>That is much more difficult and though, only palestinians and al-qaida blow them selves up. I don't see much other cases up here using a gun. I also never heard about angry people on purposly driving into masses of people. I can't imagine a teenager driving his car hitting his class mates and teachers on the schoolyard and killing himself there after.
>>>
>>>Again that takes a lot more preperation and persistence to do than impulsively take a gun and do a little rambo. A side from that, if you're depressed for a day it is too easy to reach for the gun... Up here they throw themselves in front of the train, but that takes a lot more faith.
>>>
>>>In my world your argument does not make sense.
>>
>>Making pipe bombs is not that hard.
>>
>>If you are depressed for a day, it is also easy to down a bottle of pills.
>>
>>I guess we disagree on the basic principle that if somebody doesn't have a gun, they are not going to kill somebody. I feel there is no point in arguing further because everything else stems from this.
>
>
>I don't think that's the basic principle. I think the principle is it's a lot easier to kill someone with a gun than without one.
>
>The bottom line is we have a lot more guns than any other developed nation and also a lot more gun deaths. That's a tough one to explain away.

OK, let's say we do it Tamar's way, and all guns in the world magically disappear tonight. We might see some immediate benefits, but long-term people are going to get used to not having them and create some other sort of weapon or do their killing some other way.

I appreciate you discussing this though without sounding preachy. For a while there I started to understand why conservatives use "liberals" as an insult. Maybe I am more conservative than I think.