Upscale wrote:

Everybody keeps mentioning how criminals will go to knives if guns are
not available and that comment also shows the flaws in the gun
ownership argument. Knives have and always have had a number of uses.
Guns on the other hand are designed for one purpose only and that's to
kill or injure. Maybe a few might take up guns for hunting or target
practice, but that doesn't take away from what guns are designed to
do.

Why don't you tell me how criminals who don't have guns will do their
drive by killing with knives. Perhaps you'd like to regale me with
tales of mass killings by use of knives, swords and arrows and then
offer up comparison amounts of killing when guns came on the scene.
The fact is that they don't compare. War and killing entered a whole
new dimension when guns appeared in history.

Say what you want, but you can't refute very much of what I've said
above.

No, I can't refute it - but I can expand it. As my old mentor, in
introducing me to the concept of "Quality Control Thinking," taught, one
applies the "What then?" test.

You have a point that banning guns would almost eliminate gun deaths, so
suppose a gun ban were put in place. What then? Probably half the guns in
the country would be turned in. That leaves about 100 million in storage
somewhere where their owners would be reluctant to announce their presence.
These would, over the course of many years, attrit down to a negligible
number. But during those many years, the populace would be at the mercy of
the criminals using guns.

Another Quality Control Thinking test is to evaluate the premise. You
apparently start with the axiom that deaths attributed to guns are to be
avoided. I disagree. The vast majority of deaths caused by guns are, in the
main, good. Leaving aside the justifiable homicides (police shooting of
criminals, self-defense, etc.), very many gun homicides involve spouses or
gang-bangers killing someone they simply don't like. If the victim wasn't
liked by the shooter, chances are we wouldn't like them either, so that's a
plus. In addition, the shooter is destined for the grey-bar hotel, another
plus. So, when a gun homicide occurs, most of the time we get two
knuckle-draggers off the street.

You also claim the only purpose of gun is to kill or injure something. Not
so.

* Guns are used for recreation, including target shooting. It's even an
Olympic sport!
* Historical artifacts - the dueling pistols used by Hamilton-Burr, the
Glock owned by Sadaam Hussein, "Machine Gun" Kelley's Tommy Gun, etc.
* Investment
* Collecting - like stamps or locomotives