Madmen don't kill people.

Madmen with guns kill people. Sure, they may find other ways to kill people, but guns make it easy, and the numbers of victims and the severity of their wounds greater. Before there were guns you needed to totally surprise, or physically overwhelm an opponent to kill him, or you needed the help of others. You don't need to be crazy. Now anybody with a gun can kill anyone he likes, even the President of the United States, or a classroom full of kindergartener, or a stranger on the street who dissed him.

No, it's not just madmen. Criminals who are not mad find it easier to do their work with guns, and more people die as a result. Guns kill people in domestic arguments where their absence would almost always have saved a life. Vehicles are inherently dangerous, but road rage is much deadlier when guns
are readily available.

People die from gun accidents too, although people die from accidents with many other tools, so perhaps pointing that out is unfair. But gun accidents seem so often to involve children. Children, after all, are more likely to have accidents, and they are so fascinated by guns...

No, guns aren't the whole problem, but the cheap and available firearm, particularly the high capacity, concealable weapon, is a very great part of the problem, and it is a part we can do something about. People will die by gunshot no matter what we do, just like they die in chain saw accidents, or airline crashes, or on the athletic field, but do we really need to lose 27,000 people every year to this plague? That's a Vietnam worth of deaths every other year. It's not just the occasional schoolhouse mass murder, people are dying by the dozens for no good reason every day of the year of gun related homicide, suicide and accident.

And what stops us from doing something? That's the easiest question to answer. There are two reasons we have a gun problem.

First, because too many men are little boys who love to play with guns and fantasize about killing people. For most, nothing bad ever comes of it, but the odds catch up to us eventually; we are a big country and we have lots of cheap guns. All that talk about constitutional amendments and freedom, and protecting the home, and right to bear arms is just a cover for the childish fascination about being able to kill at a distance, without risk, the power of the gods. It's a perversion. I know that for a fact because I recognize it in myself. Unfortunately, most men are not prone to introspection, and most men are too cowardly to admit their perversions to themselves.

Second, a very profitable industry has arisen to feed this perversion, a business with as little conscience as the drug cartels of Mexico or the tobacco industry, and they will do anything in the way of political arm-twisting and propaganda to continue operating with as little restriction and control as possible. They know that any measures taken to cut back on gun deaths will result in an inconvenience for them, in the only way that really matters to them, it will cut into their profits. It really is that simple.