Think of it this way. The majority of our gun deaths are from suicides, then the next largest amount is from gang/drug violence, after that it’s police (on average 1k a year) then it’s the rest. Meaning that around 4k deaths a year are from literally everything else (domestic/robberies/random acts). We don’t really have a gun problem, we have an issue with our society. 99.99999999% of all firearms in civ hands have never been used to harm another person.

Poverty creates the violence, lack of education, lack of social support, lack of opportunities, lack of healthcare. If we fixed those things, our guns violence would plummet overnight. But the owners of this country would rather have us fighting each other than them.

With this logic, saying poverty is what creates the violence, and that the existence of the guns have nothing to do with it, should mean that of you removed all the guns, you’d still have the same proportion of homicide with knives instead.

And I don’t think that would be the case.

Poverty necessitates the violence, I agree. But the availability of guns makes the violence accessible.

Both are problems.

Brazil and Mexico both have some of the strictest gun laws in the world. Basically civs are banned from owning firearms, but their homicide rates are 10 fold ours. A lot of countries in Africa are the same way.

The guns are just the tool used. You solve the why and overall violence will plummet.

Gun laws are probably not going to matter if the guns are still available. You gotta get rid of the guns as well. And also the poverty of course.

But would you oppose my knife argument? Say there are no guns. Ever. Anywhere. What would happen in the streets? Would there be as much killing?