All you have to do is show that fewer guns means less homicide. Show me that in all cases across the board high percentages of gun ownership is the cause of homicide. Then I'll agree that our strategy ought to be to lower gun ownership.
There is no possible way to do this, because there is no evidence that you will accept. You have already decided, and hence forth all your energy is going to warding off any and all contrary thought.
Simple reasoning will dictate that fewer guns will result in fewer gun deaths. But you aren't going to accept this. The stats from countless other countries that have fewer guns, and fewer gun death per capita will not convince you because you will invent some excuse for why all those other countries and all those other people are "different", somehow, than this country and from our people. We could look at the stats in the U.S. that show that owning a gun not only does not make the owner safer, but actually greatly increases the likelihood that they will be killed by their own gun, or will kill someone in their family with it. But you will ignore these stats as well.
So there really isn't anything that will change your mind, because your mind in made up, and you aren't going to change it for any reason, or for any evidence anyone could possibly provide.
Evidence says that in rural areas or small cities with higher % of gun ownership, homicide rates are lower than big cities.
Even a little common sense will tell you that all crime is increased as population density increases. And that all adding guns to the mix the will do is make the crimes more likely to be deadly.
Evidence shows that certain races are far more likely to commit homicide, even when gun ownership is lower by percentage. Before your automatic liberal programming kicks in, I'll say that I believe those reasons are economic and cultural, not intrinsic to race.
It's not about race, it's about poverty (racism increases poverty in the U.S.). And again, even a little common sense will tell us that all crime increases as the number of people living in poverty increases. It will happen by NECESSITY if no other reason. All guns will do is make that crime more likely to be deadly. So if you are looking for reasonable statistical comparisons, we should look to countries that are equivalent to our own in terms of rule of law, and economic parity. When we do that, we find that the countries with significant fewer guns per capita also have significant fewer murders per capita.
Evidence says that many countries with lower percentage of gun ownership have far higher homicide rates than the US. Not the handpicked countries popular in this debate, but nonetheless, many countries. Guess what those countries have in common typically? Cultural and economic problems, wow, where have we heard of that before?
Common sense dictates that lawlessness and poverty inevitably result in more crime, and more killing. Adding guns to that mix simply only makes the killing easier, and therefor more likely. This is not evidence in favor of people having more guns, or of having more guns minimizing the incidence of murder. The problem is lawlessness and poverty. Guns do nothing to resolve those problems. All they do is make killing people fast and easy. So when you look to countries with increased lawlessness and poverty, and fewer guns per capita, and bemoan their increased mortality, it isn't because they have fewer guns. It's because there is more overall crime per capita due to lawlessness and poverty.
Guess what I conclude? I think cultural and economic conditions cause higher homicide, not levels of gun ownership. I also conclude that your ideas wont help.
… And guns do nothing to resolve those problems. All guns do is make killing people faster and easier. And therefor more likely … especially in places where lawlessness and poverty reign.
So you have no evidence to support the contention that guns minimize the incidence of gun violence and murder. Yet, still, you will continue to maintain that you do. As you continue to ignore all logic, reason, and stats to the contrary.
This is the real problem with the gun debate: there is no debate. Because we can't debate with people who will not use reason, and who will not be honest with themselves or anyone else about their own positions. Guns have become such an absurdly sacred totem among conservatives that no amount of reason or evidence will ever make them question their own absurd propositions.
And this is becoming more and more true of conservatism in America in general. It's getting to the point of complete absurdity when someone like Donald Trump is actually leading in conservative polls as a candidate for president. No sane person would vote for such an incompetent buffoon to be president. Yet American conservatives are so entrenched in their "us vs. them" mentality that they will vote for satan himself rather than cede anything, ever, to the "other side". And they respond with similar absurdly partisan behavior regarding gun regulation.
