Sigh.
Everything in nature is lethal if enough force is applied or a large enough dose is administered, your point is just plain silly.
However; cars, kitchen utilities, construction tools and body members are fundamentally different from guns because their main purpose is not to kill, they are not weapons designed to harm other humans.
Also, directly from the FBI's site:
Of the homicides for which the FBI received weapons data, most (67.8 percent) involved the use of firearms. Handguns comprised 72.5 percent of the firearms used in murder and nonnegligent manslaughter incidents in 2011.
Law enforcement should always have access to the most powerful weapons to protect the citizens.
Inb4 the "corrupt armed government turning against the unarmed civilians" argument:
The USA government already has a billion-fold more powerful striking force (tanks, bombs, airplanes, boats, nuclear power) in comparison to all the private guns in the world, if they wanted to turn against the people they could easily already have done so (this is not a point politicians like to bring up ;))
Giving everyone a gun does not eliminate weakness or easy targets.
Criminals would acclimatize quickly and would, for example, start using even more deadly and illegal weapons to keep the upper hand. Now, when criminals start terrorizing the streets with bazookas, should we then allow common citizens to also keep bazookas in their car for self-defense? How about grenades, bombs, tanks?
Yes, it's inevitable.
As I said before, you can't eradicate them, but you can make them much less accessible.
In 2011 (USA), felony circumstance homicides (thieves, rapers, burglars, bank robbers, serial killers...) represented 'only' 23% of all homicides. 43% of all homicide victims were murdered during arguments (including romantic triangles) [extremely high percentage when compared to countries with stricter gun policies] and the remaining 38% of murders's circumstances remain unknown.
Access to guns makes murder more accessible and easy for common citizens, there's no need for that.
Yes people would start stabbing each other to death, murder'll always be inevitable, but homicide rates would most certainly decrease if you take the most efficient, clean,impersonal killing tools out of the equation.
I suppose this is a philosophical, difference of opinion.
I had to rewrite these answers a couple of time because I backspaced out of the thread (which made me really mad).
The next answers will be a bit more brief because I'm getting tired and can't be bothered to retype my previous answers.
Homicide rates would most certainly decrease if you take the most efficient, clean,impersonal killing tools out of the equation.
But I wish we were able to make the desire to kill redundant. But yeah. If one day I get a free wish then who knows...
I'm aware of that, however when correlation occurs almost without exceptions in cases distributed all over the world (which means different political systems, health care policies, etc...) I think it's relatively safe to say there's a causal link somewhere.
I was thinking of Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan. Sorry for the lack of specificity :p
I like to argue, thanks for this.
I'm really pissed of for pressing backspace a couple of times while writing this reply though so I'm going to call it a day here and end this on a musical note.