criminals than there are instances where legal gun ownership has resulted in suicide, murder or accidental death, so the whole 'Only criminals will have guns' thing doesn't stand up, since the legal ownership of guns is effectively causing criminality.
The vast majority of mass shootings in the US (of which there are a horrific number - far more than most of us realise, in fact) are carried out using legally-owned firearms. No legally-owned firearms, no mass shootings.
suppose you can understand them being a bit jumpy.
Oh.
more deaths from car accidents, if these restrictions could be implemented in way that was not prohibitively expensive?
Like, say, dropping our motorway speed limits to 50mph?
almost never get burgled is hardly newsworthy, is it.
we just have to accept that people cannot be trusted with them. Obviously, I think you or I should be able to walk into a shop and buy an assault rifle and have a spot of fun whanging off rounds. However, that desire is ultimately outweighed by the fact that, in order to let us do that, we'd also have to let the truly dreadful people who make up the rest of mankind do the same. And that's too high a price to pay.
I blame democracy for this mess, of course. Once upon a time, it was simply assumed that someone who'd gone to the right school and behaved like a gentleman could be trusted to do whatever the f**k he liked - and that was pretty much right. Now, however, we can't have one rule for decent people and one rule for scum and the whole thing's f**ked.
Which is why I have absolutely no desire to go there again and I'm perfectly happy for them to keep killing eachother, though I reserve the right to object to them pumping guns - and all sorts of other dangerous weapons - to any tinpot puppet dictatorship they choose to set up in the rest of the world.