In my about twenty years of engagement in the gun debate, I've come to the estimation that the pro gun control side bases its arguments about 50% on aesthetics, 50% on lies, and about 0% on actual knowledge.
Some surveys have actually been done on this - gun control advocates almost always point to guns that are all black, made from plastic, and look modern as the guns they wanna ban. If there's any wood in the construction of the gun, unless it's an AK-47, they generally think that gun is fine. This shouldn't be a surprise being that the legal definition of an assault weapon is almost entirely aesthetic and not about functionality.
As a simple matter of available data, the average gun control advocate is more likely to want to ban my sister's Walther PPQ than my Colt revolver. Still, as a matter of available data, gun control advocates would want to ban the ammunition for my gun over my sister's because a 9mm round could literally fit inside a .45 round. Still, it's all about looks, not function.
You don't need an AR-15 to hunt deer? Well, that's a dumb statement to being with because that's not the issue. Still, some people do use AR-15s to hunt deer. That said, it's illegal in eleven states because the gun is too weak and the rounds are too small.
We've all seen the dumb image of a person holding up a poster of a massive black spot claiming that that's the size of the hole that an AR-15 leaves. The only thing is that a lot of people believe it. NPR went so far to say that an AR-15 can take a person's head off. Only, these statements are all lies. My 30-30 Winchester would be a lot closer to those claimed capabilities than the AR-15; but, my gun is constructed out of wood and metal so gun control advocates aren't afraid of it.
Gun control advocates claim that reinstating the assault weapons ban in a clear and obvious step to curbing violence. The problem is that the data don't show that. Columbine happened during the assault weapons ban. Before the Vegas shooting, the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history was Virgina Tech - committed with handguns.
Of the nearly thirteen thousand murders committed with guns per year in this country, only about five hundred are committed with a rifle of any kind. The gun control lobby spends the overwhelming majority of its time fighting against a gun that kills about a couple hundred, mostly white people a year and ignores the gun that kills about twelve thousand, mostly people of color a year.
But, we're the only country with this problem, right? Well, wrong. In terms of mass shootings per hundred thousand citizens, we're not even in the top ten.
Even if it were true, has anybody asked why we're looking for connections between prevalence of guns and gun murders instead of murders in general? A good guy with a gun can, and often has, stop a murderer with a knife. You're statistically more likely to be murdered by a person's fists than by an AR-15.
Try to look for a connection between gun availability and murders in general. You're not gonna find anything useful if you want to argue for gun control. Gun control people like to cherry pick comparisons between, say, the USA and the UK. Of course that comparison starts to get shaky when you get into specifics when we realize that the overwhelming majority of murders in the USA happen in the places with the strictest gun control laws. Oh, but that's because criminals are taking guns in from other places, right? Well, no, there are no data to support that. Also, Washington DC saw a steep drop in violence over the handgun ban was overturned.
Well, you still wanna focus on how the UK has such a smaller murder rate than the USA. Okay, I'll play this game with you.
How about Mexico? There's only one legally licenced seller of guns in the entire country and they have a murder rate about three times ours. Oh, but that's not because of guns; that's because of economic problems, right?
Okay, lets unpack that, too. Actually, of all the countries in the North Western hemisphere, Greenland usually has the highest murder rate with extremely low gun ownership. Iceland has high gun ownership and a much larger, denser population and they've gone entire years without a single murder.
Not good enough? Okay, Serbia and Albania are connected through Kosovo. They're both poor counties. They're similar in terms of demographics. Only, Serbia has one of the highest gun ownership rates in Europe with a murder rate lower than the UK while Albania has near outright ban on guns with a murder rate twice that of the USA.
Still not good enough? I could go on. How about comparing Yemen to Oman and Saudi Arabia? How about Russia and Mongolia? Hell, how about Kazakhstan and Mongolia? How about Houston and Chicago? If there's a correlation to be seen here, it actually regularly vindicates John Lott's thesis that more guns are actually beneficial. The correlations are imperfect and it's not a good argument; but, it's hard to have causation without correlation and the gun control advocates regularly, falsely argue that there's a direct correlation between availability of guns and murders.
This is already too long; so, I'll close up the rant as cleanly as I can at this point. The bottom line is that there are important things to learn about guns. I'm willing to bet that most people who post and march passionately in favor of gun control are basing their opinions about which guns are okay and which ones aren't solely on looks and don't know the difference between a .45 ACP and a .45 Colt round. I'm also willing to bet that most of you have just bought the comparisons presented by the mainstream media and haven't bothered to dig into the data which are publicly and readily available.
If I managed to change nobody's mind, that's fine. I just hope that some of the overly confident, oftentimes vindictive proponents of gun control may have been introduced to some sense of doubt.