Guns don't kill people, People kill people

I think I'll add this to the Pro-life/Pro-choice example I have used so often. If the purpose of distinguishing these two conceptual priorities from each other is to ban the "bad" part, then we are offered the choice between banning guns or banning people. Not a very attractive choice.

On the other hand, what everyone knows--everyone from the most enthusiastic gun enthusiast to the most ardent pacifist--is that guns make it easier to kill people. There is a gradient. At the "unlikely to commit a homicide" end of the scale are personal, physical, time-consuming ways of killing. Let's say, just to have something vivid, that at this end, the favored way of killing is to shove a knitting needle through the victim's eye and into the brain. It would still be possible to say, "People don't kill people; knitting needles kill people." On the other hand, there would be very very few homicides using that method.

At the other end of the scale is carrying a small loader rapid-fire handgun around. It isn't personal; it isn't physical; it isn't time-consuming. It makes it possible for an act to be performed during a brief moment of anger or despair. I believe I recall that a small child somewhere in the Pacific Northwest recently shot and killed his mother because he was angry that she made him carry in some firewood. It is impossible to imagine that if he had been limited to knitting needles, that he would have killed his mother that day. Or to strangling; or to slitting her throat, or to beating her to death with a baseball bat. Very likely, picking up a loaded gun in a moment of anger is the only way he would have managed to kill his mother over a household chore.

The policy debate--leaving aside the Supreme Court's current views on whether the Constitution guarantees the right to own muskets--would be about how close to the moment of anger killings we want to be. It is clear to me that making it less convenient to commit homicides would cut down on the number of homicides.