i'm gonna go right out and say this, but a Firearm (Guns are either your "junk", or artillery) is an OFFENSIVE weapon. a sword, if you will. while you can feign defense with a weapon, you cannot inherently defend something with a weapon. it is built and designed for attack, not defense.
this isn't to say a person WIELDING a firearm can't defend something. they themselves can become a shield. but a weapon of any kind is not a defense. at best, it is a deterrent. which is effective in its own right.
not i'm neither "pro-gun", nor "anti-gun". i know that neither course of action will work, and that both will only worsen the situation. putting more firearms in the hands of (likely) untrained civilians will just get more people caught in crossfires, or accidentally shot. firearms are a tool for killing and should be treated with the respect that commands. it is not a toy, and is defiantly something you should know how to use beforehand. the benefit of that, of course, is that if everyone is armed, people will be less willing to commit crimes, particularly violent ones. because anyone around them can pull a weapon on them instead. so "Pro-gun" has it's benefits, and its flaws.
"Anti-gun" does too however. people will ALWAYS want to kill each other. and if firearms don't exist, then we'll just find some other thing to kill each other with. take away everything, and well. kung-fu exists right? what're we gonna do then? cut off everyone's arms because you can kill someone with them? that's ridiculous. not to mention that people will not want to be rid of the weapons they already have. and thoroughly searching every home for firearms is ridiculous and quite impossible. then there's the fact that criminals don't follow laws anyway. why would they be inclined to follow firearm laws? sure fewer firearms in the populace will mean less crimes INVOLVING them, (though i bet you'd see a rise in crimes involving other weaponry) but would also mean less firearms DETERRING criminals from committing crimes. take the gas-station attendant stereotype. it's exceedingly common in movies and TV to show the gas-station attendant having a firearm behind the counter to use on potential robbers. which works as a deterrent against being robbed. if that were no longer the case, then they'd get robbed more frequently. hell. people have held up stores with a PRETEND firearm. sometimes not even a water-pistol or something like that. i mean their FINGERS hidden in their jacket made to APPEAR to be a firearm. having no firearms wouldn't do anything to reduce crime. only crime involving firearms. and i'd bet that there would be a lot MORE crime NOT involving firearms. neither "solution" will change anything for the better. instead, teach people the responsibility that comes with having a weapon of ANY sort, and how to use it should the time come. and even better, try and make people not WANT to commit crimes, or kill other people. if we worked towards that, rather than shifting the blame from OURSELVES to a hunk of metal and plastic, then maybe we'd make some progress...
sorry for deviating from the OT, but i know that's what this'll devolve into anyway. so i went and saved myself the trouble of responding.
