I feel like sometimes we're advocating for the continued irresponsibility of gun owners by blaming the guns. What about children that die of unintentional poisoning by common household chemicals? Do we blame the chemical, or the dumb ass parent that leaves that sort of thing in easy access of unsupervised children?
Personally, I think any parent whose kid kills someone else with their gun, accidentally or not, should be charged with negligent homicide. I also think that if someone owns a gun and has children, it should be a felony to simply have the weapon accessible to them, and their gun should be taken away.
I do not, however, think that banning guns across the board is going to be effective in the U.S. Not only are there far too many of them, it simply creates a black(er) market for them and shifts the availability to criminals who simply don't follow laws, and disarms those that do.
If the statistics are such that you're more likely to die at the hands of a friend or loved one versus a violent criminal, then it's rather naive to think it wouldn't swing the other way when the only people with the guns are the criminals.
Personally, I've had guns all my life. I've had them during my 6 years in the military, and I know how to handle them. I have a pistol in my bedroom, and I've never accidentally blown off a toe or killed a family member. And maybe my chances of having to defend my own life against a violent criminal are slim in comparison to the alternatives, but that's not the only measuring stick. I'm pretty sure you can find PLENTY of examples of someone defending themselves against violent criminals. It's not nonexistent. The fact that it isn't is enough reason for me to have the chance at even odds, because frankly, I do give a damn about my life. Misguided idealists are not going to rob me of the ability to protect it, no matter how irrelevant they think the danger is.
Just because your life was never threatened does not mean that no one's is. For every single incident where someone's is, that's a real person that is affected by whether they can protect themselves or not. Even if it's not on your own radar. It's still people.
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