It's all very well me not dying of being shot by a random violent gang member robbing my house, but if the chances are MUCH more likely that I will kill myself, or be killed by a relative or neighbour because I own the gun to protect myself, I think maybe I would rather take my chances with the burglar.
I agree with 99% of your post Eff.. there's just a couple things that I dont entirely go along with. The big thing are the "accidents." There's no such thing as a firearm accident.. any "accidental discharge" is caused by negligence, plain and simple. There are four very simple rules to follow that guarantee your weapon will never discharge unintentionally (aside from a 1 in a million chance of a round cooking off for no reason or the one in a million chance of a mechanical failure).
1) Treat every weapon as if it were loaded.
I promise you that the vast majority of "accidental" shootings in the US were because "I didnt know it was loaded." or "I thought I unloaded it." If you treat every single firearm as if it was loaded.. even when you have it broken down, you will never EVER have it go off accidentally.
2) Never point your weapon at anything you dont intend to shoot.
Simple enough right? I promise you that you'll find that there's another massive amount of "accidents" that occur JUST because the person pointed the weapon at something or someone. This also ties back in to rule one.
3) Keep your finger straight, and off the trigger until you're ready to fire.
Again.. pretty simple. "The gun went off, I dont know how or why but it just went off." That's because they had their finger on the trigger, instead of on the trigger guard, or up over top of the trigger completely extended and pressed against the weapon.
4) Keep your weapon on safe until you INTEND to fire.
Same as the other three above, if the weapons on safe, it cant "accidentally" go off. Barring some sort of one-off mechanical failure, but as long as the other three rules are followed, no one will get hurt.
These four rules are not mutually exclusive of one another, but produce a synergy or sorts. Each one puts the others in check, and as long as each of the other three are followed, there wont be "accidents." If a firearm doesnt have a safety on it (mostly antiques), the other three rules will provide the extra measure of protection. Other than that, like I said, I do agree with you.
As to the rest of the debate... Earlier I mentioned negligence.. thats what the accidents boil down to. Kid shoots his sibling, its because the parents failed to 1) educate their children and teach them to respect a fire arm like they teach them to respect electricity, and 2) the parents didnt follow the rules stated above. It boils down to negligence and/or lack of education/respect for firearms.
Im not for or against gun control.. personally I think the whole argument one way or the other is impossible to solve. There are TOO many factors, and you guys have all brought up good ones.. Socio-economics being a big one, education about firearms being another.. and the list goes on and on and on and on. If firearms are banned completely (which I know isnt what the control side is asking for or wants), you end up creating a black market, similar to that for drugs (which is what the anti gun control guys say). That much of it I think we can all agree on.
What HASNT been agreed upon, and is largely ignored by both sides.. is that no one understands what creates the gun violence in the first place. There isnt ONE cause but a massive list of symptoms that creates it.. just like with any crime or violent crime in general. There's also no one single cause for crime, violent crime, and gun crime to decrease. The only thing that will ever totally wipe out crime, gun crime, and violent crime all together is respect for one another.. and even then, while itll decrease to nearly zero you're still going to have nature to contend with.. illnesses, emotional break downs etc.
There was a thought years ago that crimes of passion were the primary reason gun crime took place.. so we had the Brady Bill to allow for a 5 to 10 day cooling down period (among a laundry list of other things).. and if I recall correctly, there was a small decrease in gun related crimes of passion.. that still didnt stop weapons of opportunity being used.
There's evidence for and against both sides, but I seriously doubt that there will ever be a consensus. The guns themselves arent the problem, just as Eff pointed out.. the size of the magazine doesnt matter, they'll just carry more magazines. You lay a gun on the table, its not just going to start shooting people. The real issue behind gun crime are the people, and thats why itll never be solved. If you ban guns, you create a market for them elsewhere.. if you relax gun laws then you end up with fire arms in the wrong hands again anyway. The absolute best thing we can do is educate people, teach them to respect fire arms as tools that can cause harm, and treat gun related 'accidents' as negligence. Until there's a way to determine what EXACTLY causes violent crime in the first place and can fix THAT.. this whole debate is going no where.