Mass shooting in Buffalo NY.

UncleTrvlingJim said
Is it better to be dead or wounded? Not sure why you felt the need to go all strawman there... I certainly am not saying people being wounded is insignificant. But if you gave me the choice to come out of a mass casualty event wounded or dead, I'll choose being wounded. And the fact of the matter is, the pressure cooker bomb was less effective at killing people than guns are.

I'm not even advocating banning firearms. I am trying to get people to acknowledge that having lots of guns cheaply and readily available make it easier to kill people.

Again, if all these other choices are just as effective as guns, which appears to be your claim, why do people choose to use guns way more to kill people than other choices? By your logic, if a gun was no more effective at killing people than any other choice, then people would be choosing other methods more frequently, but they aren't. Out of the 21,000 homicides in 2020, 19,000 were committed by guns. So, by far people choose to use guns to kill people.

If you want to defend yourself, are you walking around with a pressure cooker?

I think that misses the point. As I said earlier, the point is not comparing how easy the process to kill someone with a gun is, vis a vis a bomb. The point is, if you remove one killing tool, there are many others available that are not being used at the same rate as guns are used today. Would it be as easy to use a method other than firearms in the immediate future? Unlikely. Would we get better at it with time? Absolutely.

The idea that less guns = less shootings, I used to think it was a valid claim, but I don't think it holds water anymore. How much less is "less"? You posted statistics from 2020, showing that 19,000 people were killed with firearms. That same year, ~ 40,000,000 firearms were legally purchased in the U.S., adding to the estimated ~500,000,000 firearms floating around the U.S., which makes the ratio of shooting deaths vis a vis number of firearms insignificant ( I do get it is not insignificant to the people who were gunned down or their relatives).

As for regulations, again, I am all for regulations, heavy regulations at that; but the way I look at any regulation/law, while they may prevent some from doing certain acts (premeditated mostly, heat of the moment is another thing), I see them more as means of punishment, not prevention.