I know that was during the Clinton years, so you have to take it with a grain of salt, but I think the salient point here is that the only way to solve the problem is to use an approach which reduces the number of guns OVERALL, both legal and illegally obtained. Many guns that are legally obtained are either stolen or resold illegally, but a legal gun can kill a person just as easily as an illegal gun, which is kind of the point; Endless propaganda about safety courses and knife control laws from the NRA can’t hide the simple fact that guns make it much easier to kill someone than any other method. Will gun control keep people from being murdered? Of course not. Will it make it tougher for people to commit murder? No question.

Do you have any links you can post to support your claim that incarceration rates caused a drop in mortality rates? I can’t find support for that anywhere, would like to look into it.

While you could bring up many anecdotes about how people are murdered with objects other than guns, I respectfully disagree with your statement that “the lack of guns doesn’t reduce significantly the ability of a motivated individual to cause harm.” How can that possibly be true when guns are used so much more often to murder people in this country than any other method? The census has some good data on homicides in the last decade, and there is way to distort the fact that, statistically at least, guns are the overwhelming tool of choice for those who wish to cause harm. Is it then logical to suggest that what we need is more guns in the general populace? I’m fairly certain that you’ll disagree with this point, which I respect, but I’d love to hear some thoughts on how more guns are going to bring these numbers down.

I have a few thoughts. There’s no real moderator on this site right now so we don’t really have the resources to host a full-on debate, but here’s my responses to your responses to my responses to your responses:

“From 2000 to 2008, 13% of all murders were commited with knives. You call this an anomaly?”
Yes, I do, because statistically, that’s the definition of an anomaly:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/anomaly
“a deviation from the common rule, type, arrangement, or form.”

13% is statistically an anomaly, since the rule or the norm in this country for committing homicides is using a gun, twice as many times as any other method, according to the census. In all the things you cite, I didn’t see anything that actually addresses this number. Here’s a long post I did about it:
http://sbcoalition.org/2011/04/gun-violence-and-the-census-sobering-statistics/

“And I guess that if we had some kind of gun control the number of people murdered will decrease, no?”
I can’t see a single thing I wrote that suggests that things are this simple. I was simply citing the census numbers. Do you have any comments on those numbers?

“That’s why, in 1974 the Jamaican government banned the civilian possession of firearms…”
I’ve also read the NCPA talking points, where I’m assuming you got this information. I don’t see how Jamaican crime has anything to do with crime in the U.S. For starters, it’s one of the poorest countries in the world, and has a much smaller population. Stands to reason there would be high rates of crime there. As it is, I’m pretty sure the New Orleans per capita murder rate in 2009 was pretty close to Jamaica’s because of the widespread poverty and lack of law and order after Katrina. Still, this has nothing to do with the census.

“To check the effectiveness of gun control you can also compare the murder rate of the US and the former USSR from 1965…”
I have to be honest, and I’m not trying to be difficult, but I really don’t see what the point of any of these references are except to obfuscate what my original point is. I tried to make it clear before, but let me reiterate what I wrote:

According to the Census (this is not a partisan think-tank or some weird study, it’s the U.S. Census), approximately 2/3 of all homicides were committed using a firearm, and only 1/3 were committed using anything else. That’s it. There’s nothing else to it than that simple fact, and I haven’t gotten any information from you that suggests that this is incorrect.

Given that fact, it’s my opinion (and I think a reasonable one) that something needs to be done to lower that ratio. I know from your numerous posts that you oppose gun control of any sort, but I really don’t think you want people to be murdered, so I’ll just try to appeal to your human side and say that, while there are countless factors that contribute to high levels of crime of all sorts, I just can’t believe you or anyone thinks that it’s easier to kill someone with a knife or a brick or poison or anything else than it is to kill them with a gun. My opinion is simply that, since guns are such effective tools for killing things (isn’t that what they are manufactured for?), we need sensible, common-sense regulation to match that effectiveness. I never wrote anywhere that we should storm into people’s houses and take away their guns. I never wrote anything to suggest that the solution to the problem is that simple.

While it’s impossible to have a real enlightened discussion in the comments section of a blog, I do appreciate your readership and would like to hear some constructive, elevated ideas about why 2/3 of all murders in this country are being committed with guns, and what can be done to bring that number, and the number of all murders, down for good. If you’re only going to post talking points from conservative think-tanks, you should start a blog and post them there.