The argument that shakes anti-gunners up the most in my experience is this:
The police and government in general, unless you are a prisoner of the state, have NO DUTY to protect you. For those who believe that government is god or big daddy that will protect and feed them, this shakes them up to no end. Once the awful realization comes that life is not a movie, there may be no cavalry, and that Big Daddy doesn't have to or may not be able to protect them, then the realization that they might have to protect themselves makes them more 2A friendly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/...ot-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html and the case is Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748 (2005)
Warren v. D.C. (444 A.2d. 1, D.C. Ct. of Ap. 1981), has a horrifying fact pattern where the victim calls the police of being sexually assaulted and was were ignored for hours.
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20131101/no-duty-to-protect
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-Th...ave-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect-citizens
This is a long standing principle in constitutional law, also see DeShaney v. Winnebago Cty, 489 U.S. 189 (1989) (which dealt with social services' having no legal duty to protect their clients.)
The second awful truth is that most victims of homicide and most perpetrators of homicide that bulk up the statistics have criminal records. It ain't the normies killing normies in a fit of rage. The common media and entertainment portrayal is that people just snapped, murder suicides in families, lovers triangle revenge killings, mass shootings, workplace violence, etc. The other rarely makes for good tv or movies where criminals are constantly killing and hurting other criminals as well as others who cross their path. It is depressing and boring to watch a criminal go about their daily business of mayhem, drug sales, robbery, etc. with no self reflection of the effects of their action. If you want to know real situations, read trial transcripts and appeals on death penalty cases. The degree of depravity, lengthy criminal record, and self absorption of the killers demonstrate the banality of most evil. If you imagined them as a tornado that randomly goes through their life with destructive impact when it comes across something, it would be more accurate than most Hollywood portrayals.
In urban jurisdictions, around 60- 90% of homicides involve this common criminal background of killers and victims, this is a fairly representative report from Milwaukee,
http://city.milwaukee.gov/ImageLibrary/Groups/cityHRC/reports/2011Reportv6.pdf
Here is a New Orleans crime story about this,
https://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/01/nopd_release_of_murder_victims.html
Baltimore
https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-08-30-baltvictims_N.htm
Newark
https://www.politifact.com/new-jers...ooker-says-newark-shooting-victims-have-high/
Chicago
http://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2011-Murder-Report.pdf
New York
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/nyregion/414-homicides-is-a-record-low-for-new-york.html?_r=0
In truth, leaving aside criminal records, many of these last sort of firearm killings involved people with prior documented psychiatric issues involving violent conduct that the police were aware of including the recent mass-murdererer in Calif. So if you put murder in the context of criminals killing other criminals as the majority of murder cases and those that have documented past behavior of severe mental illness coupled with violent outbreaks, the number of "just snapped murders" by "normies" declines to a small fraction.
So, you tell your "friend", "you want to resolve and prevent a lot of murders--the answers are lock up violent criminals or put them to death and require mandatory treatment for those psychiatric patients which have demonstrable anti-social behavior involving violence." Substance abusers constitute the next level of murderers as for some, drugs/alcohol release inhibitions to doing bad things.
So, 1) lock up violent offenders and give stiff sentences to keep them permanently off the streets, death penalty for murderers, 2) mandatory treatment of violent psychiatric patients, and 3) massive mandatory treatment and diversion of chronic substance abusers that have been arrested for those offenses.
It is not that complex to propose answers to how to stop violence caused by criminal and the violent mentally ill. What is lacking is
will by the general public and funding. I once came across a report from Chicago on violent crime and it estimated that about 75-80 percent of all criminal violence in Chicago was caused by about 2500 individuals that were known to the police with past arrest records and gang affiliations. There is no reason to disbelieve that the same pattern exists in most urban areas that a relatively small number of violent psychopaths commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime. A rural sheriff, on the other hand, may only have to deal with one or maybe a couple of such Violent Criminal Actors (VCA) on an occasional basis. Over half of the counties in the U.S. had NO murders in 2014 (54%) and 2% of the counties had a majority of the murders in the U.S. in the same year (51%). This pattern has held for years.
https://crimeresearch.org/2017/04/n...54-us-counties-2014-zero-murders-69-1-murder/
Rudy Giuliani and Commissioner Bratton in NYC implemented solutions using the broken windows theory of James Q Wilson and dramatically dropped the murder rate from the Dinkins era by concentrating on removing the VCA element. Note that De Blasio is letting things slide again to his political coalition's delight and as the VCA community grows, will result in increasing street violence.
The anti-gunners have a simplistic answer that focuses on the tools and not the perpetrator. To them, it is guns kill people and if those are banned such as the UK, then they will argue then that knives kill people, and when those are removed, then we must have tool control and licensing for killers using sharpened screwdrivers when knives are removed. They blame the inanimate tool and not the person that did the deed. Some cross the line of insanity and promote the perp as a good person who would never had done this deed apart from the monstrous weapon employed. Their thinking is as the perp is a child and not responsible for their own actions. In a similar way, these good thinkers themselves feel that it is unfair to make their own personal safety an issue when they actively avoid any responsibility for it.
The real answer is that some among us have damaged souls that enjoy a life of crime and will do it if and when they have the opportunity. To a seasoned criminal, jail or even prison is simply accepted as risks of the trade. However, society can protect itself from them by removing most violent criminals from society via incarceration or the death penalty. The result will be less crime outside of prisons. IN a similar fashion, treat violent mental patients by confining them to a mental hospital and we will see less violent crime. Let either of these individuals loose in the streets, more crimes.
The muddying of the waters by some claiming that poverty directly causes violence is balderdash. For example, murder and violent crime rates actually dropped during the depression. Family breakups, substance abuse, lack of community, views of others in society as prey, emotional and physical abuse of children, etc. can be caused by poverty, but there are many poor societies that lack these issues but have relatively low levels of crime. Instead, it is when the focus is shifted from the actions of the individual criminal to blame their crimes on society, that the idea is created crimes and criminal behavior are justified because those committing the crimes are also victims of society. Thus, society must pay for ignoring these individuals.
Once established, a parallel criminal society, acts like a magnet to like minded people and it self perpetuates and increases until it is stopped by the outside society. The old saying lay down with a dog and you get fleas is appropriate here. A alternative society of criminals provides these individuals norms, excitement, a sense of belonging, approval, self validation for their actions, and pleasure. You see the same with a community of substance abusers and molesters. To criminals, normal society is the one that wrong and has the wrong values. Some can be counter socialized to rejoin normal society but it takes an enormous personal effort to break out of a society akin to becoming an immigrant to another country/society. It requires individuals to leave their whole past, friends, society, and somehow regain those in a strange new world to them.
What role genetics plays is still an open question, undoubtedly, some of the behaviors may have some genetic component along with socialization. But even genetics still does not excuse those committing crimes from judgment. Tendencies to substance abuse, risk acceptance, and attention span, and IQ have some genetic basis but how these are used depends on socialization as well. Someone with a genetic tendency to alcohol abuse who is a lifelong member of a religious sect that does not drink will not become an alcoholic. NOW, that is much more complicated question than how do we eliminate a lot of violent crime.
If we take the easy steps first, and gather the low hanging fruit first by disruption of the alternative criminal society, then perhaps we can concentrate more on reducing crime even further.
