I'll repeat myself.
Criminologist Marvin Wolfgang personally hated guns. He stated if he were Mustapha Mond, dictator of "Brave New World", he would ban all guns. He also studied 588 homicides in detail, going into the background of murderer and victim, circumstances of the murder, etc. and concluded:
More than the availability of a shooting weapon is involved in homicide. Pistols and revolvers are not difficult to purchase [illegally on the street] ... The type of weapon used appears to be, in part, the culmination of assault intentions or events and is only superficially related to causality. To measure quantitatively the effect of the presence of firearms on the homicide rate would require knowing the number and type of homicides that would not have occurred had not the offender_ or, in some cases, the victim_ possessed a gun. Research would require determination of the number of shootings that would have been stabbings, beatings, or some other method of inflicting death had no gun been available. It is the contention of this observer that few homicides due to shootings could be avoided merely if a firearm were not immediately present, and that the offender would select some other weapon to achieve the same destructive goal. Probably only in those cases where a felon kills a police officer, or vice versa, would homicide be avoided in the absence of a firearm.
In homicide, motive and opportunity are bigger factors than means.
And if someone wants to bring up British handgun ban and handgun crime figures, there's this:
1997 British Handgun Ban and British Murders and Robberies
o Six years before the handgun ban (1991-1996):
Total murders: 4,240, handgun murders: 176,
Total robberies: 358,178, handgun robberies: 17,321.
o Six years after the ban (1998-2003):
Total murders: 5,103, handgun murders: 255,
Total robberies: 576,218, handgun robberies: 17,047.
Handgun murders increased from 176 in the six years before the handgun ban, to 255 after the handgun ban, or up 49%. Total murders increased from 4,240 before to 5,103 after or up 20%, so handgun murders as a percentage of the total murders went from 4.15% before to 4.99% after. But there was a reduction in handgun robbery by about 1% from 17,321 to 17,047. The six-year before and six-year after totals shows 20% more murder and 60% more robbery, but the significant increases are in the good non-handgun violence, not in the horrid handgun violence.
How could removing handguns from the hands and homes of registered handgun owners result in more non-handgun violence, if handguns are the germ of violence and the root of all evil? Hmmmm.
