Dan...you have put forward this argument several times..

"But remember one thing, a sick person or a criminal will use whatever they want to kill. You don't need a gun folks. ya can cook up C-4 in your sink if you know how to do it. Lets stay focus and try to figure out how we can identify and prevent the next mental ill person from doing the same or worse. "

...but I have answered several times with a counter-argument, and I'm not sure you have given my position fair play. I don't 'think' you have directly replied to it.

When you assert that 'other things' can be used to kill, you are absolutely correct... but it avoids the point that most of those 'other things' design and function is to do things not connected to projecting a missile directly at something. Hammers & knives and baseball bats and rocks and cars and ropes and crowbars...etc... would be hard to 'restrict' or ban without making daily life quite difficult. Many countries do just fine every day with MUCH fewer weapons...in total and per capita.

....and making C-4 and similar explosives is NOT gonna be adopted by millions of amateurs, or used to rob 7-11s, or hidden under coats in gang wars.

Guns just make it all easier when someone decides, whether planned or on sudden impulse, to do harm to others.

In the Wash DC area where I live,there was a lot of gang violence and stupid shooting at nightclubs and drive-bys. One young kid was asked why he couldn't have settled his dispute by a good ol-fashioned fist-fight or something... he said: (paraphrased)"Man, that's hard...and takes too long! You got a gun, and somebody disses you, and you just catch 'em and off 'em! You don't mess around..."

With so many guns easily available, it has become just a standard way of settling arguments over girlfriends or perceived insults....sorta like stupid 'dueling' in the early colonies, but with no tedious formalities.

You KNOW that if I knew YOU were carrying near me, I wouldn't particularly worry, but YOU aren't the problem...except in so far as, in protecting YOUR privileges, you help make it easier for millions who CANNOT be trusted. If you were only defending very carefully restricted access, like Canada, the UK and many other nations, I would not type so much...but this repetition of the idea that "fixing the problem at its root" by finding and monitoring or curing all the nut cases is disingenuous.

Asserting that "guns aren't the problem..people kill people" is a worn out rhetorical device which ignores and distorts what actually happens.

*I* am not, as I said a dozen times, advocating ..."taking away every weapon in the world...", or even hunting rifles...or even YOUR guns or the guns of FULLY certified and trained and vetted people with a NEED to own them. But today there is a huge gap between sensible rules and the "wild West" where some are advocating that "if more people had guns, we'd all be safer!" THAT is self-deception and has been proven wrong...

Please... defend what NEEDS defending, but don't fall into the easy slogans that the NRA loves to hear!