ARE more Guns the Answer to Gun Violence in This country?

[Recursion]

87. Reducing the number of handguns in circulation would be a good step

Actually getting there, in a way that respects the largely-legitimate right to own a gun, is the hard part.

So the first problem is the number of handguns (specifically, handguns). The second problem is the ease with which they are transfered from one person to another. These two are linked -- in a country awash in cheap handguns, there's not a simple way to keep people from managing to get one (c.f. alcohol, marijuana, etc.). Guns are already run using the same infrastructure drugs are, but we don't want a legal regime that pushes even more guns into that nexus.

Finally, as in all issues of public safety, we're left with the puzzling fact that despite all the trends we lament over the past 20 years, gun deaths are a fraction of what they were 20 years ago, with the vast majority of gun deaths now being suicides (homicide has gone down, suicide hasn't particularly).