Let's assume that 99.9% of the firearms were removed from civilian hands which of course would never happen.
That could mean that a young stud with a knife could attack me on the street and feel confident that I would have little chance of effectively defending myself. He would look at me and see an elderly man with a bad limp and realize that I am a weak member of the herd and by the law of survival of the fittest, it was his job as a predator to attack me.
There is absolutely no doubt that firearms are used effectively for self defense although there is a large disagreement over how often this occurs. To be more than fair I will use some statistics from a source that strongly supports gun control, the Violence Policy Center.
For victims of both attempted and completed violent crimes, for the five-year period 2007 through 2011 in only 0.8 percent of these instances did the intended victim in resistance to a criminal engage in a self-protective behavior that involved a firearm. For the five-year period 2007 through 2011, the National Crime Victimization Survey estimates that there were 29,618,300 victims of attempted or completed violent crimes. During this same five-year period, only 235,700 of the self-protective behaviors involved a firearm. Of this number, it is not known what type of firearm was used or whether it was fired or not. The number may also include off-duty law enforcement officers who use their firearms in self-defense.
https://www.vpc.org/press/1304self.htm
That would mean that even a pro gun control site agrees that people, either civilians or off duty police officers, use a firearm for self defense against a violent crime 47,000 times a year. The actual number may be far higher. I don't feel that's insignificant by any means. It's also impossible to know how much of a deterrent firearms owned by civilians are to the criminal element. If only a few citizens had firearms in their homes, how many more home invasions might occur especially in rural areas when the police response takes a long time.
It seems that a good percentage and especially the leadership of many gun control organizations feel all guns are inherently evil and should be banned and confiscated. That's a simplistic way of looking at a complicated problem.
In the wrong hands firearms can be misused and tragedies can result. When owned by responsible, honest and sane citizens they serve many purposes including sport and self defense. The problem is to find a way to insure as much as possible that firearms end up in the right hands, not to ban and confiscate almost all firearms as has been done in nations like Great Britain.
We might also consider finding ways to insure that all people make a living wage and fight social injustice in our society. It might be a good idea to end our failed War on Drugs which has encouraged the development of violent gangs in all of our cities.
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