Gun control in general
Gun control advocates have a real, legitimate basis, for their desires; firearms are incredibly dangerous weapons, and thus should be treated as such. If I could ban all violence causing devices, I would, without hesitation, to end violence on this planet. Unfortunately, this approach, while a noble pursuit, is incapable of working, both due to the endless variety of devices that can be utilized for violent attacks, and the fact the proliferation of effective devices, particularly in this case guns, is too high to get rid of them on any significant level. Thus, the only remaining option is to possess the capability to defend oneself when the need arises, which requires access to firearms.
Central to the over-all theme of gun control is the limitation or banning of legally available commercial firearms; the theory essentially rests upon limiting legal civilian access to firearms, or goods in general to prevent criminal from obtaining them. While to some degree, this may be necessary or prudent, such as in heavy regulation of explosives, anti-aircraft or tank weaponry, and even potentially more serious threats such as nuclear, chemical, or biological threats, with many products, limitations have not completely curbed or even greatly impacted legal prohibition from the hands of criminals. The issue is not black in white; some things can largely be eliminated by banning, such as nuclear weapons, which have only been used twice in a real combat setting, while other things, such as water or ethanol, would be incredibly difficult to ban. The ease of access largely determines the availability, not legal precedence on them; thus, something hard to obtain naturally might be difficult to hold of if it was prohibited, while something widely available, such as water or organic produce required for ethanol production, would be incredibly easy. Thus, prohibiting proliferation of goods on any reasonable means is determined by access, availability, strictness of enforcements, and many other factors than deciding to prohibit something alone.
In the United States, there are approximately 80 million gun owners, only approximately X amount of total crimes, and X amount of homicides committed each year. Thus it's easy to ascertain that your average person an unlikely suspect for committing crimes, and in particular, and small percentage of society, or "criminals" are the most likely to commit crimes. In fact, in the legal system, most offenders are repeat offenders, going on to comity more crimes even after released from jail, or repeatedly and charged for multiple crimes, while the average person is unlikely to commit any crimes. Therefore the focus on civilians is somewhat arbitrary.. The goal of gun control, like any form of complete restriction, is to limit it to the hands of civilians, and thus potentially criminals from the avenue as well.
But would this level be significant? Would it be considerable enough to warrant the complete ban of firearms (or any particular product) or would the removal of firearms from law abiding citizens have greater implications of it's own, raising successful crime attempts against civilians or broadening the weapons theoretically usefully available by criminals when civilians are disarmed? Could disarming civilians raise crime in it's own right, as the weapons were intended?
It's impossible to completely determine the outcome, due to the wide variety of variables responsible for the presence of crime, ranging from poverty, educaiton levels, culture, law enforcement capabilities and technological advancements, as well as individual thought or personality. However, a reasonable conclusion can be drawn from basic data.
Banning Legal Commercial Sales to Civilians
Comparing crime rates from Country's in General
In general, Gun control laws have a relatively minor impact on over-all crime rates in a country. Country's, such as Mexico, have strict gun laws and yet relatively high crime rates (compared to the U.S.) and yet country's like Switzerland have high firearm ownership and less strict gun laws and have incredibly low crime rates. Furthermore, comparing to criminal value's at face value is a poor way to determine the outcome, since various country's have different manners in which they record or report crime internationally. Since gun control legislation is only one variable of many, including proper execution of legislation, culture, naturally high crime rates, poverty, and standard of living, all such things do more to greater influence crime, or unchecked crime, than gun control. Technological and infrastructure development, law enforcement capabilities, technique, and raw numbers all influence the success of policy in addition to policy itself, and many laws formulate the creation of a government, and thus determine the outcome in general. Thus gun control laws are relativley minor to the over-all outcome in terms of crime rates and specifically, homicide rates.
In addition, crime contributes in a very minor way to over-all death, injury, and general health problems. For instance, in the U.S. x homicide out of X total deaths, aggravated assault X part of injury. or X percent. According to the World Health Organization, x to x etc. Furthermore, the chances of being injured or greatly harmed by criminal activity is low in general, with a lifetime low chance of such crimes even happening, despite their rare occurrence compared to regular injury (as non criminal forms of injury are quite rare, as well).
Therefore the over-all contribution of crime in general to death and injury rates is rather low, the over-all chance of being negatively effected during a person's entire life time is rather miniscule, and gun control measures require a variety of other factors to be successful and have a limited impact on crime in general. It is but one minor part of an over-all system.
Will guns be obtained from criminals anyways?
If successful, which guns should be targeted?
Banning various guns due to arbitrary concepts of power may be a bad idea. "Power" is a very complex and multi faceted
