I don't know if this changes your opinion at all... but it's actually EXTREMELY hard to be killed by a gunshot.   Getting shot is only fatal about 15% of the time.

Assuming you aren't killed immediatly, you have an 95% chance of surviving if you make it to a hosptial. 

You actually have a better chance surviving being shot then you do being stabbed... at least, if your talking about the kind of knife used for self defense/robbing someone.

EDIT: Meant to say Pistol wounds.  Not all guns.

I think that would be largely due to caliber too. I think the chances of living from a .45 shot is unlikely while a .22 sometimes only breaks the skin (I saw an episode of cops with a drive by shooting and the guy who got shot was bearly bleeding in the leg). When I get a gun I will have a .22 LR because of this and the fact rounds only cost $0.03 while .45 are like $0.50. On top of round expense a .45 can cost upwards of $1,400 while a .22 costs about $350

I also don't think anti-gun crowd really differentiates between these. They think a hand gun is a hand gun and equates it to movies like Dirty Harry or Pulp Fiction. They fail to realize a .22 is pretty much the size of a airsoft pellets in width just longer and projects at higher velocity. In fact I saw someone get shot my an airsoft gun in the face and went through his cheek and about 3 feet away.

Yes, because a few people dying like that is worth it. How many people die in terrorist attacks in the West per year? And HOW much are we spending on it, or curbing people's liberty in the name of prevention? Same thing.

You can't seriously believe that allowing guns causes your scenario to happen every time? Brave homeowner shoots killer thief etc etc

I don't agree with every measure that is taken to prevent terrorism, but to just say we should allow terrorist attacks to happen is beyond foolish. If there were no preventative measures, the number of innocent lives lost to terrorist attacks would be massive. Based on your arguments so far, I'm guessing you're young and have no clue about the abject evil that exists in this world, and I'm wasting my time talking to you. I just can't even wrap my head around the thinking required to arrive at statements like that.

EDIT: Also, I live in the United States and have friends from NYC that lost loved ones in the twin towers. Your statement about terrorism ticks me off and makes me want to say things to you that would get me banned from this site, so I'll refrain. I think your naivete speaks for itself.

Well the point of terrorism is to provoke a reaction - terror. So if we just ignored it I don't think it would happen. It wouldn't happen more than it currently does anyway - which is almost never (in the West). Unfortunately no government will try it out.

See, you're making it personal. "loved ones" etc. Emotion like that is worse than useless in a political debate.

This. It should be OK to have a gun (as well as a conceal and carry license) for every citizen in the US but they definitely need everyone who applies to get a gun take a psych test.

Acts of terrorism as we're talking about here are done by evil people who want to kill anybody who doesn't agree with their worldview, they even kill other muslims who aren't as extreme as them or have a different Islamic doctrine! Their goal is not to scare people for fun, but to either force others to conform to their extreme brand of Islam or kill you if you refuse. Ignoring them won't make them go away, just like ignoring Adolf Hitler (or any other militant force of evil) does not make them go away, but only makes them stronger as history has shown time and time again. Keep in mind, normal Muslims aren't the problem, it's the radical, militant ones I'm talking about.

Also, the emotional statement there was not a political argument, it was the reason I was a little ticked off at that moment.

I can agree with this.

Only problem is people go through different stages at certain points in their life. I agree mentally unstable people shouldn't own a gun. However, should someone be blacklisted from owning a gun the rest of their life because they went through a period of deep depression because of serious shit going on in their life? I'll use myself as an example. If I got a psych evaluation last year I probably would have been denied gun permit. Why? because I havent seen my son since July 2011. The mom took him out of state and I have no clue where. I was pissed off (still am) and depressed. Though I was very competent in owning a gun because I would have never used it on someone unprovoked. This week I found a website where she is trying to raise funds so she can get her fiance to adopt my son. Now I'm not depressed anymore but this infuriated me to no end. We all know that if I had a psych eval and got denied then it would be damn near impossible to reverse the desicion in the future

because we had just fought a war against oppresive tyrants, so they wanted us to be able to defend ourselves against oppressive tyrants