I live in southern Louisiana. Everybody here owns guns. my friend's older brother used to work at a local gunship, cleaning the weapons. He'd take them home to clean them, and we'd take them up to their camp and shoot them. G3s, mac-10s, all types of good stuff. They had an M4 and an AK-74, but I never had the opportunity to use them, sadly. :(

I'm not a gun fanatic. but have a double barrel 20 gauge I used to hunt with when I was a kid. I have it for home defense, but keep it in the closet upstairs unloaded with the shells (bird shot) hidden in a drawer.

I'm not a fan of pistols at all though and would be very nervous with a loaded gun around. I don't hunt anymore because I really didn't like being out with mutliple people toting loaded guns.

QFT.  Let's ban alcohol, because of all those drunk driving accidents, or cars, for all the idiots who can't drive even while sober.

On point, until very recently Washington DC had the stristest gun control laws in the entire nation. This began in 1976, at which point the crime rate (including violent crimes) rose significantly higher than pre 1976 levels and have only risen higher. So more gun control laws were passed; the crime rate rose. Washington D.C is one of the most dangerous cities in America.

Killing someone with the next most popular weapon, a knife, is much harder than using a gun. The attacker has to surprise the victim, attacking from the back, or overpower him, which in many cases it is just not doable.

One or two stabs won't do it unless they are very well placed: The attacker will probably have to stab the victim repetedly, risking bodily harm, and getting a ton of evidence all over himself.

It's also easier to flee from someone with a knife than with someone with a gun.

It's also less common to accidentally kill someone with a knife. Accidental gun deaths happen all the time. 

In the end, an assailant armed with a knife has less chances of succeeding, and even if he succeeeds, of getting away with it. It's not the gun's fault, it's just so much more efficient that it allows some people to act on urges they'd never go with using a knife.

 Think about this comic book weapon: The Death Note.  A book that kills any person whose name is written on it. The person seems to die of a heart attack. Almost impossible to trace a crime to the perpetrator, 100% success rate. It's hard to prove it was even a murder. Would the number of murders increase if people had access to such a weapon? Killing without risk or consequences other than guilt? Of course it would increase! Wife cheats on you? kill the bastard! Disagree with a politician? He's gone, and nobody can find you! It'd change the world as we know it. A gun is not quite as convenient, but in the same way, it makes crime happen that wouldn't happen otherwise. 

Also, as far as I am aware, the murder rates in Louisiana aren't any higher than anywhere else in the nation, despite us having the most lax gun control laws of any state. Of course, the murder rates in New Orleans are insanely high, but that's more due to police corruption than anything else, and neighboring Metairie (where I live) and other suburbs to the west of the actual city have extremely low crime rates, because of the excellent police force in Jefferson Parish.

 Same for me.

Gun Control is a red herring used by politicians and alarmists to make people feel better about not being personally accountable for their own lives.
You want to fix crime rates and better society, you look at your drug and alcohol laws, enforcement policies and education. I worked in law enforcement for three years as a dispatcher. I can't think of one single case (barring traffic stops) that didn't involve drugs or alcohol (and traffic stops were roughly 75% drug or alcohol related). Quit blaming guns for crime.

I have read a little more of this thread, and have found a tone that I am pretty aggrivated with. I am kind of getting the impression that our European friends are talking down to us just a little. It gets a little old hearing about how much better it is in Europe because they don't have any guns, or fat people, or murders, and free healthcare. It probably gets as old as Americans telling them how we saved their butts in Dubya Dubya Two. The point is that Europe has problems. America has problems. America will never lose its love for guns and cheese burgers, and France will never win a war. We just need to realize that we are the civilized world and even if we do differ on some trivial issues, we are all still friends. Or at least we should be.

I would argue that most people that fire a gun have about as much sense as someone pulling a knife on someone, and that guns are also easier to trace than knives, as they're supposed to be registered and can be traced to bullets easier than a knife can be traced to a body.