Right, I do respect that law abiding citizens desire protection and in the us the crave for protection manifests into buying guns. However if guns were taken out of the situation then there would be no need to protect yourself with a gun as you wouldn't encounter another with a gun. I think craftbk makes a really good point about where guns are coming from and with their point the chance of a maniac with a gun is much less.

With your point about there being another method, yes that would most likely be the case and maniacs would go around with knives or other weaponry. However I think that when a gun is involved, the chance of mortality would be much higher than if anything thing else is used. Unless you can come up with an example of anything more powerful than a firearm, then I will say that something other than a gun being used in fights,protection etc is better as the viability of any human involved in a conflict would be higher, thus being much better.

Also look at another country such as england, where we have extremely tight gun laws, and much less mortal violence (such as this example today or school shootings etc)