OK, since your argument has been prepared I'm concluding that gun owners are completely unwilling to do anything to prevent gun violence. Are there really no ideas from your side about how to reduce the number of massacres in schools and movie theaters and nightclubs? Not even some gestures of restraint?
That's not true at all. There were two bills that had Republican (and NRA!) support that didn't 1) didn't trample due process laws and therefore 2) wouldn't have been ruled unconstitutional, but the Democrats would rather throw a staged rough ridin' fit and sit on the goddamned floor like petulant children. How do you explain that? There could have been some movement, anything, but they balked because they'd rather grandstand for votes than actually do something that might help somebody. It's nearly unbelievable, except it's not.
The "sin tax" on booze is meant to be a societal restraint.
That's not true at all. It's meant to drive tax revenue. Your statement is true for tobacco products, but not for alcohol.
And the idea that guns have a curbing effect on crime is ludicrous. First and foremost, it's rough ridin' impossible to study. We could line up Canadian cities against American ones all day and not be able to control for a million different elements.
If it's impossible to study (it's not), then isn't it impossible to conclude the opposite?
Here's the thing folks...there are evil people in this world, there are mentally ill people in this world, and they will cause harm, and no laws restricting the rights of law-abiding free people will stop that. It only takes us looking at what happened in Paris to know that.