So what the hell is it with shooting guns for the sake of shooting them anyway
I'm going to just like, get a knife and stab the air and see if it has the same effect
Because you're not
shooting air your shooting at cans or flying discs or deer or turkey or something that moves. If you want to compare shooting guns with swinging knives then have your buddy cover his hands in ceramic plating and practice stabbing your knife at a moving target. Marksmanship is a very relaxing exercise and hunting is a very relaxing hobby. Pretty much everything in the right hands is a dangerous weapon and while gun crimes are nonexistent in some countries (and I find it hilarious that people compare crime in America, a country of 300,000,000 to crime in a gun banned country, like say Japan, which collectively has less than 140,000,000 spread out in a fraction of America's cities) the fact of the matter is that other weapons are still used to commit crimes. I might not be able to buy a firearm in Britain but sure enough I can pick up a cricket bat and beat the living shit out of you.
Guns may make killing easier, but here's what everyone seems to forget, they're the most easily traceable weapon in existence. Even if you don't register a firearm anybody with a basic forensics lab can link a bullet to a
SPECIFIC weapon. I'm not talking about matching caliber, I'm talking about matching up the unique traces of gunpowder and the unique dent the firing pin makes on the back of the bullet. Every gun is basically a fingerprint in terms of how unique it fires since all guns are practically pieced together by hand and as a result they're all different.
As far as school shootings go, it's just as easy to make weapons out of household appliances (anyone remember the gameboy bomb?). Take two soda bottles, fill one with bleach and the other with ammonia half way. Walk over to an air vent and quickly fill up the ammonia bottle with bleach, screw the cap on, punch a hole in the cap and toss it down the vent and suddenly you have a chlorine gas bomb. Tape a small marble to the underside of a buckshot and you now have an effective crowd clearer. Hell, most of us have seen No Country For Old Men and captive bolt pistols can be bought on
EBAY. You can take apart a taser and modify it to use more current then the standard models. You can build a bow and arrow set in a basic tool shed and that's quieter and less traceable than any gun.
We shouldn't be pushing for no weapons, we need to be pushing less illegal weapons. By law you have to register a gun when you buy it but weapons can be imported to Mexico with ease and brought across the border. America is flooded with illegal firearms and the only way to crack down on gun violence is to eliminate the stuff you can buy on the streets and make it harder for people to buy them in the stores. Guns are fun to fire and relaxing to use and anyone who thinks differently probably has never fired one before and if you take my guns away I'll kick you in the nuts! (argument of the year).
EDIT: I just checked ebay and there doesn't appear to be any more listings for captive bolt pistols but with a quick google search I found a couple of freelance websites selling them. Most won't sell them to you without a license but the fact that you can still buy one and even make one in your home is a scary prospect.