“Gun” violence is social. It exists in the social field. For a gun to be used violently, there must be a violent person who owns it. They don’t shoot themselves.
When we see the phrase, therefore, “gun violence”, what we need to read is “violence”. The problem is that people want to shoot one another, not the method they choose. I would submit that the countries with both very low crime rates and strong gun controls are peaceful because they are peaceful, because their social web is largely intact, and not because guns are not available.
To be clear, I have read of people killing 10 or 20 people with knives in Japan, China, and elsewhere. Knife crime is currently a huge problem in the UK. The problem is that people are disenfranchised, alienated, hopeless, and taught by the media to express their rage through externally directed violence.
If we are going to have conferences, this needs to be the topic. It is the height of unawareness that people like the Weinstein’s would make movies like Pulp Fiction, and simultaneously support gun control.
Politically, the 2nd Amendment was CLEARLY intended to be a part of the checks and balances built into our Constitution. Private gun ownership prevents government monopoly on the effective use of force.
The history of weapon control is very long. Our Founding Fathers looked to bans on guns in England in more repressive periods of its history. One could equally look to the bans on sword ownership in Islamic nations, for the Dhimmis, or in feudal Japan. No government that is oppressive wants the oppressed to be anything but passive and unarmed.