What can I say about guns that hasn’t been said before? When it comes down to it, not a whole lot. So in lieu of some exciting breaking logic on the role of guns in society and whether or not people ought to have them, I’m going to hope that a little bit of common sense can go a long way.

The most cliché statement someone can make when talking about guns and gun control is that “Guns don’t kill; people do.” This is very true. So true it convinces people that the problem of gun-related deaths lies primarily with the murderer, rather than the fact that a gun was used. This is not an unreasonable assumption. It is not the gun’s fault it was fired. It is not the gun’s fault it was used to kill people. It’s an inanimate object. You’d have to take a serious leap of imagination to lay blame to the gun itself for killing someone.

That being said, it would seem logical to allow people to have guns; after all, they are just tools. We don’t stop people from carrying hammers, tape measures, needle-nose pliers or kitchen knives, which—for the record—are just like guns in the fact that they are tools. This is where the similarities end. Hammers are for hitting nails. They are not, generally, used to kill people. I suppose you can pinch a finger if you get it caught on a closing tape measure, and that can hurt a lot, but it’s not really a life-threatening pain, to say the least. The same goes for needle-nose pliers.
Kitchen knives bring us to an interesting point, though, as they have been used to kill people in numerous cases throughout history. These were typically crimes of passion; in other words, they were not premeditated. Why? Well, anyone with any sense knows that if you want to kill someone, aside from explosives of some sort—or chemical warfare—there is really only one go-to tool for the job: a gun.

I’m not talking about hunting guns—those have a legitimate purpose in killing animals. I’m talking about the sort of gun someone might carry on their person while just walking around. These, as any hunter will tell you, are not likely to be that great for hunting anything except humans. A 9mm is simply not suited to bagging a deer.

The types of guns the author of “Guns Aren’t the Problem” was talking about allowing people to carry are typically quite small and suited to only one thing: killing people. You don’t carry around a hammer unless you feel there will be occasion to use it, and you don’t carry around a gun just for giggles. You carry it around because of what it’s good at: killing people.

This is not to say people who carry guns are murderers any more than people who carry around hammers. The difference is in their ability to inflict pain on others, were someone to decide to use their “tool of choice” against them. A hammer, as it’s not suited to the purpose, won’t get too far. There is certainly the possibility of killing someone with it, but this is rather low, and an attempt would most likely end up with one person in a hospital and the other in police custody. A gun capable of firing multiple rounds in succession into a human body, in that same situation, can put multiple people in the hospital and most likely result in at least one death. There is a difference in scope here.

The author of “Guns Aren’t the Problem” and many people commonly referred to as “Gun Nuts” will grudgingly agree to the fact that these sorts of guns can kill people easily. This is especially the case in the hands of those “properly trained” individuals the author thinks ought to have these guns. They would argue, as the author did, that the ability to kill people with guns necessitates that individuals be allowed to carry guns for protection from other people that may be armed.

If this sounds to you like the beginnings of an arms race, you’re right. This is bound to spiral out of control. Not overnight, of course, but eventually people will be needing body armor, then armor piercing rounds, etcetera, etcetera, until we’ve all gone completely off the deep end out of fear.

Or, we could simply make possession of the sorts of guns only good for killing people extremely difficult. Guns don’t kill people, people with guns kill people. And the fewer people with the type of guns used to kill people, the better. Guns may not be the problem, but they are never the solution.