Here in the U.K. we’re more or less having this conversation about knives. A lot of stabbing occur, but notably you don’t get hundreds killed and injured from one guy with a knife. Still, knife crime is being used to justify what Americans call “stop and frisk” and what knives are legal to own or carry. I’m in the middle on the topic, insofar as I’m against the usual Tory law and order rubbish, against stopping people to search them, but I agree that you don’t need to walk around a city with a machete or even a kitchen knife. On the other hand predictably the government is taking the opportunity to squeeze social media over what they’re allowed to show. It’s all very cynical, but at least our yearly body count per capita is dwarfed by America’s. We don’t do everything right, but we get that right at least.
And sure, even if we get rid of all the knives, there are still assholes who throw acid at you, but again the scope and severity is reduced. New Zealand had a terrible mass shooting many years ago, and much like Australia restricted access to certain firearms (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramoana_massacre). I expect they’ll further restrict firearms going forward, again like Australia, and while they’ll still have violent incidents they won’t lose 50 lives each time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_New_Zea... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Austral...
Look at what happened after Port Arthur. The worst attacks were vehicular and arson, and still it takes adding many together to add up to one mass shooting. There is a reason why people outside of America don’t act like guns aren’t part of the problem, and an easy part to address. They’re willing to accept the value of harm reduction, because they look at how many were killed and wounded in just Las Vegas, or the nightclub in Orlando, or Aurora. Look at this list! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United...
America lost more people in the last decade alone to mass shootings than NZ lost in all of their massacres with all weapons and in all circumstances (including wartime) since the 1800’s. In a list of the worst mass shootings in history, you have ISIS terrorism in France, Al Qaeda terrorism in Kenya, Anders Breivik in Norway, terrorism again in Kenya, and the next is Las Vegas. The rest of the list is mostly terrorist incidents in Africa and parts of Europe, mixed with a huge number of mass shootings from average citizens in the U.S. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-deadliest-mass-shoot...
Maybe guns aren’t the problem, but some combination of factors is and Americans as a group seem unwilling or unable to confront those reasons effectively. Other nations do, NZ has and will, and they won’t tear each other apart doing it.