That's not how it works. I'm guessing you don't own any firearms and haven't had much exposure to them. Violence is never safe and the only people "turning to violence" after acquiring one are criminals or those soon to be one.
(Note that this is still considerably less lethal than any major US city!)
> Note that the UK has police armed with guns, but not police armed with knives.
Yup. The set of qualities that make knives desirable weapons for criminals don't make them good weapons generally. The cops have very different restrictions (fewer restrictions, that is) and goals. A truncheon plus some strong mace are probably much, much better for their purposes than a knife would be.
I wouldn't say it was always "turning to violence", but there are a lot of people out there that probably 'should' not have a firearm given things like poor impulse control, lack of knowledge/acknowledgement of dangerous they inherently are, or just carelessness:
* https://twitter.com/well_regulated_
Once someone owns a gun, or a household has a gun with-in it, there are all sorts of disasters that can now occur that were not possible without one being present.
Amen. The 'upsides' of owning a gun don't outweigh the horrible potential consequences for myself and others around me. I'm really glad that guns are not as prominent in my country compared to the US.
Of course other people make different value judgements as to the risks.
If I was in the US I'd be less concerned about general firearm ownership, and people basically being about to have whatever they want in their own homes, versus all the concealed carry and stand-your-ground laws, both of which impact public safety more. And it seems toward the negative (AFAICT).
> I'm really glad that guns are not as prominent in my country compared to the US.
As someone in Canada, the day-to-day firearms stuff isn't as prevalent, but we're tied for 7th in per capita ownership:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...
However, from a firearms death rate (homicide+suicide), we're lower than what many people would expect:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...
With a lower rate that Austria, Switzerland, Finland, and France. IMHO this is because (a) we have mandatory licensing/training, which works as a filter to reduce the cowboy types, (b) relatively lower rates of poverty which helps with reduce crime (most shooting seem to be gang-related), and (c) decent social programs which helps the less fortunate. Many calamities are also probably reduced through safe storage laws.
I don't think there's a need to even "ban" firearms or specific firearm types if these are implemented.
There's no one silver bullet that will solve gun-related problems, but there are a few policies that have been shown to work fairly well. It's 'just' a matter society choosing to implement them.
UKs gun ownership per capita is something like 30% of US’, but these are predominantly shotguns, and a few single-shot rifles. Legal ownership of pistols of any kind is essentially impossible (yes even sport 0.22 ones).
* https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/jsp-sjp/wd98_4-d...
Hunting rifles and shotguns are not registered, but (many) semi-automatic rifles (e.g., AR-15) would have to be registered—as do handguns—so some ratio of licensees-to-'restricted'-class firearms can be estimated.
These restricted-class items can only be used at a licensed range, and so are generally used for fun/target shooting as well as sporting activities (IPSC, IDPA, three-gun).
It would be interesting if a spike in sales also came with a spike in training, range usage or gun safe sales.
> I'm guessing you don't own any firearms and haven't had much exposure to them.
You'd be guessing very wrongly.
Anecdotally, I'd say yes.
The three ranges in closest proximity to me have hour long waits for lanes on weekends. Everywhere, dealers are consistently sold out of "beginner" type firearms: ruger mark iv's, 10/22s, sr22s, etc. It is a similar story with magazines for these types of firearms, and I doubt demand for these is being driven by existing gun owners (who likely already have them).
I also happened to order a new safe recently, and every dealer in my metro area had zero inventory on hand. The best you can get is an order allocation, or buying one of the safes they already have on order with an expected delivery of 1-3mo. Part of this is certainly supply chain disruption, but I heard the same story over and over again that demand was through the roof.