Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide?

This is an interesting read. Some of the references are a bit on the "light side" though.

In general I agree with the findings that murder rates have little to do with tools employed and more to do with humanity. Many of course will hold up Sandy Hook as an example of a tragedy that couldn't happen if there weren't fire arms. Yet this isn't true, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China_(2010%E....

Yet I find this to be quite telling:

In the late 1990s, England moved from stringent controls to a complete ban of all handguns and many types of long guns. Hundreds of thousands of guns were confiscated from those owners law‐abiding enough to turn them in to authorities. Without suggesting this caused violence, the ban’s ineffective‐ ness was such that by the year 2000 violent crime had so in‐ creased that England and Wales had Europe’s highest violent crime rate, far surpassing even the United States.

Until people want to talk about the humans that do these things instead of the tools they employ no progress will be made.