Was it the butler in the parlor with the candlestick? Or the pimp in the ATL with a handgun?

Do guns kill people? Or do people kill people? First, let’s not take this bumper-sticker seriously. Gun control is a pressing issue that deserves more than just rhetorical arguments. We all know guns don’t kill people by themselves and that people kill other people with a lot of other tools than firearms.
The fact is, people with guns kill people. Now I’m not saying everyone who has a gun shoots it at others—I’m just making the point that in a firearm shooting, there are two parties involved—a person, and a gun.
My argument is simple. Get the guns out of the equation. The National Institute of Justice found in 1994 that 60 percent of all murder victims in the United States in 1989 (about 12,000 people) were killed with firearms. The counterpoint to my argument is also very simple. If a person wants to kill another person, they will do it regardless of gun control laws. Knives, baseball bats and chain saws are all in great supply. Do we want to restrict them too?
No. Why are the majority of gun crimes committed with a firearm? They simply get the job done the best. The same study by the NIJ found that the other means for murder just didn’t work as well. “In robberies and assaults, victims are far more likely to die when the perpetrator is armed with a gun than when he or she has another weapon or is unarmed.” The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology confirmed this. It found that the fatality rate in gun crimes is approximately 4 per 1,000—about 3 times the fatality rate for knife robberies, 10 times the rate for robberies with other weapons, and 20 times the rate for robberies by unarmed offenders.
Locally, we have reason to be concerned. Atlanta has the country’s seventh highest violent crime rate. We also lack restrictive gun control laws. In Georgia you do not have to have a permit to purchase firearms. You do not have to register that firearm, and you do not have to have a permit to carry a firearm (with the exception of handguns). In fact, a requirement to be licensed to carry a concealed handgun is the only measure that restricts gun use at all.So I ask, are we that protective of our gun “rights” that we can’t turn that last paragraph around? Would it be a violation of our personal dignity to ask that gun enthusiasts undergo a little bit of firearm training before they are handed the most effective killing tool known to man? How about licensing the guns to their owners? This just adds a bit of accountability to the mix. If you aren’t going to violate anybody else’s right—for instance, to live—then there isn’t much reason to be concerned. If it were just good ole’ Southern boys shooting deer and beer cans, there would be no reason for gun laws. But that’s just not the case. Not until people with guns stop killing people.