LOL, “I’m willing to listen to reasoning, but only if you format it in a way that I’m willing to read.”
For real, though, fewer guns means fewer gun crimes. The whole ‘then only outlaws will have guns’ is really a myth. Statistics have shown over and over again that the vast majority of criminals who purchase guns do so legally. If they can’t purchase one locally, they just go a state over where the laws are lax. The whole ‘black market’ gun stores thing is just a false argument.
The idea that a ‘good guy with a gun’ will make everyone safer is also pretty well debunked. Just look at John Hurley - the ‘good guy with a gun’ who was posthumously branded a hero after he was shot by the police.
Guns are inherently unsafe. We’re never getting rid of them in military applications, but any reasonable restrictions for private ownership should be a no-brainer.
All the arguments for ‘private gun ownership makes us safer’ fall apart under any scrutiny. So does the constitutional argument. The only real, provable argument you have is that your personal freedom to own a killing machine is more important to you than public safety.
And here’s the other argument we hear all the time. “This bill doesn’t fix everything, so it’s pointless and should be dropped.”
Drinking in a car is illegal, but how would an officer be able to tell if there are passengers drinking behind tinted windows? If the driver has booze in his or her or their yeti, how would a cop know? Since the cop can’t know, drinking in cars should be legal, even for the driver.
That’s basically what you’re arguing.
Sometimes a bill is stripped down in order to pass with conservatives or moderates. Sometimes a bill is a trial balloon for what you really want to pass. Sometimes a bill addresses a specific issue, and that it doesn’t fix some other issue is just moot.
And sometimes you have to walk before you run.