The problem is that making it easy to legally aquire firearms makes it easy for stupid people and evil people to get them. Even if they force you to take extensive training, who's to say that that guy taking the training isn't going to use that training on some innocent civillians, you can't say if the guy taking the training will or will not use the gun on someone. As for the last point, no higher than the US rates. Persoanlly I'm much happier knowing that it's illegal to carry guns than I would be knowing the types of people who could have easy access to them.
Yes, and you could also bring up how you don't know what people are going to do with a car when they have. Its not exactly difficult to just decide you want to kill people with a car and swerve up onto a side walk, etc. Your argument that they don't know what they are going to do with it is somewhat... invalid, in part do to the info danoff provided. And I believe crimes are generally committed with illegally obtained weapons any how, so a gang member or such is generally not going to care if fire arms are made illegal.
The big difference between here and the UK, most of Europe, and Asia, is how many people already have firearms and how many are in the country. You guys (refering to the UK'ers that have failed understand the CWP idea) simply do not have as many guns in the country. My family owns a dozen guns, though only one is a hand gun. My dad slept with a shot gun within arms reach for along time. Why? Because we live a good ways from a police station, 15 miles from a hospital, and so on. Any sort of emergency response would arrive to late to be of use.
People already have fairly easy access to fire arms here, changing concealed weapon laws would not change that. I would not have a problem with obtaining a fire arm being harder, but getting a concealed weapon permit perhaps easier, and allowed in all 50 states. Concealed weapons are legal in the state I am in (washington), and the adjacent state of Idaho. Drove my friend nuts when he went to California and he could not carry his weapon.
@Zrow - Yes, it does make it a good idea. Accidental deaths and such are minor from guns, and yet the lives they can save would be amazing in this sorts of situations.
And about the guy with a Concealed weapon getting picked out and shot immediately, its concealed. You do not realize someone has a concealed weapon till they decide to show you generally. All it would take is one guy with one to realize the situation and drop the shooting; aiming at those distances found in class rooms is generally not difficult. If this someone with a concealed weapon had been in the initial area, could have saved a couple dozen lives, who knows?
But claiming guns are evil and should be illegal is the quick and friendly sounding way out of the situation. Its hardly that simple. And thinking the Police and Security can control this stuff effectively... yeah right. They can't enforce drug laws, drinking laws, driving laws, how on earth would they manage to keep fire arms out of the hands of criminals? And I think someone suggested preventing the weapon from getting on campus - how would you do that? Put chain link fence up around the entire place, metal detectors, dogs, and random security checks? Do what the FAA did with airplane security? Its easy to say things, but hard to follow through on them...
In other news, VTGT is alive, but I haven't hada conversation with him about anything regarding it yet. (he responded while I was asleep)
