The problem isn't the guns themselves, its the culture surrounding them. There are a number of countries (like Canada) that have very high proportions of gun ownership but don't have the kind of wild west shoot outs and school shootings that happen in the US on a regular basis. Obviously there are places like Australia and China where gun violence is non-existent due to lack of available guns, but there are other alternatives to having no guns, many of which have been rightly accepted as reasonable and necessary by logical people. Of course, these same alternatives are decried by the NRA and other groups as being an INFRINGMENT OF ER RIGHTS.