[happywolf]

In my opinion, no guns definitely will mean gun-related criminal cases will be lesser, but this doesn't make it safer to stay. Take Malaysia for example, a country that I am quite familiar with. In Malaysia, guns are banned, however, machet-wielding robbers and windshield-crashing bad guys abound. Violence is so common that newer houses are built gated-and-guarded (G&G) where locals literally live in cages in certain areas in central and south. Those who are interested about this and would like to see real-life examples could search YouTube for 'robbery in Malaysia'. The OP takes the relatively low crime-rate of UK to 'prove' no gun is a good choice. My opinion would be it holds true so long the overall crime rate isn't high. When the crime rate shoots up and more crazy/violent people go around the neighborhood, I would bet having fire-arms would be a good idea.

[apl]

You're comparing wildly different situations. I'm honestly not worried at all about the US equivalent of machete-wielding robbers. Plus, even if I was, I'd prefer a thousand criminals with machetes to a thousand criminals with rifles (all other things being equal). There's no reason why US law enforcement would become less efficient if people's guns were taken away tomorrow.

Trouble with firearms boils down to their utterly disproportional power -- a single madman sporting a gun is capable of killing dozens of people before intervening forces can end the spree. A single madman sporting a knife may kill one, two, five, ten others, but not more. Knife-attacks are horrific yet self-limiting.

[happywolf]

I do agree these two are different situations. However I would think banning firearms in the states would be next to impossible, given how widespread firearms are, and the strength of the weapon makers in lobbying the congress. Instead, I would say having teachers trained in shooting and equipping firearms in schools for emergency access could be easier to realize (compared to outlawing firearms). I kept wondering if the teachers were armed, would the death toll be any lesser?

[jacquesm]

> I kept wondering if the teachers were armed, would the death toll be any lesser?

No, the total will be higher.

From all those cases where right now there is no weapon a weapon, so no incident at least one suddenly becomes available. The number of incidents would go up, but in case of an incident the death toll would go down.

[ryankey721]

I don't know about this, why would the number of incidents go up if teachers have weapons? Especially if they are trained to handle situations.

Another post on HN talks about a school district in Texas allowing teachers to carry firearms, but it takes a lot of training in both using the gun and hostile situations. This is a recent thing, so it's still undecided if it will help, but I feel like it helps to have the teachers trained.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,404721,00.html

[skyhook_mockups]

The fact that through an unfortunate twist of history you even need to consider arming your teachers is simply incredible. There are a lot of great things about the US, but sadly the gun ownership fiasco is not one of them.

[balac]

While this is true, banning guns makes it harder for a single crazy person to kill many people at once and could prevent some of these US public area mass killings.