Having guns available in a society, even where heavily restricted, means that every once in a while a Derrick Bird goes looney and goes on a shooting rampage, killing many innocent and helpless humans.
This is a cost of gun technology and liberty.
But there are many benefits to gun technology and liberty. The benefits probably outweigh the costs.
I appreciate the validity of this intentionally simplistic analysis.
However, it occurs to me that there are a couple of additional notions which skew the analysis unavoidably in favor of liberty.
Simply, firearms are undoubtedly a convenient means of carrying out a rampage or mass murder. However, they are nothing more than just that: a means. They are not a cause for these homicidal actions.
Furthermore, there are other means to carry out these ends, means which are, it is true, significantly less convenient in a society which has access to firearms (the majority on Earth), but also not so significantly inconvenient as to effectually dissuade someone motivated to go to such drastic measures to achieve their psychotic goals. Even furthermore, other such means are even harder to control (bladed weapons, the components to manufacture explosives or certain chemical weapons), and some of them have the potential to be far more deadly than a gun rampage, should their convenience render these means the default choice.
For these reasons, it is doubtful whether even a drastically unfree society could prevent such occurrences, and it is doubtful that many Americans would wish to live under such overt control. Take a look at repeated knife massacres in China for an example of the former, and check out Singapore of an example of what might begin to approach being enough control to achieve these end. Singapore is far scarier than gun rampages, IMO.
