The "problem" is that you (as I mention earlier) are insisting on treating any "crime" as morally identically to any other, which seems insane to me. Would you rather be shot or mugged? I know the answer I'd give.
The prevalence of guns changes the nature of crime, on the whole, from largely survivable violence to presumptively lethal injury. And that's bad, thus the game-playing with "crime" statistics instead of shootings to try to obscure the clear truth.
Bad comparison. Few criminals seek to shoot you. The proper comparison is whether you would prefer to be mugged by a gun, a knife or a club.
And the proper answer here is gun. You're much less likely to be hurt by a mugger with a gun--the mugger is far more likely to rely purely on deterrence rather than actually use his weapon.
Exactly, it's a question of perspective. We had a rationalist essay on exactly this effect on the front page yesterday, in fact! It's a Trapped Prior.
If your prior is "gun rights are super important and any attempt to regulate guns must be resisted", then it leads you inevitably to ridiculous arguments like "AKTUALLY guns reduce crime (for some variant definition of crime that includes non-violent stuff)" or (and you fell right into this one) "[gun regulation] leads inevitably to large scale gun confiscation or prohibition"[1].
At what point will the gun folks come back to rational compromise? You know how you end up with inevitable prohibition? When it's the only option left to the majority.
[1] Which is just clearly false, look at the diversity of gun laws across the globe! CLEARLY it's true that you can regulate them better than the US without "inevitably" confiscating them. Look at Canada, for goodness sake.
It’s not clear that there is anything in your response that is relevant to my comment.
The point I see you making is to say that all people who are against gun control are irrational, but it this appears to be a bare claim unsupported by an argument.
The prevalence of guns changes the nature of crime, on the whole, from largely survivable violence to presumptively lethal injury. And that's bad, thus the game-playing with "crime" statistics instead of shootings to try to obscure the clear truth.