What a completely stupid argument and I for one am utterly sick and tired of it and of those who make it. Pardon me for a moment while I rant. I apologise if I get a bit shouty here, but my frustration with this particular argument is at a peak right now.
Point the first: Concern for deaths is not exclusive and suggesting that it is is one of the dumbest arguments I have encountered in the time I have been arguing this subject. I can be concerned about gun deaths and other deaths - just because I am concerned about one does not in any sense mean that I cannot be concerned about others, and suggesting that this is the case isn't only completely offensive, it also says a hell of a lot about the mentality of the people who think that it's in any way a reasonable or valid argument.
Here's what seems to me to be an appropriate analogy for the argument you are making: Why are you so concerned about always teaching addition when multiplication gives you bigger numbers? Don't you care about multiplication? Why are you going out of your way to not teach multiplication? Do you see why I think this is such a massively stupid argument?
Point the second: I am concerned about guns because pools, fire extinguishers, motor vehicles and bottles of bleach are not called out in the Bill of Rights as having a special status. There is no right to own pools. There is no right to own bleach. There is no right to own or drive a motor vehicle. But there is a right to own guns. What gives guns - deadly weapons as we see every day - such a special status that there has to be something explicitly called out in the Bill of Rights (a document by the way that I otherwise have a fair bit of respect for) recognising them? Why do Americans have a right to own deadly weapons? Practically no-one else in the developed world does! And practically no-one else in the developed world sees the numbers of gun injuries and deaths that America does.
Point the third. America has the right to bear arms. Other developed countries do not. America has a gun death rate that is massively higher than other developed countries. Not just higher - massively higher. Anyone who doesn't think that there may be some kind of association between those two facts is a flat out idiot. If you don't support restriction on gun ownership, you are not only an idiot, you are an evil idiot because you think that your personal so-called "freedom" is more important than the lives of gun victims and you are willing to let them die in their thousands for your ideology.
*mic drop*
