Yep I agree there are angry people out there.
I have gotten really good at turning the other cheek.
Only last month I asked a couple, very polity to not talk during an orchestra performance we were attending.
I thought the guy was going to explode, f this, f that his face all red and angry.
15 years ago I would have laid him out cold for speaking like that in front of my wife.
Here in America we have learnt just to move and say no more.

Reminds me of the Churchill quote about a woman being a prostitute, only haggling over the price. You are for violent solutions to petty social problems, only differing over the extent of the violence.

Go read a gun blog or two. Those who thump their chests about it the most are frightened of their own shadows.

For all of this talk about being independent up-by-their-bootstrap types who care about their rights, they're really just cowards.

The stats also seem to show that knifes are considerably safer than guns, for reasons that would seem to me to be obvious, but the rate of death by knife or other cutting implement is something like a tenth of guns, for an object that is probably ubiquitous.

Knives are very personal weapons - you need to get right up close to your victim in order to do them in. If you kill someone with a knife, you're either a seasoned killer, or you're defending yourself and things got out of hand. If knife killings are even a tenth of the number of gun killings, I'd be surprised.

Knife murders seem to be about a fifth of gun murders. It is in suicides that the big disparity happens, as guns are the big go to weapon, and slashing your wrists is nowhere near as common as popular culture would indicate, falling behind suffocation and poison.

I spend quite a bit of time in France. My drive to an airport takes me through one of the most notoriously worst areas of Paris, where I have to stop for a while. I am not armed because of the law. I am not at ease and very wary of what might happen. There is much crime here.
In the States, I have a carry permit and I exercise the rights of this permit. I have been well trained in firearms and I am at ease and feel able to protect myself and my family.
I vote yes to keep guns.

I didn't think they'd be as high as a fifth, but then I never really looked into it.

I did figure guns would be pretty high up the list for suicides though, there's less chance of messing it up with a gun as there is with pills, for example, so if someone has one and really wants to do it, that is what they'll choose.

Feeling at ease is not the same as actually being safer.

The ratio is a bit less than 6:1. Per the FBI:

2013: 69.0% of US homicides involved firearms, 12.2% involved knives/similar.
2013: 69.3% of US homicides involved firearms, 12.5% involved knives/similar.

If guns are controlled, the primary benefit would be to reduce stranger-on-stranger killings. Crimes of passion are less likely to be deterred, given the emotional baggage accompanying the crimes.

That being said, I've been threatened with knives twice, both in Amsterdam. Even though I was unarmed, I stood my ground and came out of it fine, in part because the other guys didn't want the risk of being hurt themselves.

I'm glad that they didn't have guns. I suspect that they would have been a lot bolder and I would have been a lot more hurt if they had.

Ban knives and there would be no knife crime

QED

Okay to satisfy you, I feel at ease and safer. OK?

Statistical data tells us that the gun makes you less safe. This is true whether or not you are aware of it or are willing to acknowledge it.

I didn't think it'd be that high.

There has to be some kind of happy medium with respect to private gun ownership though, something that allows the sport shooter to go make holes in paper, or the hunter to bag himself some venison but doesn't allow crazies to perforate someone because they can't handle a simple altercation ...

I think you managed to successfully call their bluff in those cases, they had the knife as a 'deterrent', but really didn't plan on using it. You're right though, had they been armed with guns, the impersonal nature of their use would have made them much more likely to use them.

Incorrect. It'd just be a lot harder to make sandwiches.

Feeling safer is not the same as actually being safer.

The number of deaths from carjackings in the US is less than 15 a year, and as a male and presumably at least middleish affluence your risk is lower. I think one problem in America is valuing property over life.