In the world violence is increasing; terrorism and even common crime seem to be hijacking the freedom that we took for granted, so far. Now we depend on CCTV cameras and overstretched police, security and military forces.

Firearms in the hands of civilians has always been an issue; many politicians as well as a lot of politically-motivated people frequently state that civilians should not have firearms at their disposal but the truth is that having weapons has always been a natural prerrogative of humankind since the advent of tools, back in the Palaeolithic.

And while it is true that firearms hurt when they are used, the same could be said of cars, forks and electrical circuits. Many things are able to kill, but weapons allow people and whole societies to be defended. A gun is a survival tool, and in countries - like in Switzerland - where they are understood as such, there is no particular incidence of crime related to the fact that citizens are armed with rather heavy weapons.

In countries like Canada, the ratio between guns and inhabitants is higher than in the United States yet, there is no apparent relationship between that fact and violent crime. In other words, violent crimes develop from other factors instead on guns.

In Europe it is really difficult to own a firearm yet, is crime non-existent there? Are terrorist deterred in any way by that? If Europe has had a violent past it is not because of guns, but due to particular sociological factors.

Having guns in the hands of civilians not only guarantees more security for the owners - if they are properly trained to use them -; it also means that countries where that is allowed are harder to control by dictators, tyrants or invading forces, and security and defence budgets are better used.

Should people carry guns then? Yes, absolutely, because they are the tools that anyone would need for self-defence. No one can really take you the right to defend yourself from robbery or terrorists; this has been the right of people since we became capable of using tools, as I wrote. It is only a natural thing to have weapons for survival.

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Doesn´t the recent shootout in Virginia, USA prove that people shouldn´t have guns?

It proves that as much as it proves the opposite: If someone there had a gun probably he or she could have stopped the murderer. You have no other way to stop a shooter than by shooting him, and even if guns were outlawed people with criminal intent will get them.

You could argue that the police has to do the job of defending others; right, but the police force in fact was at the campus when the murder was commited and they could do nothing, so unless a policeman armed is present at the crime scene at the moment the crime is perpetrated, other armed individuals might actually prove the only way for innocent bystanders to survive.

Look at what happened once in Sweden, a country were guns are not exactly as broadly sold as in the USA: Someone got a revolver and killed a prime minister (the late Olof Palme). The murderer was never caught so he was, indeed, a person who planned the murder and not a casual killer.

That person was able to find a gun, certainly in the black market, and use it to kill someone as VIP as a prime minister, then it becomes clear that the issue is not guns but people. What would prevent someone in the USA from doing something similar if guns were totally banned there? What would prevent someone planning an atrocity from sneaking a gun from Canada, México, etc?

And even if someday, somehow, that would become possible, there are still a thousand different ways to kill and commit mass murder without using gunpowder, and you can see that in Iraq today, where expedient explosive devices, chlorine bombs and so on are profuse in abundance. Outlawing guns will only produce a variation in the way some people kill ohters, and then what?

The debate on whether guns should be outlawed is pointless, in my view, because as I just explained, it's like the chicken and egg discussion; you can outlaw guns but you will never get rid off them. The real question is to find out why these murderous individuals come into existence and what society could do about it.

I would recommend to anyone interested in this topic to review these .

While laws should be respected, I don't think that gun laws always reflect reality, especially in places where survival logic begins to take the place of state institutions due to excessive violence.

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I think it's a really difficult topic!
On the one hand, I think that a person who wants to commit a crime with the help of guns is able to do so because you always can get them on the "black market".
On the other hand though, it seems as if it's much easier to commit such crimes if there isn't a law against owning guns. You don't have to think about "How do I get a gun?", "When do I best do it?", and questions/concerns like these ones. If you have a gun in your house, I think that the possibility of acting preciptious is very high.

Nevertheless, to me it seems to be a question which is difficult to answer. In general, I do not think that prohibiting guns deteriorates the number of crimes commited - only the way of doing so is different!