In 2023, the US had less than 47,000 gun deaths. A large majority of those deaths were suicides, which, in my opinion, everyone in a free country should have the right to do.
Think of how many people died in the Ukraine – Russia war or the Palestine – Israel war. Our gun rights in America are a very strong discouragement to anyone invading us. They are also a strong discouragement to our government abusing us.
I agree we should eliminate every death we reasonably can, especially children.
Imagine if Germans had had gun rights prior to WW2… The Holocaust would have been impossible as Jews would have been able to defend themselves. 6,000,000 lives could have been saved. Maybe WW2 itself would not have happened. The first thing the Nazi party did in 1933 was use a 1928 gun control law to take away guns from the population.
It would take 127 years of saving all 47,000 gun deaths to equal those 6,000,000 deaths.
Gun rights have a painful annual cost in lives lost, but they ultimately save far more lives and protect the rights of the people. The most nightmarish places on earth to live don’t have any gun rights, and the leaders abuse the population without fear.
Or consider the more modern plight of the ten million Uyghurs in China. One in seventeen of those people is in a concentration camp or forced labor camp. Murder, rape, and other atrocities are taking place systematically at a horrific scale. Half a million people being tortured and imprisoned to scare nine and a half million people into line.
Would that be happening if they had gun rights?