Re:Guns (Score 1)

Although I don't disagree with what I think is your larger point, that it is individuals and not guns who are bear the responsibility for gun violence, I do have two minor criticisms:

1. There is, in fact, evidence from psychology that the mere visual presence of a gun increases an individual's propensity to violent thinking. I don't have a reference handy, and am only remembering this from my social psychology textbook, so I can't vouch for sure as to the accuracy of my expression of the finding, but I think that was the gist of it. This is a long way from saying that a gun "creates the motivation" for violence, but I do think it prevents you from logically lumping guns together with crowbars, hands, and cars without further comment.
2. In your third paragraph, you refer to guns as "the tools of freedom." Could the statement you make not be turned around just as reasonably to read, "Gun control opponents try to prevent the elimination of the tools of violence because they MIGHT be used by their owners as tools for defending freedom?" After all, guns are used as tools of illegal violence every day in the United States, but it's been a couple of hundred years since they were used by ordinary civilians in defense of freedom. I just don't find it highly plausible that individual ownership of guns is still necessary for the defense of freedom, from either our own or a foreign government. This alone does not mean that the government has an unfettered right to deprive individuals of guns, and you may still make a case for the utility of guns for personal self-defense, but I don't think the colonial argument is anywhere near as relevant, if at all, in 2002.