# Availability and lethality of guns and body counts

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/availability-and-lethality-of-guns-and-body-counts/809469>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [February 24, 2018, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/availability-and-lethality-of-guns-and-body-counts/809469 "2018-02-24T16:03:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\
**Post date:** [February 24, 2018, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/availability-and-lethality-of-guns-and-body-counts/809469/2 "2018-02-24T16:43:09Z")

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I’ll re-post this from that thread so as to stop the hijack over there:

> [@Sheriff officer resigns after Florida Shooting](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sheriff-officer-resigns-after-florida-shooting/809373/93):
>
> The elephant in the room is violence in society. The gun is irrelevant. If we could magically make them all go away the actual problem would still exist.
> 
> If the shooter didn’t have a gun he would killed the students some other way.

The available evidence suggests that this notion is incorrect; availability of the tool has a lot to do with how often the tool is used. [Cite](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/2/16399418/us-gun-violence-statistics-maps-charts) and [cite](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC478945/).

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