While the blueprints may be available the ability to produce is tightly regulated, you cannot simply start a weapons factory and that seems a little expensive since you would only be able to supply yourself if laws preventing sale were being enforced. Maybe I've misunderstood but I can't see your point, I understand your point with regards to things like torrents and blueprints but these are not physical objects, banning the sale of weapons is a physical thing and the production of them is physical, compared to say torrenting a DVD for example where everything remains digital and does not require you to construct the product once receiving the data. With regards to printing 3D weapons then the law would clearly stop them being allowed publicly, legally. Obviously the illegal distribution would still occur but if remove it from being so publicly available then there would be a clear decrease in usage. Given the seriousness of weapons then i would expect such sites that would pass on blueprints would be shut down and this would mean people would have to search harder and this again would reduce the final number of people who would obtain it. If you stop people having it to start with then it prevents any possible situation involving prevention, to say you want weapons for self defence would be to say you think Iran is entitled to nuclear weapons to defend themselves because other countries have them, surely you don't think that and would agree less people/countries with potentially destructive weapons is good. As it so happens the news just give out some figure on gun deaths, 3.2/100,000 in U.S.A, 1.6/100,000 Canada and 0.1/100,000 Britain. I just give the view if it's not there then it can't be used, your argument into what the law would control is far to vast to discuss(however if on the topic of things like torrents I would perhaps suggest that if a site allows for or can consolidate illegal activities it should be shut down, especially if it's main usage is illegal trade ( U torrent, Pirate bay etc..) as would any public store if it was known to allow illegal activities to take place in it and I believe it it got to/ gets to the point of weapons being able to be transferred like this we would see far more intrusive laws passed by governments to monitor and flag peoples internet usage)--- apologies if I sidetracked

The evidence given, that 1 article that gives little data from 1 source (as a scientist that is not enough to make a conclusion from) is used to back up a statement made, a statement that may I say is wrong, for the simple reason that you can find good evidence that gun control laws do work. As for the part of the article about concealed guns or not I find irrelevant due to my opposition of guns anyway. To even make a comment about the Old West being better times is ridiculous considering there clearly was higher death rates and a poor quality of life not to mention a far lower level of intelligence which is an interesting point as there a psychology articles showing a correlation between decreased intelligence and the purchasing of guns ( A quick note on that point is that it excludes those sales for hunting and job purposes). My point is just that if you don't have guns on sale then there's less crazy people with guns and therefore no need to carry guns. I am a British citizen as I said so I cannot really comment on the need for a gun, I think if I lived in America where guns are available so readily i probably would buy one and say I need it for self defence but I feel sorry that you feel the need to possess a gun, to possess a tool capable of killing someone. I apologise if you feel I did not read the argument or if you feel my point was misplaced but when a point "Gun control laws don't work" is made on a website made for debating and I disagree with the point then I am going to reply, even if you seem happy to accept one piece of evidence with no regard to it's possible bias.

Surely you can see that not allowing easy access to weapons will decrease their use, that's just a simple fact of life. True there will always be those people who will want to kill and will find a way to get a gun but if it was harder to obtain the weapons many would be deterred, as soon as situations escalate to the use of guns there are clearly going to be more deaths than say with a knife, as a British citizen I can say knife crime is the largest killer. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/ 2011/jan/10/gun-crime-us-state . This link shows with data from the F.B.I the obvious fact that most murders in the US are by gun and this is obviously going to be the case, when a powerful weapon is so readily available why wouldn't people use it. I don't know if it's just me but I don't see why people need guns at all. ( apart from hunting etc. but in those cases special laws can be made to permit farmers and hunters to have hunting weapons like in the U.K. To say the gun control laws don't work is wrong, while you may find articles showing a few shooting here and there that's the point, they are far rarer and with fewer casualties because the laws only allow select guns anyway and very few people can obtain them.