My theory about gun control laws is that pro gun people think mostly about themselves. They think that they are smart and moral enough to control their weapon at all times and use it only when they are morally justified. Pro gun control folks think about the people around them. They see loads of incompetent and immoral people who should never be near a firearm. So my question to you is twofold, if the gun in your pants went off by some freak accident and you accidentally shot either:
A. Your balls off
B. A fleabag hippie resulting in your long term incarceration and daily sodimization
would that change you view on firearms?
Normally I won't come anywhere close to starting an online gun debate because they're 1) boring and also because 2) the anti-gun arguments are generally based in either emotion or ignorance or a combination of both, which means the gun advocate always wins. That said, you posed a question so before I go off to happy hour I'm obligated to answer it. HOWEVER, there are a couple of points that need clarification.
First, there is no modern firearm, no pistol nor revolver, that can magically or "accidentally" fire on its own. It is mechanically impossible. Loaded and chambered Glock pistols have been tossed out of airplanes and fallen several thousand feet and not a single one discharged upon impact. There is only ONE way a firearm fires, and that's by having its trigger pulled. The only circumstance I can imagine where a firearm can discharge without the trigger being pulled is if the firearm were engulfed in flames long enough for the heat to activate the cartridge's primer, but if the pistol on my waist has been engulfed in flames long enough for that, I probably have bigger problems than a dead hippie or my balls missing.
Further, I cannot fucking stand hearing ignorant jagoffs in the news or the movies talk about an "accidental discharge." There is NOTHING "accidental" about a firearm discharge. There are two ways a firearm is discharged: INTENTIONAL discharge, and NEGLIGENT discharge. And a NEGLIGENT discharge occurs when an individual doesn't follow the three basic, golden rules of firearms safety that every kid in America should learn by age 5:
1) Treat every firearm as if it's loaded.
2) Always keep a firearm pointed in a safe direction.
3) KEEP YOUR FUCKING FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER.
Therefore, in the hypothetical situation you described where I either a) blow my nuts off or b) unintentionally shoot the fleabag hippy, then it would be because I NEGLIGENTLY discharged the weapon I was carrying and deserved the full consequences of my actions, whether that's being sterile or locked up in prison. I would have earned it. And it certainly would not compel me to want to deprive law-abiding Americans of their constitutionally-guaranteed rights.
But as the direction of this conversation has naturally gone the inevitable route of clamoring for "gun control," I'm not going to hesitate to say it: GUN CONTROL DOES NOT WORK.
Ask Bill Clinton how well "gun control" works in America. Clinton helped author and signed into law the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, which contained most every provision that gun-control advocates today clamor for under the guise of "common sense gun laws" (including bans on scary "assault style rifles," standard capacity magazines and anything else that looked spooky to these fucking pussies). The AWB proved to be an abject failure and did absolutely NOTHING to decrease gun violence in America. Bill Clinton has gone on record many times admitting this. So worthless were these "common sense gun laws" that ten years later when the AWB was set to expire, the DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED CONGRESS didn't even bother trying to renew it. It failed, as all gun control attempts fail, yet every time someone gets shot and weepy liberals in the news start wailing for someone to "DOOOO SOMETHING!!" the usual crowd of dickless activists crawl out of the woodwork and demand we bring the failed AWB back again.
As others have alluded to, the states with the most lenient gun laws and highest gun ownership in America also have the lowest rates of gun-related crime while the cities and states with the strictest gun laws have the highest rates of gun-related violence. As you alluded to, those same cities also have large, concentrated populations of African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans. This is not opinion or conjecture but plain, simple fact. The only state in America with extremely restrictive gun laws yet very little gun violence is Hawaii, but racial demographics in Hawaii are dominated by East Asians and Caucasians with very, very few blacks or Hispanics.
So what does that mean? Honestly? You said it first...It means you can pass all the gun restrictions you want but it won't do anything if there are lots of black and/or brown people in your city. But thanks to the racial climate we live in, go ahead and be the first (white) person to say that in public and you will be burned at the cross, labeled a racist, a bigot, a Nazi, a white supremacist; you will probably lose your job; you will be shunned in most social circles.
Guns are not the problem. PEOPLE are the problem. Humans are violent by nature and Americans have violence AND guns woven into the fabric, history and culture of our nation. You are not going to legislate guns away and it wouldn't make a difference even if you could. And no matter where you are in the world, if you snapped your fingers today and every firearm disappeared, nutcases would just find another method of killing people. Perhaps turn to the methods of the Allahu Akbar crowd and start mowing people down with vans at crowded intersections, or fashioning homemade explosives. Seems to me they're able to kill as many or more than the loony American kid with his mom's AR-15. And we as a people, nation and culture entered a new phase and reality in April 1999 when those kids shot up Columbine High School in Colorado. I know, I was thirty minutes away from the school. I watched it on live tv standing next to the siblings of some of the kids crawling out of the windows. I went to the memorial. I watched Al Gore's moronic speech afterwards where he wailed for more gun control and maybe two people in the crowd of 1000 clapped. The Columbine Shooting happened during the Assault Weapons Ban, by the way. People are the problem, and people keep getting worse.
If you TRULY cared about "people around you" and "saving lives," you'd be clamoring for bans on alcohol and vehicles, which kill exponentially more men, women and children every day than any firearm, legal or not. But you're not going to do that because it doesn't make sense to ban alcohol (as we learned through Prohibition) nor cars (because that's retarded), just as it makes no sense historically, statistically, legislatively, legally, tactically or logically to try banning firearms.
And now I'm going to go get drunk and try to rub one out later.