How would you know? I don't think we've ever tried to actually get the assholes to kill each other off before here. It's just been a happy accident that it happens at all, really. Darwin Awards and all that.
What ever if it works or not, but is that the kind of society you want to live in, where people constantly shoot each other? Again, you're kinda way to acceptable to viollence here. If only the assholes would hit each other that might be one thing, but there will be bystanders caought in it too, maybe trough accident or even on purpose.
I mean, people aren't fucking BORN assholes. It's something that gets learned and it's something that can damn well be UNlearned. Make the price for being a fucking asshole forfeiture of life and limb and you're going to see the School of Not Being An Asshole start to surge in attendance, as a matter of goddamn self-preservation people are going to want to learn how to interact with other people without copping a severe case of high-speed lead poisoning.
I doubt it. Why? Because people are not always rational or acting in their self interest or with with self preservation in mind. And you don't have to be even crazy for that to happen, emtional instability, a life crysis, depressions you name it, those can be already enough to make some snap in certain situations. Those things happen, and we're talking about 300 Million people here, so it's safe to assume that with more gun owners, there will be also more issues. People often do something, they regret later. The issue with guns however is, that certain mistakes can be only made once. Which is also interesting when you consider certain studies on the subject of gun ownership and behaviour.
Owning a gun can change your perception and the way you think about your suroudings and environment,
(...)However, can just picking up a gun suddenly make the world appear more violent? And the psychology of gun ownership, where in some cases guns are used as compensating factor, like a lack of confidence for example. Of course, the majority of gun owners are normal people and not crazy, but people have issues, they get under stress, dealing with every day problems, low self esteem and many other psychological issues. That's simply normal for a highly developed society. Ownership of guns, doesn't turn people in to testosterone driven agressive psychos, but it isn't much of a surprise that weapons give you a sense of power and have an effect on your psychology, hell I find guns pretty awesome objects and it does feel pretty great to handle them! I would definetly want to own a rifle. But I still don't believe that an armed population, means every asshole suddenly turns in to a nice person.
In other words, giving an asshole a gun simply makes him in to an armed asshole. Guns don't remove the reasons for crime and other social issues so the protection you gain from it, is rather limited.
But I guess that's how societies work today, America with their guns in particular. Instead of actually adressing the reasons and the actuall issue, give everyone a gun and it will sort it self out!
Switzerland has relatively many guns owned by the public, yet they have only very few gun related deaths and viollence. Why? Because the nation is stable and the education is high, people experience very little economic and social preasure. Turns out people which don't live in poverty and preasure, make better decisions and comitt less crimes.
