I'm going to go ahead and say that it's probably easier for Bob, a suburban guy, to walk into his local gun store, say, "Hey Fred, I'd like to buy a blah blah". Bob and Frank have a bit of a chat, friendly exchange, and Bob ends up the satisfied owner of his brand new firearm. Now what Frank doesn't know, and what nobody but Bob himself knows, is that Bob wanted to buy a gun to kill his wife. See Bob and Betty have been having things rough lately, their marriage has been rocky since Bob failed to get a raise at work, which has gotten Bob down. And since Bob's been feeling pretty crummy. And to top that all off, Bob discovered that Betty's been having an affair for several months. With Bob's best friend Roy no less. So Bob figures that life probably isn't going to get much better, so he'll just do what he has to do. So he went down to Frank's Gun Shop, legally became the owner of a brand new firearm. Then Bob shot his wife and best friend, while their son Jimmy watched.
Now that incident made it to all the major news networks, it's everywhere. And we, as a nation, mourn yet again.
Imagine how things could have been different if only Bob wasn't able to go down to Frank's and buy that gun.
Could Bob have still gotten his hands on a gun? Oh it's certainly possible. But I'm betting that Bob probably doesn't have many contacts in black market gun sales, so that would make it pretty hard for him to purchase a gun. In fact it may be enough to sway Bob from actually going through with his deranged plan.
And yes, Bob certainly could have still used any infinite number of ways to commit murder. A knife, poison, drug overdose, drowning, I mean all kinds of options, we've seen the movies. So simply not making it possible for Bob to buy a gun doesn't guarantee that Bob wouldn't still find a way. But it does mean that there was one less, very easy and accessible, way for Bob to carry out the act. Making it harder, even perhaps substantially so, for a tragedy to be carried out.
And you know what, I think I'd like to make it harder for Bob to kill Betty and Roy if it's possible.
-CryptoLutheran