What fraction of that is a member of one gang shooting a member of another gang? In my previous reading of FBI analysis of gun crime, the answer is “almost all of them”.

My objection is what you did right here: portraying one gang member shooting another as a child just caught in a conflict.

> knife vs gun actually matters

Yes — and it matters in the case you refuse to accept, self-defense. A gun lets a woman shoot a rapist, a frail man shoot an attacker, and an elderly person shoot a home invader. Each of these actual differences in guns versus knives decreases the rate at which gang members can prey on the public, and we see that in the crime rates of the US versus other countries. Guns prevent on the order of millions of crimes in the US, because of their effect on reducing crime like robberies and break-ins. Criminals prefer unarmed victims.

What banning guns doesn’t do, and we’ve seen this in other metros, is decrease the rate of gang violence by very much: they kill each other with knives just fine in London.

So you’re proposing a feel-good solution: it increases the rate at which non-gang members are harmed, it doesn’t do much for actual gang violence, and it relies on you telling emotionally manipulative lies — like the one above, where you misrepresented the victims of gang violence as simply innocent bystanders when the bulk seem to be other gang members.

I absolutely think we should do something about that violence — like increased policing, reinvestment in the area, redevelopment of infrastructure to spur the local area economy, etc. I just don’t think a feel good solution which seems based on misrepresenting facts is useful.

Happy, economically prosperous people don’t kill people.

That’s the issue — not guns.