But most importantly, in order to buy a gun you need to get a license. This means medical check, passing a theory test, passing a psychological test and passing a practical test at the shooting range. It's not trivial at all.
The culture is completely different to US. Everyone is keeping their weapons in a safe. No bedside tables, car glove boxes or other nonsense. I've never heard of a child taking their parents' gun.
Qua guns, teenagers in other countries don't have easy access to concealable firearms. Dad doesn't have one, and you can't waltz into a store around the block to get one.
The Uvalde shooter purchased his weapon a few days prior. Most school shooters do. Anything making that harder helps.
cars?
Guns are exclusively designed to take lives. Would be useless without their ability to effectively kill things, and most humans outside of America don't think it's important for civilians to be armed.
And guns aren't intended to kill children in the halls of an elementary school, but here we are. Intended use isn't a relevant part of the conversation, it's cost/benefit. We pay a cost, we get a benefit. Cars cost lives. Legal guns cost lives. Vending machines cost lives. If 10,000 people a year died from vending machines, we'd be having the same conversation as we are with guns, even if their intended use is handing out snacks
We as a society need to decide where our line is with all of these things. Just because someone has a different line than you doesn't mean they are devaluing the cost, they may just place greater value on the benefit.
> most humans outside of America don't think it's important for civilians to be armed
Most people outside of America think strict religious laws are a good idea. So what?
Most of the rest of the world live in pretty restrictive societies on a large number of axis.
I stop reading after that ridiculous statement.
Um...
I know you can shoot targets with them, but that doesn't seem like the principal use.
What else do you think a gun is designed to do, beyond killing things?
The guns the biathletes use in the Winter Olympics aren’t “meant to kill”.
They have the same essential design as most low-caliber rifles that are explicitly designed for hunting - i.e., designed for killing.
That design came from centuries of seeking more efficient, efficacious ways to kill with guns.
Sure, they're tweaked to be optimal for very formalized, competitive shooting, not military combat, but they'd still serve very well for executions, sniping, and the like.
See also biathlon's roots in military training: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biathlon#History