And I'm not proposing banning guns, I'm challenging the commonly-held narrative that guns "keep us safe." The statistics are unequivocal that they do not.
Gun owners are constantly on the defensive (except, of course, when their lobbying groups are being rather offensive), and constantly required to justify their existence, so of course they're going to go with something that sounds more noble than "but it's a cool hobby!"
It's probably been parroted so much that a lot of people who say it actually believe it.
Full disclosure: I've never owned a gun, but I do think they're pretty neat.
Full disclosure: I've never owned a really fast car, but I do think they're pretty neat.
That's pretty much an empty tautology, since any use of guns that doesn't provide this effect can be dismissed as "improper".
Most gun deaths are accidents, where the person who died knew they were entering a dangerous situation. I'm pretty sure the people who die in gun accidents wouldn't want guns to be banned, or else they probably wouldn't be in that situation in the first place. Also, accidental gun death rates have been declining almost monotonically since 1903. For scale, almost 8 times as many people died of choking than of gun accidents in the US in 2011.
America's suicide rate is not bad at all. It's actually pretty low compared to many other developed countries.
So what, exactly, are you getting at? Should we ban guns to prevent accidents, presumably against the wishes of those who are the victims of such accidents? Should we ban guns to maybe prevent a few suicides, with no evidence that doing so would decrease the suicide rate and not just cause people to use other methods?
There are also considerations beyond safety. Cars are very dangerous, but we use them anyway because they have tremendous utility. Fatty meat and smoking (anything) are very dangerous, but we allow those things anyway because they are enjoyable and people deserve the right to expose themselves to dangerous things if they so desire.