ikes,
I do have to say that you're technically "right" that gun violence is down since the nationwide peak in violent crime in the 80s, and if you isolate the last 20 years you catch the tail end of the decline before finding a steady gun death rate over the last ~ 15 years. I would challenge you to demonstrate that the decline you cite is proof that gun proliferation does not lead to gun violence,
given that over any relevant sample compared to the rest of the world, AND on a state-by-state basis, the correlation is VERY strong between gun deaths and gun proliferation (Harvard School of Public Health Study). I would also point out that gun ownership on a
per household basis has declined since 1975, which to my mind simply muddies the picture since gun violence both peaked and declined during that per household decline (which is interesting though probably explained by the independent explosion in violent crime in this country dating from approximately 1970 to 1990, during which time I continue to be amused in the relative dearth of recorded incidents of gun ownership preventing violence, but that's a digression).
In any case, the at-least-15-year-long steady rate of gun DEATHS - just deaths - per year is the one I pointed out above - something like 12,000 deaths per year (with increasing suicide by gun rates). You can throw in something like 25,000 additional injuries per year.
Thus, I dare say, your STATS are not a remotely strong argument against gun regulation or argument tending to demonstrate that gun violence is somehow becoming a smaller problem along with decreasing crime.
A simpler argument would just be that as crime decreases, gun violence does not over the last ~ 15 years.
There's also the point that pre-planned active shooter situations have been rising in frequency for almost a decade, which indicates that this problem is in fact not remotely solving itself.
On the topic of BANNING ALL THE GUNS ZOMG CONSTITUTION, you will note that I did not remotely argue for a ban on all firearms, so your point about that is plainly not relevant to
my posts, at least, or to my position.
On the point that defining assault weapon is super hard yo,the trope that the term "assault weapon" is meaningless is not true. There is no way you do not know to what I refer, not only because their use in mass shooting is
de rigueur, and because their military heritage and design is completely beyond dispute, but because functional definitions abound. Take the assault weapons ban of 2013 definition (it is long, and detailed). Take the relatively simple "every AK and AR variant in the world" definition. I do not need to provide a 300-product long specific list for you to know what I am talking about.
Not only that, but the reality is that the only people who have a semantic problem with this term are the people who want to argue that specific technicalities
between various AR models make some ARs actually "assault weapons" and others not. This fundamentally breaks down to "wait, how many people AM I allowed to kill with my people-killing-designed-weapon before it's an assault weapon? There's gotta be a minimum below which it's all good right? Right? Constitution?" The only reason we engage in this particular part of the debate is that by selecting out specific design features, numerous obviously-designed-to-be-deadly-to-multitudes weapons can be removed from the definition via fake and irrelevant design technicalities. For example, some AR-15 variants do not have selective-fire. Many gun rights advocates would have it that these AR-15s are not assault weapons at all. This is specious in the
extreme. Just as I am not burdened with the obligation of providing a specific product-by-product list, I am not required to demonstrate that every single facile and specious technical argument is wrong.
You would think the burden would be on gun rights advocates in a world where:
1. On a state-by-state basis, more guns = more gun deaths;
2. On a country-by-country basis, more guns = more gun deaths;
3. On a state-by-state basis, strict gun regulation CORRELATES (not causes - correlates) with fewer gun deaths; and
4. the purported greatest country on Earth suffers from multiple-victim shootings literally almost on the daily and happens also to be the only country in the first world that cherishes gun ownership in this manner.
But it's not, apparently. That does not make sense, and is suicidal on the national scale. I'll stop here for now, but I really, really, really want to get into the Constitutional issue as well. The tropes surrounding the Second Amendment are extremely facile and transparently idiotic, for the most part, and I honestly do not think most gun rights advocates understand what those arguments actually are. Perhaps that'll be another post.