In other words, if our politicians were really concerned about gun-violence, they would discuss the issue of handguns.  Not assault weapons, which Harris correctly points out are related to a very tiny minority of shootings.

All first amendment arguments aside (which as a lawyer, I continue to be embarrassed by the 5-4 decisions from SCOTUS and in particular Justice Scalia, who has been correctly identified by Posner as a fraud) the issue, at least in terms of personal safety, can be boiled down into a few arguments:

1. Can we prevent gun violence?
2. If we can, how do we go about it?

The first question begs the question as to what IS gun violence.  How do we define it?  More importantly, what actual form does it take?

This is the part where the "moment of truth" discussion I had as it relates to the martial arts is relevant, because handguns are also things in which our perceptions are guided by a mythology about how violence really plays out.

Central to our mythology is the "shoot-out".

There is not an American alive who has not seen thousands of exchanges of gunfire on the television or the movies.  We vastly prefer watching such depictions to depictions of sex.  Yet out of the vast majority of murders committed with guns, the same dynamic that makes BJJ not necessarily the best choice in a confrontation is the same dynamic that makes having your gun ready not the best choice.

Simply put, most gun violence, and most deadly violence, takes the form of an assassination, not a gunfight.  That is why out of the 64 mass shootings in the US, not one was ever stopped by an armed person.