Wrt your first point, Americans are portrayed badly because so many ARE bad. The whole problem with comparing one country's population with ours is that the people aren't remotely the same. Oh, sure, some are very similar, but we have people who won't allow others to live in peace.
WRT your comment about your low number of gun tragedies, I wish the same. However, it will take a very long time to get there for this country. Confiscation won't result in gathering ALL of the guns- I guarantee it. People will hide them and avoid using whatever they kept for a time, but they WILL be used again. They do it now- felons aren't allowed to have guns, but the high number of gun crimes committed by felons involve guns. They hide, trade, sell, destroy the evidence often and that makes another conviction more difficult. Many of the guns used in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area come from Chicago and other parts of the country, often transported by gangs, for gang use. Unless those people can be followed 24 hours/day, it's not going to stop and since we have the 4th and 6th Amendments, searches must come with a warrant. I would bet that if they did block by block searches, they would cut crime by 30%, maybe more.
Mental illness comes with too much of a stigma for people to willingly tell others when a family member or friend shows signs of problems but IMO, no 'sane' person would buy 30+ guns in a short time (unless it was part of a valuable collection) and shoot more than 600 people. If they were sane before, they weren't at the time of the incident.
Do a google search for weapons used in US murders- here's a link from the FBI-
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/expanded-homicide-data/expanded_homicide_data_table_8_murder_victims_by_weapon_2010-2014.xls
If guns are no longer available, it woin't stop murders, but it will cut the number- it's still a problem of people not being able to think of a different way to solve a problem.
Re: No Laws, no criminals, you're wrong- THEY owned slaves. In the past. However, because traditions and customs sometimes take a long time to die, people would still want top own slaves, if they could. Don't generalize so broadly.
WRT your comments about the gun narrative- IMO, if someone carries a gun, they need to be ready to use it, but ONLY if they are able to use it without spraying bullets and hitting something other than their intended target. The US has had a big problem with stray bullets hitting innocent bystanders & non-targets, which has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths in the last couple of decades. If they aren't proficient, they shouldn't be allowed to carry. Even well-trained (in theory) people don't hit the target when under stress and one example is when a bank robbery occurred in New York City- the police fired at the robbers and hit nine pedestrians.
Some people are too gung ho to own and carry guns, but the root of the problem is that people are ultimately at fault. Read the online news from any major city and you'll see events that should never happen.
