I've noticed a bit of that in this thread. Certain items are ignored, such as my repeated attempts when I tried to explain why we feels guns should be treated differently than, say pools, being that a guns main purpose to exist is to cause harm.
I'm assuming these things are being ignored because they can't come up with a reply that isn't just another form of "put you're wrong and I don't have to do anything to fix the problem so I won't".
Ok, I'll bite. Disclaimer up front: I don't have anything to "fix the problem" because I don't inherently see it as a problem. At least, not in the same way that you might.
Guns are built to fire a projectile, at supersonic speed. The collision with the target usually results in some form of destruction. You've chosen to classify this as "harm", even if to a piece of paper. I disagree with that classification (it would mean that carnival games like punching out shapes with BB guns is also harmful), but I will adopt your terminology here.
I believe that not all harm is bad, and a tool designed around accomplishing that harm is also not always bad.
The simplest example of this is the genre of "race guns". They are used in competitions, are are designed around causing as much harm to critical areas of the paper as possible, as fast as possible while staying within the rules of the competition. Hitting the center consistently and quickly is the only way to win. As a competition, winning is the end objective. I do not think that winning a competition like this is a negative, and the harm caused in order to effect it is sad for the paper and the tree that contributed it but the harm is ultimately not negative. By relation, I have no real reason to see a "race gun" as negative. It allows me to accomplish my goal of winning, and neither the means (punching paper) nor the end (I win) are negative.
More complex and divisive examples can be found with harm to a person, and guns that are explicitly designed to be effective as weapons against humans.
I believe that situations do exist where conflict cannot be resolved unilaterally without violence. If someone is intent on hurting me, I cannot change their mind. They are going to commit violence against me. I can either let the violence happen and be grievously injured, or I can resist it. If I choose to resist, it is prudent for me to seek the most effective means available. I cannot rely on hope that the person attacking me will have a change of heart or be easily dissuaded. I need to disable him and make it impossible for him to continue the attack. We don't currently have advanced freeze-rayguns, so my next best option is to create a physical disablement.
My apologies, because this is about to get quite morbid.
He can't keep attacking me if his muscles are useless. How do I, from the outside, make his muscles useless? I deprive them of the oxygen and fuel that they need in order to work. How do I do that? I deprive them of blood flow. How do I do that? I send him into (medical) shock, by shooting him in the chest. My goal is not to kill him, even though it looks that way. I just want to get out of the situation, and if there *must* be grievous violence then I prefer that I not be on the receiving end of it. (Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that shooting him is the only way out of every or even many situations. I'm addressing the rare situations where running away, apologizing, pleading, pepper spraying, tasering, avoiding in the first place, etc. don't work or aren't enough.)
I don’t wish harm on anybody, but in this scenario there must be harm. It is terrible that it came down to that, and that we will both be carrying scars for the rest of our lives. The fact that there is harm is a negative, but the fact that it fell on him instead of me is not. The harm to him is not inherently bad, within the context of the “him or me” scenario. A weapon, gun or otherwise, designed to produce that harm and disable him does not inherit any badness. It has allowed me to accomplish my goal of surviving the situation without suffering death or grievous bodily injury, and neither the means (sending him into shock) nor the end (disabling him) are unnecessarily negative.
If you are able to see my perspective on this so far, perhaps you can already see why I do not see a gun that is designed to produce harm as an inherent negative.
To address part of your previous comments in particular: you referenced “people who want to make a change in needless deaths”. I don’t know whether you were referencing purely accidental deaths, or death by firearms as a whole. If you were referencing death by firearms as a whole, I hope that you would not count the possible death of the aggressor in the “him or me” scenario as needless. There was very much a purpose to his injuries, and the other option would be grievous injury or death to me.
I don’t have a happy ending to this post, unfortunately. I would prefer to end it in a more upbeat manner. Perhaps there may be some consolation in knowing that only a third of shootings are actually fatal if you are promptly seen at a trauma center.
https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2014/january/survival-rates-similar-for-gunI don’t claim to have an answer, and I doubt that I have persuaded you. I do hope, however, that I have given you something to think about and a way to understand a bit of why it is so hard to get together to sit down and figure out a solution. Your perspective and my perspective are very different, and we are approaching this from different bases of understanding. It will take time and lots of work in order to build a common understanding and reference.