Hmm. There are regulations on alcohol. It is illegal to drink or purchase it before a certain age (21 in most states). You have to show your ID to purchase. Cannot give to children. Most places, cannot drink in public or at work. You cannot drink and drive, both cars and a number of vehicles, even bicycles. I'm not going into all the laws and regulations say if you were caught drinking and driving, even before getting into an accident. A 12 year old can be taken to a shooting range and shoot a machine gun, while a 15 year old cannot have a glass of wine with their family.
I think the main thing to remember, is that totally banning guns, as totally banning alcohol is not feasible. But it is entirely feasible to have enforced restrictions on the use of that item. I think perfect is the enemy of good in this situation. In the same way, less restrictions are on some drugs, while thers is an outright ban on other drugs which are harmful and have no medical benefit. In the same way some types of guns can be legal and restricted, while other types of weapons are banned and not allowed for consumer use.
Partgypsy, thanks for your response. You bring up several different situations, where alcohol is regulated, all of which were captured by my initial post on the comparison. The only thing I failed to mention was having an ID to verify age. However, they all can be captured by the three categories of age, public drunkenness, and drunk driving. On age, we're paralleled with guns at least partially. There are age restrictions for both alcohol and guns (although, as you mentioned, guns can be done with supervision while younger). Still, I feel it is a rough comparison. For public drunkenness, you've already abused it, so that's different than a restriction before any wrong has been done. For drunk driving, the same. It's not causing the accident that's the root of the issue. The root is being drunk and driving (the wrong).
So overall, for alcohol, we have only three types of restrictions. One based on age - the only one without any probable cause, and the other two based on actually doing something wrong.
The point I'm trying to make here is that the regulations on alcohol and guns are completely different. If regulations on alcohol were the same as what are on guns or certainly if they are like the regulations proposed by almost every gun control proponent here, then there would be regulations like the following:
Why are you buying so much alcohol at once? Do you really need a bottle of gin, whiskey, and tequila? Why are you buying higher proof alcohol? No one has need for that except to get totally drunk, which is dangerous. These would be done before you have even done anything wrong. Just an "in general", you can't need more than one six pack at a time or the like.
Beyond this, if you were ever abusive to someone while drunk or were ever to drink and drive, forget a breathalyzer on a car. You would be restricted from drinking period. These are comparable requirements. Both preemptively targeting people who buy a lot or certain types or whatever and a total restriction given certain circumstances, but of course, alcohol restrictions are nothing like this.
This is more than comparable, because, after all, removing the ability to drive after drunk driving is great and all, but it would only remove roughly 10k of the deaths due to alcohol (again, ~85k). While this would be a big proportion if we were talking about gun deaths (about 1/3 of the total including suicides), in the scope of alcohol it still leaves ~75k deaths a year, still over twice what is caused by all gun deaths. And yet, none of these restrictions are ever bandied about.
My goal is to post here because this is a group of much more intelligent people than the average message board. My hope is to convey the other side of the gun control equation with this analogy.
I would request that others either poke holes in my comparison or hopefully develop empathy for the side of gun supporters.
Guitarstv, accolay, milkshake, etc. propose many arguments for regulating guns. Are gun control supporters ready to do the same thing for alcohol? (again, not the only example of a difference in how freedoms are pitted against safety but an apt analogy IMO) If not, I say that the arguments are inconsistent. Guns are an easy thing to demonize and yet the data and analogy, again IMO, show that guns are hardly an isolated risk. We all have to decide how we balance freedoms against safety. I'd personally rather be in a place with more rights and more risks than the reverse, but if people want some other balance on the continuum, that's fine. I'd just like consistency with other things or feedback as to how my analogy is flawed.