At the end of the day, Texas, however you may feel living there/being from there, has a higher per capita firearm death rate than several large states with stricter gun laws and many countries with stricter gun laws, and I personally believe those things to be related.
The data are from 2015, but DC is highest by far, even with its very strict gun laws. Note that California is higher than Texas despite horribly restrictive gun laws.
My point was more that people are less likely to abuse them as some exceptional item, at least as far as I've seen. Criminals will always use them; I was more talking about the likelihood of someone to draw a gun in a tense situation, which I can't measure. But people who view them as tools and know how to use them understand that one ought not to draw a gun unless he intends to use it.
All that aside, I don't support gun rights because rates of certain crimes are below some number. We would call it silly to support a right to privacy only insofar as terrorism does not exceed a certain threshold and to say that such a right disappears. In the same way, I don't believe crime rate should have any effect on our right to keep and bear arms.
I know there are areas with higher gun murder rates than TX. DC is a slightly unfair comparison, as you're comparing a city to a state. CA is not significantly higher than TX.
Your general point- which really seemed to be "knowing that everyone is armed in TX results in less gun violence", is easily disproven by other states with totally different laws having similar or lower gun violence rates.
To your last line- I agree with you, I don't believe crime rate should have any effect on our right to keep and bear arms. I want a complete repeal of the Second Amendment, though.
So, um...what are the statistics for Texas, which is the state being talked about?
It's all very well to mention that other states have some firearm homicides each year, but if you don't provide Texas' stats to compare to, it's not especially germane to the topic at hand...
The reason I pointed out the other states was to show that the looser gun laws of Texas is not necessarily the cause of higher firearm homicide rate. The other states have looser firearm laws than Texas (not in all respects).
I do not think it is the cause. My point is that the laws on the books and the firearm homicide rate seem fairly loosely coupled, if at all. If TX has loose laws, and CA has strict laws, and they're about the same with regards to firearm homicide rate, I think it is fair to suggest that the original poster's suggestion that "knowing every person could be armed actually reduces issues" may be faulty.
