You are aware that almost at the same time a crazed man in China killed/injured 20 people with a knife... Are we to say Chinese knife control is dumb? For the millionth time, it's not the guns, it's not the knives, it's the people behind them. I can kill you with an Encyclopedia Britannica while you sleep, are we going to ban/control books after that?
By definition, weapon is a tool used to inflict damage. Furthermore, tool is defined as an physical object that's used as aid in reaching particular goal.
Therefore any physical object that's used to inflict damage becomes a weapon.
However, guns and arms are tools designed to provide aid in damaging, injuring, and killing life.
That's their primary function.
It takes helluva more effort to kill somebody with an tool that wasn't designed as weapon, than with one that was. Knife or Encyclopedia. Onhell, if I wanted you dead, and I had an AK-47, you would probably end up dead. But if I only had a knife, you stand a great chance of not only surviving, but even defending from my attack. We cannot do anything about people behind the weapons, because they are already killers by their own psyche, but we surely can do a lot for the outcome of their actions.
In any case, USA has a weapon culture. That's completely idiotic.
I agree with the main premise behind American laws, especially when you place them in the context of their time. But...
@Wasted, we had a bloody civil war in a country that had big military industry and million strong territorial defense. 5 years of complete lawless chaos. You can imagine how much arms was left around after the war. There was a action by the government 10 years ago, where you could just turn in your illegal arms to police station, and that's it. No questions, no documents, no signatures. Did it help? Yes. Was it enough? No. This year, there were three major murders in my city - a guy slaughted a Mexican woman, one local had limbs and head severed off, and another was just executed with a bullet to the head. So firearms were only 1/3 of the cases. Let's not examine the means, but the cause - the two latter were tied to loanshark businesses. The poor Mexican girl was throat-cutted by a lunatic. The demise of social and economic system inflates number of murders, regardless of the tool. If you have a ill society, you have a problem. Problems are dealt at base, not at the top.
Lets face it - due to way that Western society works today, people spend less and less time with their children. Educational institutions are mainly being ran for profit, and then everyone is shocked that a 26 year old quiet and shy guy slaughted a tourist and dumped her body. Someone should've seen it. His parents, staff at his school. Until we find time for ourselves again, we are going to have chronicles filled with bad news.
Compare the numbers for USA and Europe today and 30 years ago. Laws haven't changed, numbers did. So guns aren't really the root of the problem. But their all around accessibility makes it far less of a hassle to do a mass murder.
For USA, it's really hard to do anything about those laws, because guns have been legal for 200+ years. There are people manufacturing them, there are people selling them, there are people working with them, and of course, people who bought them with their own money with law's consent. Ban them - people lost jobs and investment.
As you can see, I don't have an exact opinion of what should be done with guns, since the issue is far more complicated - what's been happening is just a nuance of big problem, and that problem won't be solved until someone implements a decent and humane socio-economic system. Mental problems form murdereds; they can be the result of a biological issue, or a social one. How many of those killers we talk about were psychopats by birth? How many were turned to psychopats by our society?
And the North and South pole were taken by skis and sled dogs 
