Education does not always correlate to action. Behavioral psychology and economics show us that even when people know what they should be doing, they don't always do it.
We have had training and instruction on the use and care of firearms for decades, but we still have an unacceptably high number of incidents, both accidental and intentional. States like NY have even passed laws that make not securing your weapon a misdemeanor; people aren't just uneducated, they need a clear incentive to act safer.
> I'd like to see some stats that show how many people are killed by guns that are not involved in illegal activities (and suicides), gun deaths in the circles of drug dealers, gangs and other illicit activities should not so much in the stats of risk to public safety imho.
Before I get into the stats, I'd like to point out that suicide risk is still a public safety risk that the united states takes very seriously. If someone is a danger to themselves, it's nearly the same as if they were a danger to others: either way, a life is at risk. Suicide is (most of the time) an impulse decision, and even small mitigations can prevent them. If not having a gun prevents a suicide, that saves a life, and thus has an impact on public safety. Suicide impacts not only families, but entire communities. This is a complex subject, but one that should never be discounted.
Guns account for over half of all suicide deaths in the US. In fact, the use of guns in suicide has only increased, and is now even larger than gun homicides. [3]
Gun deaths involved in illegal activities are definitely public safety issues. It's easy to dismiss gang violence as a lesser part of society that we shouldn't care about. But if you get to know the kinds of people in gangs, you realize it's 14 year old kids, and 50 year old lifers. It's people with families, who live in real communities. Their life affects many other lives. From the police they come into conflict with, to the social workers that try to help rehabilitate them, to the hospital workers that pick up the damage, and the prisons that generate hardened soldiers.
Gun crime creates worse outcomes for all these parts of society and more. To say nothing of the collateral damage of their conflicts that reach out into any surrounding communities. Gang violence enacted through guns is a very significant public safety risk, perhaps one of the largest gun-related risks to public safety. Their impact on public safety is probably greatest through the impact of the drug trade, but second to that, the collateral of gun crimes.
Snopes did an investigation on a meme about homicides. They found that only about 48% of homicides could be directly attributed to gangs, with the rest being due to interpersional relationships, and "unknown causes". [4]
Gun crimes significantly affect minorities, which has a significant accumulative effect not just on public safety, but the health, safety and economic stability of significant portions of minority communities. Homicide is the fourth leading cause of death for non-Hispanic whites 15-24, but the second leading for Hispanics 15-34, and the leading cause for non-Hispanic blacks. [1]
> car crashes, cell phone use, and hospitals likely contribute to more deaths than guns yet we don't rush to ban them - and yet access to those things are not 'rights'
Wait, cell phone use causes deaths? You lost me there.
Cars cause about as many deaths per year in the US as guns, so I would definitely say we need tougher regulations there. But like I mentioned before, people are not rational, and we should be legislating based on real-world harms, not based purely on the "perception" of risk.
[1] https://www.apha.org/-/media/files/pdf/factsheets/160317_gun... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20160616013917/https://www.ama-a... [3] http://www.bradycampaign.org/gun-violence-in-the-united-stat... [4] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/gun-homicides-disputes/