Each time I've had that conversation, it invariably ends up with "fingers in the ears".
I don't intend to derail this thread because I completely agree those are good talking points. They are enlightening statistics that definitively illustrate how complex a subject this is to anyone actually interested.
However, "talking points" are only as good as the nature of a conversation. If someone is not interested in having that conversation, it's just a waste of time. The discussion ends. Nothing is gained, other than perhaps some time devoted to more productive tasks.
This is what gets me curious: as gun owners, we are presupposed to thinking of what's next. As in, you buy a gun and then what. Do you carry it? What are the consequences of carrying it? What are the consequences of using it? How to store it. How to transport it. How to maintain it. The list goes on and on but the point is
we think about those things. By and large, anti-gun people don't. They just want them gone, as though some magical sweeping legislative effort would accomplish that.
Ok, so let's examine the consequences of such a magical sweeping legislative effort. Does some agency get saddled with the task of going house to house, apartment to apartment, search warrant in hand? Which agency, and with what force of law? How does it happen? What are the consequences of noncompliance; of failure. Again the list goes on and on seemingly without end, and as you wrote
"it will not go the way they think."
And there's the impenetrable obstacle: it requires thought, as in thinking about Step 2, Step 3... Step
n. "They" don't do that. Discussion over.
I'm genuinely interested in what it is that makes "us" vs. "them" so different, but that gets off-topic which is not my intent.