I don't get (or agree with) your point. When you are discussing firearms, what is the sense of including old ladies run over by busses and infants left in hot cars?
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IMHO, the prime (most relevant) homicides are:
(Of course, expressing the above as (per capita) rates is useful...)
"C." is fairly constant or delining.
"A." is decreasing.
and...
"B." is increasing at approximately the inverse of the "A." rate.
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That tells me that self-defense works, and that the would-be-murderer gene pool is being purged.
Why cloud the issue by including people who are poisoned by their wives?
“C.”: ‘deClining”...
Too be more precise, total felonious homicides should be discussed. A person murdered with a rock is just as dead as one murdered with a firearm. A felonious homicide may be prevented with a firearm as well as committed with one.
Therefore, if firearms numbers are decreased, and felonious homicides with firearms go down, but total felonious homicides go up, you have not gained anything.
Similarly if felonious homicides with firearms go up and overall felonious homicides go down, you still have gained.
What we are seeing in the U.S. is total felonious homicides going down, felonious homicides with firearms going down, while total firearms in society numbers are going up.
The means to murder is not the cause of murder. The left focuses on the means, claiming that eliminating a means will reduce homicide with that means. That is a silly argument that is inconsequential if the number of murders rise because of substitution or unintended consequences (such as eliminating a means of deterrence).