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Or the carbon economy. Or the CIA. Or GATT. Or the WTO. Or Big Oil. Or the Pentagon. Or Wall Street. Or NAFTA. Or the TPP.
Nope. Americans owning guns, in America, is what's corrupting the world.
There are folks here I can have a reasonable discussion with. You like to think you are one of them, but you are not. You call in the "everyones," you try to isolate and pick off, you try to associate me with all manner of right-wing causes. It is your way, and you cannot hide that by calling me "motivated by some kind of interpersonal hatred."
With who? You? I don't even know you.
And again, people DO in fact kill people. And themselves.
Have a nice day.
And when people wage a cultural war, they pass laws designed to punish those of a particular culture, regardless whether the laws are effective or reasonable.
The fact is that gun technology, like all technologies, changes and evolves over time. As hunting waned with the urbanization of America, gun ownership became more focused on self-defense and related recreational shooting (such as pistol competitions that emphasized tactical shooting) and less on hunting. So guns, particularly long guns, became more optimized for self-defense, taking on ergonomic features the military adopted during the post-WW2 era.
The long-barreled bolt-action rifle firing a powerful cartridge, or the lever-action rifle firing a moderate-powered cartridge, was replaced by semi-automatic rifles firing moderate cartridges from detachable magazines. Naturally, many of these rifles were simply civilian-legal versions of existing military guns like the M-16 and the AK-47.
This scared people, who at the time were dealing with the peak of the crime wave of the 20th century and the related violence and mayhem. These people, worried because people were buying more and more "assault weapons" instead of Elmer-Fudd-looking guns, and they started a cultural war against them.
Of course, this sent sales of the guns they wanted to ban to record numbers, and the conversation went mainstream. And a curious thing happened. It turns out that people that own guns get really unhappy and politically motivated when politicians move against things they own, and that people that don't own guns don't get correspondingly motivated to keep NOT owning guns.
You can poke fun at the people that are worried that "gubmint's comin' fer our gunz", but the fact is that there is a constant and non-inconsiderable movement out there to arbitrarily outlaw broad types of guns and accessories, and that wants to make buying and owning a gun considerably more expensive and difficult. And they want to do it through the power of the various levels of government in the U.S.
Now, obviously, there is a reaction to this. The RWers have adopted the nonsensical line about needing to overthrow a government that has become unresponsive to the public; yet these are the same people that vote for corporatist Republicans and Democrats that do NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING, to curtail the political power of organized money that is corrupting our political system and INSURING that they are not heard!
Or they're worried about societal/economic collapse (a valid fear) or a race war (a stupid white-man's fear) or a UN invasion ( 
). There are perfectly valid, and reasonable, reasons for owning an AR-15 that don't involve black UN helicopters or space aliens.
But to counter the hysteria of mass shootings played endlessly by the MSM, and the (usually) irrational gun laws that have stemmed from those tragedies, they've adapted a counter-hysterical stance. Death panels and secret UN arms treaties, of course. And the FEMA camps all ready to be filled with prisoners taken by ACORN stormtroopers. 
But despite the potential of all the AR-15s and AK-47s and M-1 Carbines and Mini-14s and the like, with all their high-capacity magazines and protruding pistol grips and lasers and tactical lights and camo finishes, rifles are a minor player in murder, robbery, etc. High-profile shooting asides (yeah, I know, it's a big aside, but bear with me), they simply are not a significant factor. Something like 5% of all murders (when the weapon was identifiable) are with rifles of all stripes.
So you can worry all you want; your odds of being killed with a muscle-driven weapon are significantly higher than being killed with a rifle. Oh, and accidental shooting deaths are at a low, after declining steadily for decades. MSM strikes again, eh?
But attempts to wage a culture war are only empowering the other side. This is in part because many of the laws proposed are ineffective, ridiculous, shameless pandering that only works on gun-ignorant people ("assault weapon" bans) and deflects attention from the root causes of violence and crime (War on Drugs, anyone?). But it also highlights this simple fact: gun owners will get politically organized and spend their money to continue to keep their guns (or their options on future guns), and non-gun-owners will NOT get politically organized and will NOT spend their money to continue to NOT own guns.
I agree with you that guns should look like guns, and toys should look like toys. None of my guns will ever look like anything but a serious chunk of metal and plastic and wood. And some of those "family portraits" make me shudder; I think there's one (1) picture of me holding a gun, and that's with two other people while out deer hunting on the prairie.
SPOKANE, Wash. - An early morning road rage incident at the intersection of Division Street and North River Drive ended with a man being shot and killed by Spokane police officers in front of the Salvation Army building at 222 East Indiana Avenue.
And more guns
http://www.kxly.com/news/spokane-news/police-responding-to-possible-hostage-situation/-/101214/21622492/-/4qyjmhz/-/index.html
SPOKANE, Wash. -
Multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Spokane Police Department and the SWAT team are responding to a hostage situation at the Double Eagle Pawn shop at 3030 E Sprague.
A gunman is barricaded inside the store, has one hostage and is asking to talk to news media.
And more guns.
http://www.kxly.com/news/spokane-news/police-investigate-reported-shooting-in-west-central/-/101214/21616942/-/hk7s2a/-/index.html
SPOKANE, Wash. -
Two people were detained after Spokane Police responded to a call of shots fire in the West Central neighborhood Thursday afternoon.
Neighbors say they heard at least one shot fired, then saw two people running when police arrived on scene.
Police detained two men in an alley near Gardner and Elm while other officers searched the street and nearby lawns for shell casings.
Cody Sleep lives nearby, and says he's seen the neighborhood slowly get worse over the last eight years.
"That's why I conceal carry," he said. "In case any of that tries to spill over to my friends of family I can handle it."
No injuries were reported and there has been no word on any arrests.
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YEA GUNS!!!!
See how that works?
His opinion carries the same weight as yours or mine.
What? No call for a boycott?
Most of the DUers I've railed against have been banned, actually. Some more than once. The rest of the Gun Squad are pretty harmless.
It's the fetishists in the real world I find more disturbing. Fortunately their influence continues to wane, as civilization progresses. It always does, eventually. 
