Guns versus spoons...

Spoons Don’t Make People Fat 

I am all for personal responsibility, but a gun is a far more effective tool than a spoon.  When I wanted to learn how to kill a man, I did not go to a swordsman.  I did not want to learn to use a Scottish claymore.   I did not want to grab a railroad tie.  I wanted to learn to use the most efficient method.  For me, that was a hand gun.  

A gun is far more effective than a spoon.  How many people can you feed with a spoon in a minute? Five minutes? Ten minutes? How many bites of food can a spoon hold?  Can you feed someone with a spoon through a wall?  Can you feed someone from more than 200 yards away?  How long will it take for you to feed someone until they are full?  How many times have accidentally fed someone or the wrong someone?

I get the personal responsibility angle, but we have to be honest that a gun can be a very efficient way to kill people.  Guns make otherwise mismatched opponents equal.  In thinking about this, I thought it might be best to cite a story from Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle to make a the point.  Set December 21, 1832, Darwin's voyage was sometimes fraught with adventure and excitement.

This is more in line with how I see a gun.  

At night we endeavoured in vain to find an uninhabited cove; and at last were obliged to bivouac not far from a party of natives. They were very inoffensive as long as they were few in numbers, but in the morning (21st) being joined by others they showed symptoms of hostility, and we thought that we should have come to a skirmish. An European labours under great disadvantages when treating with savages like these who have not the least idea of the power of firearms. In the very act of levelling his musket he appears to the savage far inferior to a man armed with a bow and arrow, a spear, or even a sling. Nor is it easy to teach them our superiority except by striking a fatal blow. Like wild beasts, they do not appear to compare numbers; for each individual, if attacked, instead of retiring, will endeavour to dash your brains out with a stone, as certainly as a tiger under similar circumstances would tear you. Captain Fitz Roy, on one occasion being very anxious, from good reasons, to frighten away a small party, first flourished a cutlass near them, at which they only laughed; he then twice fired his pistol close to a native. The man both times looked astounded, and carefully but quickly rubbed his head; he then stared awhile, and gabbled to his companions, but he never seemed to think of running away. We can hardly put ourselves in the position of these savages, and understand their actions. In the case of this Fuegian, the possibility of such a sound as the report of a gun close to his ear could never have entered his mind. He perhaps literally did not for a second know whether it was a sound or a blow, and therefore very naturally rubbed his head. In a similar manner, when a savage sees a mark struck by a bullet, it may be some time before he is able at all to understand how it is effected; for the fact of a body being invisible from its velocity would perhaps be to him an idea totally inconceivable. Moreover, the extreme force of a bullet that penetrates a hard substance without tearing it, may convince the savage that it has no force at all. Certainly I believe that many savages of the lowest grade, such as these of Tierra del Fuego, have seen objects struck, and even small animals killed by the musket, without being in the least aware how deadly an instrument it is.[1]

The crew of the Beagle understood the advantage that their firearms gave them over the natives.  Nearly more than a century and a half has passed since that night.  Guns have not gotten less superior, but more superior.