Whenever guns are discussed it polarises into those who hate them and those who don't. Some seem to have a visceral fear of guns and believe that they have a life of their own, capable of jumping out of a cupboard and shooting them dead. But a gun is only dangerous if it is pointed and the trigger is pulled, so you should fear the shooter, not the gun.
I see reference often to the 30,000 killed by guns in the US, but you should know what that figure represents. Of the 30,000, 10,000 or so are suicides. Woud they still be dead if they had no guns? Probably, so we should look at their reasons for doing what they did rather than the means.
Another 9,000 are those killed by law enforcement officers, so presumably those killings were justified. Or not. A man at a halloween party last year in LA was dressed as a pirate and had a plastic gun. A policeman saw him from the garden outside and fired 14 rounds at him through the glass, 9 rounds went wild but five hit the poor b*gger, in the BACK. The investigation cleared the cop. We should be outraged at that, I think.
1,500 are accidental deaths, tragic of course, but in the scheme of things not so many. 10,000 die in the US every year from errors by medical personnel, but we don't call for stethoscopes to be banned. Another 18,000 die because they have no or inadequate health insurance, but we don't call for universal coverage. Maybe we get upset at the wrong things.
Of the rest of the 30,000, about 60% are due to drug or gang activities, and are generally black on black (in other words, a small part of the population). The insane war on drugs and the politicians refusal to re-think a failed idea is the blame here.
The final few thousand are what you would correctly be afraid of, being killings and murders by civilians. But even that is not what you think, since it includes those (successful) defences against bad guys trying to commit crimes. The civilian record in this regard is better than that of the police, in that their actions are not found to be at fault as often. another one or two million (yes, million!) crimes are estimated to have been prevented by civilians using guns (not necessarily firing them, but letting the criminal know that you have a gun and will use it).
So the 30,000 becomes just a couple of thousand. Still more than the UK, sure, but on a per capita basis not so bad, and maybe those murders would still have happened, even without a gun.
Criminals prey on the weak and defenceless, such as those in "gun free" places like Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Liverpool, London and Sydney. And, yes, airplanes.