This was a Quora question I answered.
As a gun owning Americans, if giving up all your firearms except one handgun and one hunting rifle meant all the bad guys lost all their guns as well, would you do it? Why or why not?
First tell me how you are going to keep the guns out of the hands of the bad guys. It is naïve to think that any amount of legislation, licensing, background checks, waiting periods, psychological testing, etc. are going to do the job. Bad guys do not follow those requirements. Then tell me how you are going to keep knifes away from the bad guys after they get rid of their guns, and then other items that can be used for aggression, down to bare knuckles. Please also tell me how to discern between the bad guys and the good guys? Finally, tell me how to make sure that my one good-guy handgun and rifle cannot be used to do a crime if stolen, I don’t think the handgun and rifle know the difference of how is being used and therefore decide not to work. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
To reduce crime, you must address the causes of crime; events and conditions that push and individual to commit crime; the attraction or social learning and acceptability of crime and teach restrain of violence and the sanctity of life. There is a lot of good research into these areas, regretfully, the implementation of solutions is not that easy. You will never be able to completely eliminate crime, so limiting guns is really not part of the solution. In fact, not knowing if I have a gun to defend myself and my family may be a bigger deterrence to a criminal from committing the crime than prison itself, which is another topic.
So, the answer is NO, I will not give up my firearms away, because it will neither guarantee that bad guys won’t get them, nor it affects their ability to commit crime.