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Originally Posted by schoy
Nice try, but the analogy fails because the difference is one of intent. People drive faster than 65 mph because they want to get to point A to point B faster, not because they want to kill someone. The fact that traffic fatalities happen at higher speeds is an unintentional consequence. Hence, most, if not all, high-speed traffic fatalities are due to recklessness and gross negligence, not intent or willfulness (and the law makes a distinction).
While many gun-related deaths are due to accident, a not insignificant portion are the result of an intent to kill ... because that's what guns were designed for.
Plus, your statistic of 40,000 traffic fatalities is misleading. Compare (the number of traffic fatalities / hours spent driving) vs. (the number of civilian gun-related deaths / civilian hours spent firing guns), then get back to us with a meaningful statistic.
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You may be surprised by that statistic. Hundreds of millions of rounds are fired each year shooting targets. A minuscule amount of those rounds are fired with intent to kill.
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According to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics for 2009 there are 254,212,610 registered passenger vehicles
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Roughly the same amount of passenger cars legally on the roads in the US as their are legally purchased guns.