I own and enjoy shooting handguns, but if I'm being honest, I have a hard time arguing for why handguns should be legal. People on both sides of the gun debate admit handguns are the most common murder weapon in America, and if you count all the people who are shot but not killed (I've heard the ratio of wounded to killed with handguns is about 6 to 1), then that means that a very large number of people are being shot with handguns.
I've heard some arguments against this before, but none are especially convincing.
>criminals will still get guns
Some of them surely will, but if you stop the manufacture of new handguns and take the old ones off the street and melt them down, you can make it more difficult for criminals to get them. You could provide owners of existing handguns with compensation for their loss.
>SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED!
The 2nd Amendment is supposed to be about a militia, and a militia would have little use for handguns as they are seldom used in modern warfare.
>self defense
This would only apply to self defense on the street rather than the home, since rifles and shotguns are the preferred home defense weapons. Most people who own handguns (even those licensed to carry) don't carry regularly. Even those who do legally carry have a questionable effect on crime deterrence, since they tend to live in low crime areas in the first place.
I would love to hear any reasonable arguments.