Argument: There is no good reason to focus mainly on guns, rather than crime or criminals in general. It doesn't matter what weapon the criminal uses, it matters that they are committing a crime in the first place; guns shouldn't be "singled out". (Alternative versions include "Guns don't kill people, people kill people!")
Example: "We’ve seen terrorist attacks committed with knives, by people driving cars into crowds, and hijacking airplanes." -Trump administration anti-gun control talking point
Another example: "A gun is a tool. But guns serve as a distraction from the essential human problems at the heart of these symptoms of our national ill health. The cure for what ails Americans is to seek approaches that strengthen our communities." -American Greatness
Response:
Assaults committed with guns are much more likely to result in death than are those involving other weapons (Zimring 2004, Saltzman et al. 1992). As Powell et al. (1996) put it, "guns are more likely to kill than any other weapon used in an assault." Also, this difference does not appear to be entirely due to differences in intentions between criminals using guns vs. other weapons; instead, it is apparently at least partly because of differences in the weapons themselves (Roth 1994). A 2002 study (Harris et al. 2002) corroborated this finding (see p. 148, "Firearm assaults are by far the most lethal form of assault...").
In 1985, Susan P. Baker made a similar point when she wrote, "...in the US, two-thirds of the 7,900 deaths in 1981 involving arguments and brawls were caused by guns. These deaths would largely be replaced by non-fatal injuries if a gun were not handy. Thus, [instead of "Guns don't kill people, people kill people!",] a far more appropriate generality would be that "People without guns injure people; guns kill them"" (Baker 1985).
References:
Baker 1985: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.75.6.587 Harris et al. 2002: http://www.universitychurchchicago.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Murder-and-Medicine.pdf
Powell et al. 1996: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019606449670063X
Roth 1994: https://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/fireviol.txt
Saltzman et al. 1992: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/397728
Zimring 2004: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1748-720X.2004.tb00446.x/full
Other examples of this argument:
"Guns are not the source of violence in the world—people are." -The Odyssey Online
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