This is utter bullshit. ALL guns are made for _killing_. It's irrelevant who - or what - is being killed. You can of course say the same about knives, but they aren't all the effective.

> The real question is how would you collect the guns from criminals...

That would indeed be a problem, but the priority should be to stop selling weapons to people who obviously doesn't need them. No one needs to own automatic rifles. Australia was able to deal with the problem decades ago.

> Criminals will still hold on to what they have, and such a law would only put innocent people at risk.

Again, utter bullshit. You are under the impression that criminals LIKE to shoot people, like they have nothing better to do. Sure, there will be killings, but criminals are also people; they only fire their weapon if they feel they have to.

If less people have guns, there will be less escalation of conflict. That's why we in Norway strive to have our police force not to carry weapons all the time; we know that if the criminals _know_ that the police they encounter carry weapons, then the criminals will also carry weapons, and people will get killed.