Guns Don't Kill People

Before anyone gets all up in arms, just let me make it clear for the record that the leanings I have toward gun rights is purely consequentialist -- gun rights are good if they they save lives on net (who would disagree?). That's why I am generally only instrumentally interested in the 2nd amendment debate and instead watch the number-crunchers for new results. So in light of the recently released opinion [hat tip: Volokh] from the Department of Justice's legal counsel on the private right to carry, I'd like to draw attention to old but interesting research that reminds us of what we already know: governments kill people. Of course, we in the U.S. like to think that such democide doesn't affect us. But by the numbers, the U.S. makes the top 30 of most deadly regimes in the modern era as a result of the near extermination of native americans. Would anyone contest that the outcome of that struggle had nothing to do with guns?