A small firearm is enough to defend yourself and your home.
And no you can't guarantee people won't use those bigger guns for things other than hunting. You can however take their guns away if they do, or put them in jail.
you're not one to decide what is enough and what is too little, if someone decides to invade my home with a rifle of any sort I'm not going to be on the short end of the stick, whether you like it or not.
and before you go "well you're not one to decide what is enough either", well actually we have every right to decide what's enough. If I want to defend myself/property that I worked for, I'll defend it with whatever I choose, not have someone else who's completely unrelated to me or anything having to do with my life dictate how my future is procured by allowing me this over that. If you feel like pistols are better and safer/more effective then you do you, meanwhile If I feel rifles/shotguns are safer/more effective you'll stay out of my life and let me live it and keep my tools to defend myself when the time comes.
and taking their guns away and jailing them won't stop them from killing, it'll only stop more occurring.
Some points on gun control:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rR9IaXH1M0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9UFyNy-rw4
Also, while looking around, I found this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/mass-shootings-in-america/
One of the interesting points in the above link: 78% of the guns used where the method of obtaining them is known were obtained through legal methods. So no, the criminals will not necessarily have guns if guns are banned.
Another interesting article:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-35048251
In summary, it wouldn't work in the U.S. because of the historical second amendment (which could be changed), the speed of the U.S. government (all the legislation in Australia was passed in 12 days, imagine getting all 50 states to agree on anything in 12 days), and American culture (which is more difficult, it took over 100 years to get Americans to legally accept that people with larger quantities of melanin had rights).
I'm going to bed right now so I'll watch those in the morning, but in the meantime remember that the reason 78% of those guns were obtained legally is because
guns are legal to begin with, there's no point in obtaining an illegal firearm when you can save yourself the trouble and get one legally, but then you have the 22% who can't get one legally and get one illegally anyways.
It wouldn't work here because the second amendment can't be changed, no matter what, and if it is changed you guarantee a
Civil War Revolution, not because people want to keep them to kill (although there are those people), but because you have people who want to defend themselves with a gun instead of fending off an invader with a knife. And to those people, someone who's taking their guns away is the exact same as a burglar invading their home, so
they will defend themselves. Not to mention how you expect to ban weapons when the US can only track the 3 billion registered ones out of the 9 billion guns in the entire country, leaving 6 billion unregistered weapons a mystery.
not to mention guns are the primary reason the US is the superpower it is today (in an unfortunate manner, as our government is stuff) as no one's tried to invade us. We're not safe from other countries because of our military or government, we're safe because there are enough guns to give to every man, woman, and child, still counting constant newborn babies. So if someone invades this country, foreign or internal, unless they nuke and bomb the stuff out of every square inch, they're going to have a pretty hard time.