I'm perfectly willing to concede that if all guns were made to magically disappear the murder and suicide rates would go down to a degree. But in fact you can't do that, so even an outright 100% gun ban is only going to have a very marginal effect on murder/suicide rates.
(Note, I believe we all have the right to end our lives, so I have no sympathy for the suicide thing, but whatever, I'll play along)
It is certainly a fact that guns make it much easier to kill people. try killing someone with a knife. It can be done, but you're likely to come out of that fight with scars at the least.
The argument here is that some rights have a cost. The right of self defense has a cost: that is, some murders will take place that otherwise might not. The benefit is that I have the ability to defend myself and protect the country from tyranny. That's a trade-off just as the ability to write BS articles in a newspaper has the ability to start an Imperialist war (Spanish-American War/Hearst). The benefit outweighs the inevitable cost of misuse.
I can't make that argument with unrestricted access to high explosives/hand grenades.
There are hundreds of millions of firearms in the U.S. so a ban couldn't be imposed even if you tried.
However there are not and have not been for many many decades, large amounts of hand grenades, c4, etc in private hands absent government licenses, strict controls on storage, security, etc.
The simple lack of availability of these items makes them extremely uncommon items used by criminals. Sure, a dedicated, capable criminal can get their hands on these, but face it folks, 99% of criminals are both stupid and not capable at all.
Seriously: Who the hell robs a liquor store? You get maybe $100, you run a very serious risk of being caught (video surveillance, witnesses etc.) and you go to jail for a long time if/when you get caught. Whio dies it? drug-addled people and idiots. Jails have always been full of both.
The standard gun-control argument is that reducing guns will reduce the use of them by average street criminals, not massive conspiracies pulled off by pros. The latter is a straw man and no intelligent anti would argue it.
So as far as arguing that common possession of say hand grenades/c4/blasting caps with no restrictions wouldn't result in higher body counts, I don't see how the argument holds up. And lets face it folks, the chance of an armed revolution in this country in the forseeable future is remote.
If there WERE a revolution, guerrillas would obtain grenades, rocket launchers, etc the same way they have in every other insurgency: Kill a soldier and take HIS. I can make an excellent argument that keeping my small arms makes me more able to do this at a minimal cost to society, plus it has other benefit, namely self defense from criminals. The cost to society from easy availability of explosives on the other hand, (simple housebreaking results in lots of illegal guns on the street, I don't think that can be denied) is not so easily argued.
The obvious counter to the less guns = less street thugs using them argument is that with 250 million guns in this country, even an outright ban wouldn't take guns away from criminals to any meaningful degree and that it would only make the government the sole arbiter of all things with no recourse whatever to the citizenry to resist.
I don't think I can make that argument convincing about heavy ordinance.