From Iceland here.
We are rather strict on gun control here I think and its a good thing. We have only had one incident in the last 20 years (all my life) that I can remember. That was somewhere up in the country where a man shot his wife or something with a shotgun.
Its obvious that if you allow people to own guns we get more and more guns to the public, legal and illegal guns. What so many in the US think is that they need guns for their protection, to protect them from criminals with guns. In a way it solves the problem but along with solving the problem it also makes the problem bigger. The more guns legaly owned by the public the more illegal guns are owned by criminals. If you stop producing guns like semi automatic handguns and automatic shotguns and whatnot the criminals will have no way of getting their hands on one. By not allowing the public to own guns, aside for rifles for hunting and olympic target practicing, the gun makers will not make other guns because there is no real demand for them. Therefor criminals will not get their hands on them. Apart from that it will almost radicate incidents where incidents like a kid goes to school and starts shooting everyone, hardly any accidents at home where someone accidently shoots a family member or friend. The police will gain from this and because the police gains from this the public also gains from this. The police will no longer be in fear that everyone is carying a gun and could shoot them, excesive police prutality will hardly be noticable and when it does happen it will be alot easier to deal with because it is no longer a daily accurance.
This all takes time, changing the rules like that but in the end the results are alot better than the other. Like things are going I would not be surprised sometimes that US school will start teaching kids to shoot and nearly everyone will own a gun, with that we will see many many more murders and accidents.
If you look 5 years to the future alowing people to own guns is probably a better way now like things are going now. If you then look 50 years into the future then going that route will be one of the most horrible mistake in history of the US. We must start to think further than few years to see where the world is going to. Do you think your 10 year old children will go to school someday with a gun for their protection, is that a future we want?