You always have to make a big deal about criminals with guns, Russ?
The simple fact is most firearm incidents don't even involve criminals (or should I say recidivous criminals, I wouldn't referr to someone with one or 2 charges in the course of their life as a 'criminal') They actually involve average normal everyday people & are either accidents or impulsive/compulsive acts such as domestics & what not cause by drunkenous, simple jealousy or just by someone losing it. Really the average person is more at risk of being shot by an alcoholic with a gun than a criminal with a gun - Here in Oz we have that 'Cops' program & also that 'LAPD' program on at about 3AM, every so often, & if you watch either of those programs you'll notice that just about every 2nd callout (well it almost seems like that) is to some drunken domestic, where some drunken black man or redneck white has pulled a gun on someone in a fit of rage, so then they have to go searching under all the beds & in the back yard till they find it.
The fact is even most criminals don't actually own firearms. Just do a survey of people who have decent rap sheets - I bet the vast majority are the type of people, that if ever they came a cross a firearm, they'd sell it before the day is out, just so they could get an extra hit. Even the vast majority of people who break into houses, have no intent in comiting actual bodily harm on residents, they just want to grab your VCR (& any money or jewellery lying arround) to flog for drug money. If you were actually at home when one of these scrotes climbed through your window, all you'd have to do is turn on your bedside light & they be out the door & running down the street as far as their abused bodies will take 'em.
Really most Americans who keep guns for self defence, do it mainly because they have tickets on themselves & there own self importance & have watched too much Hollywood TV & are thus paranoid they need a gun for self defence. When really they are only at risk from other people, who also have guns for self defence too. About the only people who truelly need firearms for self defence are people in law enforment/security/military & drug dealers. Afterall they are about the only people who are at risk of geting held up regully - most of the drug dealers I know have been held up at least once, useally by toecutters (Oz talk for standover merchants) or by crooked police. As far as everyday people are concerned the odds are like about 1000 to 1 or something that they'l be held up just once (let alone more that that) in their lifetime.
However I do agree with DaboneHead, the US is to saturated with Guns, for 'guncontrol' to be worth bothering about. & He's also right about compulsary gunsafe storage, too. Here in Oz & the UK its been compulsary for donkeys years, that all firearms have to be stored unloaded (& if possible disabled) in a steel gunsafe that's bolted to concrete & the bolts lockwelded down. Consequently domestic firearm accidents are very low in Australia & the UK compared with the US (both in relation to hunting/handling accidents & as a percentage of all firearm deaths too).
Such gunsafes make legal firearms harder to steal, which in the long term would have a negative (if initially negligable) effect on the supply of ilegal firearms. Afterall the main reason why the US has so many illegal firearms arround is because of the huge number of legal firearms that are arround. Because as we all know virtually all illegal firearms start out as legal firearms.
Maybe if Tasmania then had 'Fair dinkum' gun storage laws (Tasmania was at that the only Australian state that didn't have gunsafe laws, actually they were phazing them in at that time), than that recesive might not have been able to steal that Armalite & blast away 30 people. Then the politicians wouldn't have been lobbied (by that womens antigun group) into bringing in that stupid over-the-top expensive, gun buy-back scheme.