[pjc50]

It's never going to be en masse. Australia enacted sufficient gun control to drastically limit mass shootings by introducing licensing, purpose and registration requirements as well as banning semi-automatics. There was a buyback scheme which most people complied with.

I do wonder if American resistance to sensible gun control will cause a flip straight over into hard restrictions, but it's difficult to see what the trigger event for that would be. Left-wing paramilitaries? (right-wing paramilitaries are seemingly tolerated!)

[bnolsen]

"sensible"? Since massive amoutns of guns have found their way to the public since the 1990s the crime rates across the US have been dropping dramatically. And even so the US isn't even close to the top of the list worldwide in per capita murder rate even though lots of people have weapons.

If anything those numbers show that there is at the very least no correlation between numbers of guns and crime, and may well indicate more guns means less crime. Since the US constitution protects ownership with the "shall not be infringed" clause and the stats show there's little downsides why stomp on people's rights?

[rpenm]

Gun ownership rates have been falling, not rising.

http://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gun...