Without wanting to cause offence - each (country) unto its own.
It is however interesting to compare the US experience with that of Australia. They had masses of firearms, although clearly nothing like the number in the US but after a mass shooting the law was changed and the result was firearms offences and suicides dropped dramatically. See here. I walk the streets of the UK without the general fear that my neighbour might loose off a firearm (or their children will.) Even with strict gun control we have problems but nothing like the US. I have to say that I've never felt threatened whilst being in the US apart from when one giant of a man who looked extremly rough came towards us. He stepped off the pavement raised his hat to my wife and said, "Evening mam," proving you can't judge people by their looks. (Another lesson learned)
Davie 
I find it amazing the results of Australia’s controls. Only 40% of the suicides and homicides are now done by using a firearm. Have suicides and homicides decreased over all? Have grotesque results increased because of a less effective way of suicide being readily available? What about homicides given the same line of inquiry? Home invasions did not increase, nor did they decrease, but now the home occupants had no recourse, but to be peaceful victims, or little old ladies standing in a corner with a kitchen knife in hand? I have wrestled with larger more powerful friends for fun. I remember how completely helpless that I was a couple of times, being pinned or tossed. The statistics need to be looked at more closely. What is the true impact?
Most people advocating have lived in areas where there is peace and have had relatively close to no violence in their lives, stable places. Most are not different, like minorities, or a social difference like odd religion, or gay, or of anti-war or some other opinion, or dress. I have seen many shocking examples of these people being beaten, tortured, humiliated or traumatized, because they had no defense…victims happen. Mentioned that I have not needed a gun for many years, but in my youth, there were several times that it could have been handy in my defense and I had no gun. The last time I felt threatened was a larger younger textile thinking that he had a right to take away our free beach. We had to leave for another place. Upon return, his inebriated girlfriend shouted, “You guys a soo cool” and removed her top. He was too busy with her to hassle us about our nudity. This just an example, there will always be someone popping up when you least expect it, ready to push people around when there are no guns.
A few decades ago, while driving on a remote interstate highway in California, where two years before a nutjob had been driving up and shooting people at random two years before, I was stopped for speeding. That was when I discovered that it was illegal to have a firearm in my car for protection, there. That’s when I became a life member of NRA.
But there is more to the issue than what a gun control advocates are framing it to be. When I traveled in South America, I was among populations where people had no guns. As I sat eating a hamburger in a restaurant, a group of students came by in protest of the flying of planes over their classrooms and disrupting college. The military police walked up and shot into the crowd. I watched young people fall. This in the main plaza, on Peru’s Independence Day. That evening there were people celebrating patriotic Independence just as loud, in that same plaza, and there was nothing in the newspapers.
In Bogata, the public bus fares had been upped by approximately 4 to 6 cents and people were walking the streets in protest, because they were that hardworking poor. I was picked out of a crowd on my way to a movie, slammed up against a wall and held a gunpoint like a firing squad, searched, and left vulnerable to any gun play that the police were supposedly attempting to suppress, as others walked by. The oppressive government and its monopoly squeezing the people, needed to take away the guns.
These are two examples of unarmed citizenry. History has proven continuously that there is no limit to the oppression of those who gain power, unless there is popular control and too many pitchforks for the Knights to handle. I know that this country has slipped continuously and dramatically toward a situation like those South American CIA/corporate/oligarchy controlled countries that I visited back then and we are never that far from the same without the Bill of Rights in true force. These are the issues of gun control. A well-armed citizenry, too many guns in the hands of too many people is a necessity. If we look at histories statistics, fascism, oligarchy, in numerous forms are inevitable, unless the government is truly by the people, of and for the people. These shooting tragedies will continue, but the odds of getting harmed by a gun are very small. With government control of guns, the odds that oppressive government will take over are 100%. You don’t have to use guns, you just have to have them.
Hitler took away the free body movement. He put guns in the hands of only those that fit the mold, of friendly groups. Dictators stand as strong controlled personalities and like to stand as the representatives of controlling religions, as often as they make ideology like religion.
This is a political rant, but body freedom depends on its political aspects, too. Guns actually free society. Free to do things like be naked.
So, well, yea, I’m a cowboy, wild on the free range and I’ve been roaming around.
Jbee
