You seem to live in same utopistic wonderland as Piers Morgan, where criminals drop their weapons as soon as the average citizen drop his. In real world it doesn't happen that way, because criminals just benefit more if average citizen doesn't have guns. By law you can rule only that part of the population who obey the law. Criminals are known to be outside this category, so they doesn't care about the laws. If you stop self defence by gun control, you will see how much homicide numbers grow.
http://gunssavelives.net/category/self-defense/ There you can see what happens in real world. More than 110 cases just 2013, where citizen has shot potential killer as self defence.
How about in Australia? How your gun ban works? You got it 1997, and how many lives it has save? As far as I know, you has the fast growing numbers of gun crimes, lots of homicides, and fast growing numbers of home invasions. You are just learning that gunless people are easy pray for predators, and what will be price? How many dead, raped, mutilated, just because they doesn't have tools to self defence. You see, it is widely known fact that criminals doesn't afraid a police, or punishments. What afraid them shitless is citizen with gun, because that will kill you fast. In that web site most of the stories end after first shots, because criminals flee like a bat out from hell when citizens fires first shot. What would have happen if these citizens did not carry their guns? Most of them would be dead right now. How many in australia has die by the gun crimes since 1997? I bet the figure isn't 0. In fact, you got your share of mass murders, dead police officers etc. regardless of the ban.
If you stop self defence by gun control, you will see how much homicide numbers grow. - I live in Australia (plenty of gun control) where homicides are way less than America, you guys crack me up, you have the worst homocide rate in the developed world (because of gun culture) and you talk like everything is wonderful. You then state that More than 110 cases just 2013, where citizen has shot potential killer as self defence. (but you fail to connect the reason why their is so many potential killers in the first place - Answer (Gun Culture linked with ease of access to guns making criminality EASY)
And as for Australia, the figures you have are wrong, everything got better after gun control, in fact our Government warned the NRA to stop LYING and misrepresenting the crime statistics to suit their agenda. The federal Attorney General Daryl Williams accused the NRA of falsifying government statistics and urged the NRA to "remove any reference to Australia" from its website. That's the sad part, you get fed a bunch of lies and propaganda from a biased gun lobby and the gun nutters just swallow it up as truth. You don't get told how happy the average Australian is with the gun laws, you don't get told that we experience ZERO mass shootings since changes were made. You don't get told how safe and secure the average citizen feels, how they don't live in fear of being violated, unlike the average American, you don't get told how lucky and blessed people feel to live here. The average Australian would HATE to have a similar culture to America (their are exceptions like bad boy dazza, but the average Australian just sees his type as a whackjob)
I have never met anybody in 40 years who experienced a home invasion by an armed predator, it just doesn't happen where I come from. For that matter, I have never met anybody who was the victim of gun crime. And of course criminals are afraid of police and punishments, and career criminals probably have a better code than the police when it comes to shooting citizens. We have had ZERO mass murders since the GUN restrictions, ZERO ! There was a reduction in yearly rates of firearm homicide and firearm suicide of approximately two thirds of what they used to be in the days before improvements were made to the gun laws.
I know it must be hard for the average American to visualise, but their are Countries that live in relative peace and harmony and they don't have a gun culture nor a large percentage of the population owning guns. It is nice to live in a country knowing that you can send your child to school without fear and walk the streets without worrying about being shot in the face.